'Challenging a culture of mediocrity'

I thought this was worth highlighting for those who haven’t seen it, its Lee Waters lengthy article on the Referendum Campaign and the state of Welsh devolution in the latest IWA Agenda journal.

Lee was part of the YES Campaign and Sustrans Director is also one of the more thoughtful and less instinctively tribal members of the Labour Party in Wales, so its worth listening to what he has to say and he certainly no punches - one can only wonder what the First Minister, the Cabinet, Labour AM’s, MP’s and ordinary members make of such honesty from their own ranks about the stale political climate they in particular have allowed to develop since 1999.

Lee writes ‘The No campaign’s assaults struck a nerve in three areas: capacity, scrutiny, and quality.

It is only human for those of us who campaigned for a Yes vote to have basked for a brief moment in the satisfaction of a well fought campaign. But it is incumbent on us now to examine the weaknesses in the case that we presented and seek solutions, however uncomfortable they may be.

From the vantage point of the engine room of the Yes campaign Wales looked small. Of course, not literally. The task of creating an infrastructure across the towns and cities of Wales in a matter of months was an awesome one, and one I left to the formidable organisational skills of Cathy Owens and Daran Hill. But the challenge of engaging Wales’ civil society and media was one I helped take on, and it was a sobering exercise. To be brutal, there wasn’t much to work with.

Though non-governmental organisations have grown significantly in Wales since 1999 they remain a weak force. Most proved themselves either unwilling or incapable of persuading their UK head offices of the merits of engaging in the referendum campaign. Otherwise, they were too reliant on Welsh Government grant-in-aid to risk taking sides. Of course, as individuals most of the people engaged in Welsh civil society supported the reforms, in some cases actively. However, the small civil society to which they belong has developed a culture of risk aversion when it comes to political engagement. The rules of the Charity Commission do not help, although they are too often a convenient excuse to fall back on to justify the new credo: don’t upset anyone!

The tale of the ‘media war’ is another tale for another day, but the salient point for the purposes of this essay is that Of course, it is difficult to run a campaign in which few are taking much notice. A declining Welsh media, allied to a metropolitan corps of journalists disinterested in developments that do not fit into a Westminster narrative, made the telling of our own story very difficult. The frustration was only added to by having the disengagement played back to us as evidence of a disinterest in the devolution project amongst the people of Wales.

There’s no use railing against it, it’s a reality. And that reality presents enormous challenges to the future viability of Welsh politics. As Rachel Banner herself said, in an essay on the Wales Home website:

“The serious lack of plurality in the Welsh press means that it is much more difficult for a unicameral Assembly with the greatly enhanced law-making power... to be held accountable”.

She’s right, but of course her solution was to campaign against improving Wales’ law making powers. So how do we address the problem of accountability and scrutiny in a more autonomous Wales?

Cymru Yfory have an answer to this question, and they’ve been perfectly consistent in making the case of the Richard Commission. They say the number of Assembly Members needs to be increased from 60 to 80. Their position seems to have has support from unexpected quarters. In a letter to the Western Mail in the aftermath of the vote the former Labour leader of Bridgend Council, Jeff Jones, wrote that “one of the problems with our Assembly is that it is actually quite a tiny institution with not much depth of talent”. He drew the comparison between the size of the Assembly with the Parliaments of Estonia (which has 101 MPs with a population of 1.3 million), and Ireland (166 TDs and a population of 4.5 million). He might have added that it is also smaller than the House of Representatives in the US states of North Dakota (94), and Vermont (148) – all of which have smaller populations than Wales.

One reason for the consensus in Cardiff Bay?

Still trying to get my head around the events in Norway and others have a better take on events and what it all means, but my heart goes out to them after such a brutal and senseless attack.

Instead I will stick to domestic politics and a BBC Wales interview with former Tory Assembly leader Nick Bourne over the weekend about his diaries from his time as an AM and to reflect on his defeat in May’s elections and his loss of the Tory Group leadership with Bethan Rhys Roberts.

It’s the sort of standard interview that makes politics go around and for the most part was pretty formulaic except for Nick’s throw away remark about missing most things from his time at the National Assembly except the plenary sessions.

Now for politicians and politics watchers alike Plenary is where the main action happens, it’s where the leaders, backbenchers and parties do battle over policy and the direction of the Country, so it’s rather surprising for Nick Bourne, who was after all Official Leader of the Opposition from 2007 to 2011 and had been an Opposition leader almost since the Assembly began, to admit he did not enjoy his time in the Chamber.

It’s quite a statement suggesting that Nick believed in the consensus that rules Cardiff Bay that he had difficulty carrying out his task of holding the Welsh Government to account, but his admission certainly goes a long way to explaining his lackluster and often forgettable performances at the weekly First Minister’s Questions against both Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones and perhaps explains why he was often upstaged by Lib Dem Kirsty Williams seeming to lack the will and the killer instinct to oppose failing Welsh Government policies over a range of issues from Health, Education, Social Justice and the economy.

But Nick is no longer leader, Andrew RT Davies is and for all the genuine concerns in the Tory Group about his election, he will at least challenge Carwyn Jones and the Welsh Government more robustly week in week out which is more than can be said for his predecessor it seems.