Article written by Calum Davies, Deputy Chairman for Cardiff Central Conservatives
After over 20 years of Labour rule, Wales is more than just ready for change. It needs it. But how can Conservatives genuinely transform our nation without simply saying we will spend more money, or we will do things better?
The answer is this: by being distinct from other parties and acknowledging the shortcomings of Welsh devolution over the past two decades, insisting on the need to choose a new direction in areas that demand it, and, crucially, by not being afraid to be genuinely conservative.
We often talk about Conservative values. I believe in those values too but, in Wales, we must be less fearful of causing controversy and upsetting an Establishment that has failed to make Wales a better place to live. Otherwise, the Conservative Party in Wales will continue to struggle to inspire its natural voters to turnout in devolved elections and the status quo remains intact.
We need to challenge a consensus that has taken root in Welsh politics; a consensus that holds our small nation back from realising its potential. It is time to break that old consensus that has led to nowhere for our Party and our country and build a new one forged in a Conservative vision for Wales.
One of the strangest developments that has emerged over the last few years is how many in Cardiff Bay have adopted the view that devolution has become a silver bullet to solving problems. This is despite devolution leading to worse outcomes for the people of Wales across virtually every area. So why is this happening? Simple – Cardiff Bay politicians want more and more powers.
This might seem like a reasonable ambition, were it not for the fact that since devolution hospital beds have dwindled by a third, wages have consistently lagged behind all other UK nations, and our schools’ performance has fallen behind international norms.
Conservatives should not be surrendering to this narrative of one-way, absolutist devolution. We should oppose the further devolution of powers to Wales. Indeed, I have heard first-hand how disappointed members were to see the devolution to alter income tax rates achieved without any public mandate – and by a Conservative government no less. In the same way many in our party spent years saying “the answer isn’t more Europe, but less Europe”, maybe we should be saying the same in regards to devolution.
There needs to be a more dynamic settlement, with mechanisms to devolve powers to local authorities or even giving them back to Westminster. This is not taking powers away from Wales. After all, Wales has MPs in Westminster and can represent our interests there. It was bizarre to see nationalist MPs protesting the use of “English Votes for English Laws” recently when their outrage would be extreme if the English MPs were able to change the law in areas devolved to Wales.
A move to federalism in the UK must be avoided. As the Unionist party of our United Kingdom, we have a duty to uphold this institution that has shaped the world for the better. We cannot give oxygen to this gateway to independence by alienating ourselves from those who cherish the UK. These matter as we have experienced life for centuries as one country, have high-levels of trade (England is Wales’ largest “export” market), and want to maintain closeness to our families (one-in-four Welsh residents were not born here, the vast majority of those from England).
We should also oppose moves to increase the number of Members in the Senedd. There is no public appetite for this and expanding the number of politicians in Wales should not be allowed to happen without public consent.
There are several instances of wasteful money and unmandated laws that need to be wiped from political life too. We need to end the attempts of the Left to introduce votes for prisoners and scrap the pointless Welsh Youth Parliament. No inviting conspiracy theorist journalists to speak. No thousands of pounds for a carpet to showcase the name change of the Senedd.
Additionally, there is the problem that the Presiding Officer of the Welsh Parliament is able to remain a member of their party and stand as their candidate in elections. This lack of genuine impartiality has been key to locking those right-of-centre out of decision-making in Cardiff Bay. This change cannot come quick enough.
And what about those who want to scrap the Senedd? Those of this view are often portrayed as cranks or fringe figures by a media establishment that coincidentally produces candidates that stand for left-wing parties in elections later on. However, those who feel sceptical of devolution have come to that view not because they hate this country, but because they love it.
According to a recent poll, that view is more popular than an independent Wales or a Senedd with more powers. It is extremely close to being the most popular option. It has also seen more growth in support than any other constitutional settlement. Abolishing the Welsh Parliament would also comfortably beat independence in a head-to-head question. This group of voters are in the ascendancy.
They see a system that has failed to produce better outcomes as they continue to slump further behind England as it has for worker wages, school grades, and A&E waiting times. These people deserve representation and the Welsh Conservatives should aim to represent those who approach devolution from a Unionist view, with love of country at their heart. They deserve a representative voice.
As can probably be read from these ideas, they will not generate goodwill with the nationalists and socialists that govern us in Cardiff Bay if our Party were to adopt them. But where is the good-will they have shown us thus far? Labour regularly block our sensible amendments to legislation. Plaid Cymru regularly keep them in power. Both have collaborated to create a “joint response” to Brexit together rather than work with us as a bridge to London. Not that this last one was necessary – Brexit is and always should be a matter for the UK Parliament as it was the UK that voted to leave as one country.
Devolution has provided the opportunity for the Welsh arm of political parties to pursue a different path. This is totally understandable but as Conservatives in a nation that has long proven unwilling to vote for our party, we should be championing the way the UK Party as a whole has decided to pursue policy. Obviously, our Party should aim to shape things for a Welsh context but keep the approach as close to the original as possible.
We need alignment with what MPs propose or we risk allowing those who do not have an interest in keeping Wales as an integral part of the UK exploiting differences between Wales and England. This can be seen in the way Labour and Plaid often seek divergence for divergence sake. Their belief is that being worse than England is better than being like it. Such a mindset is responsible for Wales falling behind in health, education, and the economy, and most recently evident in the responses to the Coronavirus epidemic.
As loyal Unionists and loyal Conservatives, we need to place our loyalty in the UK’s institutions and the UK Party. The more we give in to the urge to pursue a different path, the easier it becomes for nationalists to make the case for independence. The more they can hollow out our attachment to the UK, the easier it becomes for them to present an argument to the public that the Union can be dispensed with. I believe in Wales and the common sense of my countrymen, but we cannot be complacent on this most intrinsic and fundamental of issues.
