This essay by
Gwynoro first appeared in the booklet: ‘Towards Federalism and Beyond’.
Intermixed with these issues have been the
2015 General Election and the EU Referendum of 2016. Both of which, for
differing reasons, provided unexpected results, with the latter leading to the
resignation of David Cameron and the emergence of Theresa May as Prime Minister. The outcome of the EU Referendum particularly
focussed the minds of devolutionists, federalists, and many in favour of
independence alike, on potential future governance models for the UK Union, or
even its prospects for survival, with several significantly thorny Brexit
issues appearing centre stage. These included the High/Supreme Court hearings
and the enactment of Article 50.
Many powerful voices joined the constitutional
debate at this time, most notably the First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones,
the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
the much experienced Lord David Owen and, a long time supporter of a powerful
Welsh Parliament, Lord Elystan Morgan. The momentum was such that the Labour Party came
out strongly in favour of a Constitutional Convention, as witnessed by an event
held at the Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff in late-March 2017. Additionally,
Jeremy Corbyn spoke in support of a Convention at the Scottish Labour Party
Conference in February 2017 and has reaffirmed his stance more recently.
In Wales, an
emerging non-partisan and all party group called Yes Cymru produced
a booklet on Welsh
independence. I was pleased to have been
asked to speak at three of their rallies in Carmarthen, Cardiff and Swansea
over the last year or so.
Then, in spring
2017, the Prime Minister whilst breathing the beautifully rarefied mountain air
of Snowdonia one weekend, emerged in London on the Monday morning to announce a
snap General Election – despite having promised publicly on at least five
occasions not to do such a thing. Theresa May was enticed by an opportunistic
calculation, founded on a lead of 20 percentage points in the polls, a
seemingly dysfunctional Jeremy Corbyn, and a considerably weakened Liberal
Democrat party. Indeed for several months prior to early-May 2017, it was
forecasted that the Conservatives would have a 100-seat plus majority in
Westminster following any snap election, with the Labour party annihilated.
Also, in late-April 2017, a sensational poll conducted by YouGov for ITV and
Cardiff University projected the Tories as winning 20 Westminster seats in
Wales, Labour 16, Plaid Cymru 3 and Liberal Democrats 1. The lure of temptation
was far too great for our Prime Minister to ignore.
So after a century
of Labour hegemony in Wales, it looked for a few weeks during spring 2017 that
we were heading towards a political earthquake of serious magnitude in nature, which would have been an enormous
culture shock to the body politic of this country. But as Harold Wilson often
used to say, ‘a week is a long time in politics,’ or to quote Harold Macmillan
when asked about what shapes political fates, ‘events dear boy, events.’
Without recounting
the full extent of the fateful events that transpired, the ‘strong and stable’
Theresa turned out to be ‘weak and feeble’ whilst the seemingly ineffective
Jeremy became transformed with substantial crowds attending his rallies. I had
not witnessed such gatherings since the 1950s when politicians like Aneurin
Bevan spoke in public. Theresa May’s
performance was the poorest, if not the most disastrous, by any Tory leader in
my memory, other than Sir Alec Douglas Home in 1963 and William Hague in 2001.
Jeremy Corbyn on the other hand was a revelation, a man inspired, totally renewed
from the inept and ineffective performer he had been at Prime Minister’s
questions time over the preceding year. He was in his element as a superb
campaigner, attracting unprecedented numbers of people to his meetings,
wherever held across the country. Incidents such as the Conservative manifesto
debacle and the appalling terrorist attacks also played a part in forming the
electorate’s views.
The final outcome was effectively a hung
Parliament until the Tories were saved by the Northern Ireland Democratic
Unionist Party. Now the headlines and sub-plots of that election is testing the
commitment, determination and mettle of all devolutionists, federalists and
other interested stakeholders engaged in the UK constitutional debate.
