WALES: The fight back starts here
It's Henry VII all over again
It is now nearly a week since the Conservatives rudely took it upon themselves to put Crispin Blunt’s nose severely out of joint (to ‘blunt’ his leadership challenge, as it were, ho ho etc) by having the rank indecency to win one or two council seats in England, elect a couple of MSPs, and increase their number of representatives in the Welsh Assembly to eleven, in the face of all predictions. Given the general Wales-wide lack of persons of suitable soundness, I hope you will forgive my presumption in taking up the too long-dropped baton of Welsh Conservative political commentary.
Since election day (or E03 as the BBC nattily titled the event), the print and news media in the Principality have devoted reams of repetitive bilge to the topic of whether Rhodri Morgan will be able to govern the country with a Labour Party — sorry, Welsh Labour Party — that is one short of an overall majority in the Assembly. In this writer’s view, it is entirely possible that even were he to have one hundred percent of the AMs on-side, it would be still a matter of severe doubt whether Morgan could actually govern the country with any degree of competence. Still, given that there are already in existence sufficient articles to sate any amount of lust regarding the wire wool-headed buffoon’s governing problems, I will not devote so much as a further syllable to the matter.
What the Welsh media have been remarkably and unprecedentedly quiet on, however, is the Welsh Conservatives (see — I got it right first time!) Widely predicted by sundry over-earnest Taff-media unpronouncables to be on course to lose seats in the election, the Welsh Tories surprised themselves, the media, the electorate and, well, everybody by increasing their number of representatives in the Assembly by two and increasing their share of the vote in the majority of constituencies Wales-wide. Prior to the Great Day, BBC Wales hacks (and it is worth pointing out at this juncture that these people are even more rabidly anti-Tory than their English compadres) such as Rhun ap Iorwerth were wont to follow Nick Bourne around demanding to know details of any possible leadership challenge, whilst paying scant attention to the election at hand. Full marks to the Professor for keeping his cool; Bourne is the most scarily on-message Conservative this writer has ever met, and he has a remarkable talent for sticking to Party manifesto lines whilst still actually not saying very much at all. That said, he has a formidable temper and if BBC sources are to be believed, no fewer than seven out of the nine AMs in the last Assembly had briefed against Bourne’s leadership in one way or another. Thursday’s result has put any leadership challenge rumours well to bed.
An overview of the current Tory state of play in the Assembly, then: there is still only one directly elected AM. David Davies pulled off an astonishing 17% increase in his share of the vote, increasing his majority to a clear 8,500 in Monmouth. This result had repurcussions area-wide, as a remarkable 13,000 Conservative PR votes in Monmouth ensured the re-election of Will Graham and meant that Laura Jones at 24 years of age became the youngest AM ever elected. Elsewhere, the same old portly faces of David Melding and Jonathan Morgan were re-elected in South Wales Central, with mixed fortunes: although Morgan came within 540 votes of winning Cardiff North, Melding’s best efforts in the Vale of Glamorgan served only to turn a 1,000 Labour majority into a 2,500 one. Alun Cairns was returned in South Wales West; new faces Mark Isherwood and Brynle Williams (of ruddy-cheeked fuel-protesting fame) were elected by top-up in North Wales; and an unprecedented showing in Mid and West Wales meant that newbie Lisa Francis was returned along with Glyn Davies and Nick Bourne.
There are various points to take on board from this result. First of all, and by far the most important consideration, the Conservatives are now just one seat behind a decimated Plaid Cymru, who slumped from 17 to 12 seats in the Assembly; given that Dafydd Elis Thomas is expected to continue as non-voting Returning Officer, the Tories and Plaid may well be voting level. Second, Labour should be able to govern alone if they are sufficiently crawling towards ex-Labour independent AM John Marek, who held Wrexham after being de-selected by the Labour Party. This consigns the six Welsh Liberal Democrat AMs from being in government to the obscurity their underhanded, vitriolic, petty, self-righteous 'unpolitics' deserves.
The election of two female AMs is clearly a plus-point from the perspective of media profile; the election of Lisa Francis and Laura Jones was completely unexpected, and is a sterling achievement by both given that they are two of the very few female AMs of all parties who were not selected [sic] by positive discrimination. That said, the selection of the latter owes more to the patronage of friends in high places than genuine merit, and serves more as an indictment of how easily perverted is the Conservative system of candidate selection rather than a ringing endorsement of the equality of such methods. Best not to get too carried away by this one (although journalists in Wales are already having a field day with the idea of a young, attractive, female Tory).
The Conservatives can take from this election the knowledge that they have essentially spawned it. The low turnout (37% Wales-wide from 48% in 1999), and Labour’s mid-term slump combined with the Plaid Cymru collapse enabled the Tories to slip through the middle; furthermore, as mentioned, a second top-up seat in South Wales East was only possible thanks to the freakishly high result in Monmouth. The Welsh Tories in the Assembly must grasp this unexpected opportunity and actually make an impact; media profile will undoubtedly be helped by the presence of the two wimmin. Mr Bourne’s job as leader is safe, and although stability is a good thing, one has to question his achievements in the job to date. In real terms of impact what have the Conservatives actually achieved up to this point? The case is there to be made that our 'successes' came not from people going out and voting for us, but from them determindedly deciding in large numbers not to bother voting at all. This is an unsure foundation for Tory revival.
Many self-congratulations have been offered regarding the “only real opposition” the Tories have been providing in the Assembly, but in terms of truly causing the Lib/Lab administration any serious problems the Welsh Conservatives have been as effective as, well, the Westminster Conservative Party are at wounding Tony Blair at the despatch box. I challenge anyone to think of but one occasion where the Tories have made a memorable impact in the Assembly chamber. They are desperately constrained by Labour’s overwhelming superiority of numbers, and worse still: in Wales the Labour stronghold will never falter; this is a insurmountable problem. Furthermore, accusations of some Tory AMs having “gone native” are well-founded: David Melding has been prone to sending out press releases arguing for primary legislative powers for the Assembly and Jonathan Morgan has been privately heard to argue in favour of building the new £50million Assembly building, in spite of the Party’s official “No New Assembly Building” line. Apparently, he complains, there are two concrete pillars in the debating chamber that occasionally block his line of sight to speakers on the other side of the room. For shame! Imagine not being able to instantly grasp the full beauty of one of our AMs . . .
One would also be fully entitled to ask, here of all places, ‘Whither the Conservative right-wing in the Assembly?’ David Davies and (prior to his departure) Rod Richards were both splendidly sound in the last term, but to a man the other AMs err to the fungal growth side of Wet. The political inclinations of the four new faces (Jones, Isherwood, Francis and Williams) are yet to be seen, but one trusts they will be able to resist the persuasive powers of 42 grand per annum and campaign against the existence of the Assembly, as all good Conservatives should. Let us be clear on this: just because Jonathan Morgan is able to take three skiing holidays a year and drive a BMW, it does not necessarily mean that the National Assembly for Wales is a Good Thing for Wales. It is nothing more than a bloated, unnecessary tier of socialist bureaucracy; the sooner it is gone the better; and Tories must not lose sight of this fact. They must become a real opposition to the very existence of the Assembly. They need to stop bleating about the need to “work with the Assembly now it’s here”, find some direction and stick to it — by opposing the Assembly at every possible opportunity. If a national turn-out of 37% does not convince the Welsh Tories that the Assembly is an unpopular irrelevance, nothing will. Let us hope it does.
— Ivor
CardiffWatch is ERO's Welsh politics column
CardiffWatch, May 5, 2003 12:55 PM