Is this really the Establishment we want to keep in power? No. But behind this is a mindset – the mindset outlined throughout this essay.
Our country is at a crossroads. For over two decades, three million people have been governed by a small, select group whose ideas have not improved our lives from Conwy to Cardiff, the Vale of Clwyd to the Vale of Glamorgan, Aberystwyth to Aberdare. It is not enough simply to replace those in power with those of different political stripes, but a completely different attitude.
It does not mean counter-productive radicalism, but pragmatic reform that accepts the failures of the past and the ambitions of the future. We as Conservatives are aiming to improve hospitals, schools, and more. But if that requires significant changes to the way politicians in Wales operate and our constitutional structures, then it is something that must be pursued. We need to give our natural consistency of support a reason to turn out and vote for us.
It is clear to a large and increasing section of the public and the Welsh Conservative membership that devolution is a system in decline. Political parties must recognise and react to this anxiety. They are dutybound to do so. The Welsh Conservatives must not only seize power from the cushy consensus that has built in Cardiff Bay but ensure that our Party does not fall into the same trap. Our Party can only change Wales for the better if the stagnant status quo that exists now in our political life survives no longer and we act in best interests of our country.
This is a thoughtful article and some interesting points are made. Readers may be interested in a recent podcast I presented, titled ‘The Devolution Disaster’: https://talkpodcasts.com/twenty-minute-topic-episode-38-the-devolution-disaster/
I am joined by Greg Lance-Watkins. Greg played an important role in the ‘No’ campaign leading up to the referendum of 1997, in which the ‘Yes’ side won by the narrowest of margins.
Greg makes some shocking allegations of foul play, both during the campaign of 1997 and at crucial counts on the night.
The term ‘crachach’ is discussed extensively during the podcast. It is a term that refers to the Welsh-speaking middle class elite, often sympathetic to Welsh nationalism, nepotistic in character, that has huge influence across the Welsh arts, media, civil service and higher education sectors.
Veteran left-leaning journalist Paul Starling observed in his Welsh Daily Mirror column on 26 April 2002 that ‘our country is run by no more than 50 extended families or individuals’.
Indeed, far from being a swivel-eyed conspiracy, the crachach was thought to be very real by former First Minister Rhodri Morgan, who saw their elitist control of so many tenets of Welsh civic life as a real threat to the success of devolution. He said: ““As well as horizontal devolution – spreading power and responsibility more widely – we have to have vertical devolution as well. I have sometimes tried to sum up this dimension by describing our devolution settlement as a shift from crachach to gwerin, from government by a self-replicating élite to a new engagement with a far wider and more representative group of people, women and men, people from north and south Wales, Welsh speakers and not, black people as well as white, and so on.”
Greg and I agree that Rhodri Morgan’s words were not heeded, and far from creating a more diverse and inclusive civic sector in Wales, devolution has led to a consolidation and intensification of crachach power and influence.
Leighton Andrews, a former Education Minister in Wales, also spoke out against Crachach influence in the Welsh higher education sector.
The podcast begins with a brief history of devolution, beginning with the referendum of 1979, in which the Welsh electorate categorically rejected the proposal for an Assembly. The discussion moves on to the ‘quango culture’ of the 1980s and 90s, the impact of the Welsh Language Act of 1993, through to the referendum on giving the Assembly primary law-making powers in 2011.
There is discussion on the broken promises of 2011. The people of Wales were told it was a ‘tidying up exercise’ and the ‘end game’ for devolution, but in the years since, income tax powers have been devolved, and the institution’s name has been changed to the ‘Welsh Parliament’.
The podcast is available on the Talk Podcasts website, iTunes, Google Podcasts Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and the TuneIn app.
One of the best articles from a Conservative party member that I have read in recent years.
The only omission but a significant one, (not mentioned in this article) is that the Welsh Labour Government has used the devolution strictly for the benefit of the Welsh-speaking minority.
Welsh Gov has put in place legislative requirements that prioritise Welsh speakers by making the minority language as a condition of employment.
By creating artificially protected labour market in order to motivate acceptance of compulsory language learning via education is simply to compound one abuse of state power by another.
We now have the Cymraeg 2050 Policy that is doing and will be doing immense harm to education standards and the children of Wales, for years to come.
Surprisingly, Welsh Conservatives in the Assembly (‘Parliament’), are 100% behind the Welsh Government’s strategy on imposing the Welsh Medium Education on infants/primary school children throughout Wales:
https://www.glasnost.org.uk/2020/05/has-the-welsh-conservative-party-gone-rogue/
The two-minute video clip of Darren Millar’s statement has truly left me ‘gobsmacked’, but do have a question, how on earth Welsh Tories can square up compulsion/diktat with the party’s ethos of valuing democracy and freedoms of personal choice?
Jacques Protic (Editor Glasnost UK)
Thanks for your kind words. On this subject, I think the words one chooses are really important as to have a debate rather than an argument. Maybe I will write about this subject in future when I have greater certainty about what I want to say.
A cop-out Calum, in other words, no opinion on where the Welsh Tories stand on democracy or the parental choice to education format for their children.
I guess you must be a Welsh-speaker, which would go a long way to explain your hesitancy, either to argue or to debate. the very issue that is damaging most children in Welsh ‘education.’
If my assumption is correct about your linguistic skills, perhaps you can explain to me how it can be right for the Welsh L1 speakers to demand and get Welsh Government’s concession that their children must not be taught English till the year 10 of primary education, but that very privilege is being denied to parents/children who do not have Welsh at home?
For the facts behind my assertion, please see: https://www.glasnost.org.uk/2020/04/postscript-to-the-cry-of-the-children/