Welsh Labour Takes the Fight to the Tories
By Nick Davies
Welsh Labour Conference is a strange beast.
Despite the matey atmosphere and the
relative lack of political distance between the AMs and members, it’s still a
controlled environment. Substantive policy issues are shunted off to the Welsh Policy Forum, and
if it’s an election year, which is usual, conference generally consists of a sequence of
prepared speeches by MPs, AMs or
candidates. For more reflective
political discussion, conference-goers need to make their way to the Welsh Labour Grassroots fringe meeting. This year’s
conference was a little different, however.
Ed Miliband’s speech praised Labour’s
record in Wales, while gliding over the fact that on education policy, Tristram
Hunt is nearer to Michael Gove than to his
Welsh counterpart Huw Lewis. The one significant announcement was that a Labour
government would introduce legislation so that, like in Scotland, power would
be assumed to lie with the Welsh administration unless reserved to Westminster,
as opposed to the present arrangement in which powers have to be specifically
conferred on Wales. Behind this arcane-sounding formulation is an important
principle: it would strengthen the ability of the Welsh government to act in
defence of the people of Wales without interference from Westminster, such as
the Attorney-General’s attempt to use the courts to prevent the Welsh
government retaining the Agricultural Wages Board.
The real red meat came later. For months now there has been an
increasingly bitter and hateful attack on the
record of the Welsh government by the Tories in London and their media
allies. The motivation is to distract attention from their own project of effectively privatising the NHS in
England and to attack what they see as the threat of a good example: the
Bevanite NHS Wales, community comprehensive schools and government
help for students with higher
education. It’s difficult to say there’s no alternative to Con-Dem policies
when they are at the other end of the M4. Grant Shapps has admitted that the
Tories are using Wales as part of their general election strategy; presumably,
attacking one of the devolved legislatures in the United Kingdom is part of their
plan to win back UKIP voters!
First Minister Carwyn Jones went to war on the Tories’ ‘War on Wales’, setting the record straight on the Welsh
government’s performance on health, education and job creation. Health Minister Mark Drakeford followed with a
warning to Cameron that he had picked an argument ‘on the wrong topic, in the
wrong place and with the wrong people’. This belligerence from the Welsh
government is welcome and it contrasts notably with the attitude of Welsh MPs.
The phrase ‘fork in the road’ came up
repeatedly. The next general election will, or should, be about what kind of society we live in. Wales cannot afford another year of the
Tories, let alone another five after that. That prospect is disturbingly likely
if Labour fails to prevent a clear alternative to the Tories. It is up to Welsh
Labour, in combatting Tory smears and lies, to present that alternative.
This article appears in the current issue of Labour Briefing magazine.
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