In the lead-up to that General Election,
during early-May 2017, an opinion poll was conducted by YouGov for Yes Cymru on
the question of independence for Wales. It articulated a staggering result
which was absolutely unexpected in substance, and quite probably unwelcome in
many political circles. The findings received little publicity at the time,
being lost and buried in the ‘hurly burly’ of the ongoing UK election campaign.
This poll painted a political picture that
went against all opinion and public attitude surveys in Wales since
establishment of the Welsh Assembly (Senedd) in 1999. As brief background, in
the last two decades, backing for independence has registered between 3% and 6%
on average. In fact, the annual BBC Wales poll conducted in March 2017 by ICM
revealed the following levels of forecasted support for various scenarios of
Welsh governance—independence at 6%; increased Senedd powers 44%; same powers
29%; fewer powers 3%; and abolishing the Senedd 13%.
However, this survey of 1000 respondents –
which incidentally is the usual sample size for opinion polling – conducted by
YouGov on behalf of Yes Cymru, and published in May 2017, showed that 26% of
the Welsh population favoured independence, with the percentage increasing to
33% if the then predicted Conservative majority actually materialised! Labour
voters turned out to be relatively supportive of independence. Plaid Cymru
voters, as expected, were too. But more importantly, the 18 to 49 age groups
were found sympathetic to the prospect, which raises real questions about the
future status of Wales within the UK. On removing, from the calculations, those
respondents who registered as being undecided, the poll identified 47% of
Labour voters backing independence (of which 23% were strongly in favour); 64%
Plaid Cymru; 33% Lib Dems; 15% Conservatives; and 18% UKIP.
Two other interesting observations were
highlighted. The first was that 28% of Plaid Cymru voters were against
independence. The second concerned that middle band of party supporters whose
vote might be ‘up for grabs’ during any referendum campaign on the issue, with
their extent ranging from 8% for both Labour and Plaid Cymru to 18% of Lib
Dems.
So, post-General Election 2017, where are we
in relation to exploring the future of the UK Union? Will the
progressive forces now unite to move the agenda forward? At the heart of this
debate is the question of what will Labour do? Any major constitutional reform
cannot happen without its serious involvement and active participation in
discussions. Brexit and the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, unless radically amended,
will have significant implications for the present devolution settlement. One
area of particular concern to Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh is what will
happen to those powers and responsibilities now delegated from Brussels,
through Westminster, to the devolved administrations on matters such as
agriculture and rural affairs. Will they be taken back up the chain to London
in time thus completely undermining the arrangements in place?
Here in Wales we have an added matter to contend
with, and that is the manner in which Wales is perceived and reported through
the media—not only across the UK but especially in our own backyard. Many
commentators have written extensively about the impact of the ‘information
deficit’ existing due to the inadequate news coverage of Welsh issues in our
media, and the ensuing challenges faced. For instance, the level of reported interest shown in Wales for the
2016 EU Referendum (82%) was considerably higher than that for the 2016 Senedd
election (59%), both of which were held only a month apart. Without
doubt, one of the major reasons for this difference was the nature and content
of news reporting in Wales, including which sectors of that medium predominate
in our country. When tuning into the latest UK political news, its substance is
often entirely focused on events surrounding the Westminster ‘village.’ This,
of course, is quite natural, but unfortunately during times of devolved
elections in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, such an intense
preponderance and saturation of Westminster information, clearly impacts on
people’s exposure to the key campaign issues and political choices presented
closer to home.
Put
straightforwardly, the people of Wales are not regularly exposed to informed
news coverage centring on Senedd matters. One of the most striking findings of
survey data published by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) in 2015 was the significantly low number of Welsh people
identified as frequently reading a newspaper produced in Wales – 5% or fewer.
Today, the Western Mail disseminates the most comprehensive handling of Senedd
matters, but the ABC survey revealed that fewer than 4% regularly read the
paper. Further, when respondents were asked to name their main newspaper, only
1% selected The Western Mail. The Daily Mail, by contrast, is almost ten times
more likely to be acknowledged as the main daily read, being consumed
habitually by four times more people in Wales than The Western Mail.
Broadcasters
in Wales, on the other hand, reach a far greater proportion of the population
than newspapers. BBC Wales Today is the most widely followed – 37% of people
frequently tune in – whilst 17% and 13% regularly follow ITV Wales Tonight and
BBC Radio Wales respectively. However, UK-wide programmes are still the main
source of reference for news consumption in Wales, with the ABC survey
identifying The BBC News at Six or Ten as viewed by nearly 37% of respondents,
whilst 30% follow the BBC News channel. ITV’s Evening News or News at Ten, and
Sky News are watched less often – 11% and 13% respectively – but still rank as
key sources of information relative to coverage produced in Wales. Other
regular daily or weekly productions such as Daily Politics, Newsnight,
Panorama, Question Time, and the like, compound the situation further in terms
of ‘swamping’ any reports delivered through indigenously created programmes.
I
have recently come across additional data from the ABC revealing an
ever-continuing reduction in the readership of local weekly newspapers and
regional dailies. Local weekly newspapers in the UK lost print circulation by an average of 11.2%, year
on year, during the second half of 2016. The figures suggest a
quickening in the pace of print decline, possibly fuelled by cover price rises,
editorial cutbacks and the readership moving to online sources. A redeeming
feature is that nearly every regional newspaper website audited by the ABC recorded strong growth in the second half of 2016.
As already mentioned, in late-March 2017, the First
Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones AM,
the former Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, and ex-Deputy Prime Minister Lord John Prescott came together to discuss the future of the UK Union
in an event held at the Wales Governance Centre in Cardiff. It was an occasion that I was keen to attend for
many reasons, including political and personal. One of my first tasks when
appointed Research and Public Relations Officer for the Labour Party in Wales
during 1969 was to Chair a working group charged to develop the party’s policy
towards devolution. Together with Emrys Jones and Gwyn Morgan I jointly
prepared the party’s evidence to the Crowther/ Kilbrandon Commission on the UK
Constitution. In fact, the content of our submission essentially described a
forerunner of the Welsh Assembly, which was established some 30 years or so
after the Carmarthen by-election of 1966, and
following 8 General Elections and 2 devolution referenda in the
intervening time.
Whatever
one’s view is of the Blair Governments, it was his administrations that moved
forward considerably the devolution agenda for Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland. Nevertheless, since the creation of the Senedd it appears that the
Welsh Labour party has been contented to accept its ‘divine right’ as the
‘natural’ party of Government in Wales, albeit if they have had to rely on the
support of the Lib Dems for one period and Plaid Cymru for another. Plaid, on
its part, has seemingly settled for that limited degree of devolution.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives, who had previously only fared occasionally well
during Westminster elections in Wales, such as in 1983 and 1992, have found
themselves with a sizeable voice in administering the country. Politics is
unpredictable because it could be said that the party which has benefited most
from the establishment of the Senedd is the Conservatives – the very party
which opposed it!
So, does Wales still have a radical electorate today? To what extent does the country actually mirror England and, if so, what has caused this to be the case? Immigration, over decades, from other parts of the UK has no doubt influenced movements in the political landscape, but its extent and impact is deeper than realised. Labour and Plaid Cymru, in particular, have been found ‘sleeping on watch.’ Their inaction, or inertia, has resulted in a significant ‘hidden Tory’ component to Welsh politics by now. But the challenges do not end there. Labour is viewed as having neglected its traditional working class areas, with its once, rock solid, loyal support going ‘on the move’ during the 2016 Senedd election – not to Plaid or Lib Dems, but rather to UKIP!
The economic and industrial
structure of Wales has altered significantly in the last quarter of a century,
as has the country’s demography – with 30% of the people living in today’s
Wales born elsewhere. Indeed, in parts of north-east Wales, the proportion is
nearer 50%, and almost 40% in the ‘Welsh heartland.’ Further, 48% of people
living in today’s Wales reside within 25 miles of Offa’s Dyke, with 140,000
crossing that border each day for work purposes. The equivalent statistics for
Scotland is 4% dwelling within 25 miles of the English border with some 30,000
traversing it daily.
Coinciding with
this changing demographic and economic picture, there has been a notable shift
in the political composition of the country’s electorate too – nearly 35% of
whom favoured centre-right parties in 2016. The growth of UKIP in Wales is
hard to accept – a party with its roots firmly grounded in England. However,
this development should not really be a surprise when considering the make-up
of our news consumption.
The final warning
signal for me was the actuality that Wales voted to leave the EU – the very
country that has benefited the most from being part of it. Our
agriculture, rural economies, tourism, education and business sectors have
received considerable investment from Europe, especially less prosperous geographic
areas. With England and Wales (albeit by a majority of no bigger than a crowd
that fills the Principality Stadium on international day) voting to leave the
EU, and Scotland along with Northern Ireland favouring remain, significant
constitutional questions for the UK are emerging. Wales has to be careful that
it does not simply become an annexe of England in time, possibly in a scenario
where Scotland has renegotiated its relationship with the Union, and a new
framework is settled and implemented for the island of Ireland.
So we live in
tumultuous times with substantial uncertainties, but also opportunities. Wales and its politicians must be vigilant.
It cannot be a case of ‘steady as she goes’ any longer. As a people we need to
think long and hard about the future direction of the Union, planning for all
eventualities. I have not always been a
fan of how successive Welsh governments have conducted themselves. Nor have I
ever been an admirer of the Senedd’s quality of debates both in standard and
substance. The truth is that the
Senedd has been hamstrung from the beginning, being devoid of the freedom to
act with the effective powers granted the Scottish Parliament. However, those
of us who believe in a stronger and more confident, self-governing Wales must
advocate that vision more vociferously now than ever.
With the Brexit result, I am convinced that
the future lies, at the very least, in a self-governing Wales within a Federal
UK, but I also increasingly accept that a strong argument can be made for going
even further. The reality of today is that 20 years of devolution has made
little difference to Wales’s economic standing within the UK. Our country is
near to bottom of the league on several socio-economic indicators.
Out of 235 countries in the world, some 130
of them have populations of around 7 million and under. Of these countries, 100
have fewer than 4 million people and the vast majority are smaller than
Wales. Further, 11 of the countries of the 27 in the EU have populations
of approximately 5 million or less. 7 of the 11 have fewer people than
Wales. In the modern financial, service
and technological age, as opposed to the era of heavy industries and large
scale manufacturing, the question of a country’s size is no longer a deciding
factor in terms of deliberating governance models.
For decades, too many politicians have argued that Wales is either too
small or cannot afford to go it alone, markedly because the country would run a
significant budget deficit. But so does the UK, with a deficit of some £100
billion a year, carrying a debt of £1.83 trillion. Indeed, a proportion of the
£14 billion claimed to be Wales’s presently projected deficit is our share of
the money spent on large UK projects such as HS2 and defence (e.g. Trident).
What more, revealingly, only about 50 of the world’s 235 nation-states actually
run a budget surplus!
Therefore, is there now the political will to advance the national
debate on the future of the UK Union?
Will the Labour
party re-gather its forces for change and pursue the matter of a Constitutional
Convention and a Federal UK? Or has the satisfaction of recently winning an
additional 36 seats at Westminster, securing continued control over Wales and
achieving a limited but important comeback in Scotland dampened their
enthusiasm for reform? The SNP stance for Scotland is broadly clear, but what
of Plaid Cymru’s vision for Wales in the next few years? The Brexit situation
has already brought into sharp focus the vexed question of the long-term
framework for the island of Ireland. Will the Conservatives ultimately accept
that they may need to make a strategic comprise on the constitutional question
to prevent more serious disunity? Then what of the Liberal Democrats, the party
of ‘Home Rule’ with its antecedents stretching back a hundred years? Will they
actually manage for once to discuss constitutional change at their conference?
In the days of the SDP/Liberal Alliance of the 1980s it was forever on the
agenda. I made certain of that.
It is time to move towards a real ‘Senedd’
for Wales…