Hard Labour

Ben Wildsmith

When Keir Starmer opted to launch his election campaign in the heart of Tory Kent, it signalled the beginning of a tricky new era for his party in the Senedd.

This week’s Conservative motion condemning means testing of the winter fuel payment is an early taste of what’s to come for a Labour group that is unused to seeing its basic principles scrutinised.

There must be darker moments when Labour members recall the comfortable certainties of their roles under a Tory administration in Westminster. