I haven’t seen any reporting on the House of Lords Debate on the Barnett Formula that happened yesterday except this from epolitix urging reform to counter the threat from the SNP.
Labour peer Lord Barnett, who invented the Barnett formula as chief secretary to the Treasury in the 1970s, said he had not expected it to last for three years let alone 30.
Lord Barnett made his comments in a debate on a select committee report on the formula which recommends it is replaced with a new system based on an assessment of "explicit needs".
"If we don't do something about it soon the only people who will benefit from this are the people who want to break up the UK like the SNP in Scotland," Lord Barnett told peers.
"I hope whoever is in power after the next election they will implement the recommendations of this report - it is vital for this country."
He said it was not a tribute to the formula that it has lasted so long. "It is a tribute to the fact that governments of all persuasions don't like to make the major changes that are needed," he said. "It is not just New Labour it is everyone else as well."
Tory former chancellor Lord Lawson of Blaby said: "The public expenditure per head in Scotland is 27 per cent higher than the public expenditure per head in England and there is no rational justification for that whatsoever."
He said that instead of a "convergence" between expenditure in the two countries, there would be "divergence" because of differing rates of population growth.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Newby his party had accepted the conclusion of the report.
He called on the Tories to say they would go further than the government and "move in the direction of this excellent report" if they took power.
For the government, Lord Davies of Oldham said the issues around the Barnett formula could not be "resolved in the short term".
He said Welsh Secretary Peter Hain was concerned about the effect of the formula and was meeting the chancellor, Alistair Darling, to "emphasise that the Barnett formula does bring very substantial disadvantages to Wales which does need to be addressed".
He added: "It requires a great deal of consideration and a government with a significant mandate for reform—one who have the power to look at issues over the long term."
Friday, March 12, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
‘long-standing single-party dominance produce phenomena such as widespread corruption and intellectual stagnation’
Most of Roger Scully’s article on the IWA blog on Welsh Labour’s decline doesn’t really tell us anything new, but he does have some interesting things to say on the corrosive effects of one party dominance has on a society, not that you would get anyone acknowledging or admitting to it mind you.
He writes ‘Labour’s task in the May 2011 National Assembly elections is probably rather less formidable that it will seem on the morning after the general election. An unpopular Conservative government in London might make that task less formidable still.
This doesn’t mean, however, that we should expect a return to the days of Labour hegemony in Wales. Sustained periods of single-party dominance do happen in democratic political systems, but only rarely. Once they subside it is rare too for them to be re-built.
And we should be very glad of that. Because, however immediately satisfying a crushing election victory may be to loyalists of the winning party, sustained single-party dominance is emphatically not a desirable state of affairs. It is not something anyone should wish for their country. Most instances of long-standing single-party dominance produce phenomena such as widespread corruption and intellectual stagnation. (Wholly foreign to Wales?). Of the democratic polities that have experienced it, probably only Sweden under the Social Democrats could remotely be classified as politically healthy.’
He writes ‘Labour’s task in the May 2011 National Assembly elections is probably rather less formidable that it will seem on the morning after the general election. An unpopular Conservative government in London might make that task less formidable still.
This doesn’t mean, however, that we should expect a return to the days of Labour hegemony in Wales. Sustained periods of single-party dominance do happen in democratic political systems, but only rarely. Once they subside it is rare too for them to be re-built.
And we should be very glad of that. Because, however immediately satisfying a crushing election victory may be to loyalists of the winning party, sustained single-party dominance is emphatically not a desirable state of affairs. It is not something anyone should wish for their country. Most instances of long-standing single-party dominance produce phenomena such as widespread corruption and intellectual stagnation. (Wholly foreign to Wales?). Of the democratic polities that have experienced it, probably only Sweden under the Social Democrats could remotely be classified as politically healthy.’
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Heir to Blair and Clinton
There are plenty of less than helpful quotes and statements in Vanity Fair’s article on David Cameron from people on the right that will no doubt be used by his opponents in the upcoming General Election campaign such as Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator saying, “I don’t believe for a minute he (David Cameron) believes protecting the N.H.S. is a good idea,” with some mixture of disdain and admiration.
Or this from Tory M.P. and Oxford friend Ed Vaizey “He is, I believe, much more conservative by nature than he acts, or than he is forced to be by political exigency,” That’s the same Ed Vaizey who said that David Cameron’s wife Samantha voted Labour in the past in Channel 4’s latest Dispatches programme.
Or this from a Party advisor Ian Osbourne “In U.S. terms, he could be a moderate Democrat,”
But the one thing from this article that genuinely could hurt David Cameron the most is the ‘Third Way’ charge of not having many strong views and being like former President Bill Clinton and Tony Blair both centre left politicians.
‘Cameron is basing his campaign and, too, his idea of the Third Way—this further chapter in Clintonian and Blair-ite politics—on his being the bulwark against disagreeable and ugly people and other nameless terrible things. And he is counting on the fact that fewer and fewer voters will ask those old-fashioned questions about identity and provenance, which, after all, in the modern world are, for so many people, ever changing and fluid.
“There’s a left-right spectrum—where are you? I don’t really do it like that,” Cameron said, both as explanation and obfuscation, during our January chat. “What I’ve tried to do is marry a belief in market economics with the importance of a strong economy while restoring the condition of the Conservatives’ being social reformers and also addressing the future—climate change and the environment. It’s the full kind of package.”
Is the UK ready for Tony Blair Mark 2?
Or this from Tory M.P. and Oxford friend Ed Vaizey “He is, I believe, much more conservative by nature than he acts, or than he is forced to be by political exigency,” That’s the same Ed Vaizey who said that David Cameron’s wife Samantha voted Labour in the past in Channel 4’s latest Dispatches programme.
Or this from a Party advisor Ian Osbourne “In U.S. terms, he could be a moderate Democrat,”
But the one thing from this article that genuinely could hurt David Cameron the most is the ‘Third Way’ charge of not having many strong views and being like former President Bill Clinton and Tony Blair both centre left politicians.
‘Cameron is basing his campaign and, too, his idea of the Third Way—this further chapter in Clintonian and Blair-ite politics—on his being the bulwark against disagreeable and ugly people and other nameless terrible things. And he is counting on the fact that fewer and fewer voters will ask those old-fashioned questions about identity and provenance, which, after all, in the modern world are, for so many people, ever changing and fluid.
“There’s a left-right spectrum—where are you? I don’t really do it like that,” Cameron said, both as explanation and obfuscation, during our January chat. “What I’ve tried to do is marry a belief in market economics with the importance of a strong economy while restoring the condition of the Conservatives’ being social reformers and also addressing the future—climate change and the environment. It’s the full kind of package.”
Is the UK ready for Tony Blair Mark 2?
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
New Blogs
Marcus Warner is back in the Welsh Political blogsphere his musings can be found over at Plaid Panteg
And much to my surprise i found out about the GuardianCardiff blog with Welsh news and blog links after my post on the Wales Office’s name change if the Tories we elected was included, the link is HERE.
And much to my surprise i found out about the GuardianCardiff blog with Welsh news and blog links after my post on the Wales Office’s name change if the Tories we elected was included, the link is HERE.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Back to the Future
We learned over the weekend that the Wales Office will become the Welsh Office if the Conservative win the General Election, apparently Wales Office sounds too colonial according to the Tories (stop sniggering).
It’s not the name change that particularly bothers me although it’s us tax payers who will be paying for the signs to be changed, but what the change signals.
We already know that Shadow Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan is ‘Wales proofing’ her Party’s agenda by appointing a shadow minister in every Whitehall Department with a specific duty to ensure Wales is not inadvertently left out of key legislation.
She added that the Wales Office would play an “enabling role” across Government under the Tories, now apart from the obvious that Health, Education, Economic Development and Transport among other are devolved, this sounds like a shot across the bows of the Welsh Assembly Government already, not the working in harmony message there has been in so many Welsh Conservative press releases.
And that brings me to the obvious question does everyone in Welsh Conservative Group in Cardiff Bay agree with what the Shadow Secretary of State is proposing and if not what does that say about their attitudes to devolution and Wales. Did Nick Bourne who is now an advocate of more powers correct Cheryl Gillan when she spoke at the pre Party Conference News Conference when she described the referendum as ‘some obscure constitutional matter’?, these things matter as Tory chairman Eric Pickles said the single greatest electoral vulnerability of the Conservatives is the label of: "Same old Tories."
I can’t say the prospect of Cheryl Gillan empire building at the Wales Office enthuses me anymore than Peter Hain always putting Labour first and his endless self promotion does at the moment, but as I said in my last post we still don’t know what the Tories are offering Wales apart from deficit reduction even after their party conference and its that uncertainly that worries voters and the reason the Tories are struggling at the moment.
It’s not the name change that particularly bothers me although it’s us tax payers who will be paying for the signs to be changed, but what the change signals.
We already know that Shadow Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan is ‘Wales proofing’ her Party’s agenda by appointing a shadow minister in every Whitehall Department with a specific duty to ensure Wales is not inadvertently left out of key legislation.
She added that the Wales Office would play an “enabling role” across Government under the Tories, now apart from the obvious that Health, Education, Economic Development and Transport among other are devolved, this sounds like a shot across the bows of the Welsh Assembly Government already, not the working in harmony message there has been in so many Welsh Conservative press releases.
And that brings me to the obvious question does everyone in Welsh Conservative Group in Cardiff Bay agree with what the Shadow Secretary of State is proposing and if not what does that say about their attitudes to devolution and Wales. Did Nick Bourne who is now an advocate of more powers correct Cheryl Gillan when she spoke at the pre Party Conference News Conference when she described the referendum as ‘some obscure constitutional matter’?, these things matter as Tory chairman Eric Pickles said the single greatest electoral vulnerability of the Conservatives is the label of: "Same old Tories."
I can’t say the prospect of Cheryl Gillan empire building at the Wales Office enthuses me anymore than Peter Hain always putting Labour first and his endless self promotion does at the moment, but as I said in my last post we still don’t know what the Tories are offering Wales apart from deficit reduction even after their party conference and its that uncertainly that worries voters and the reason the Tories are struggling at the moment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)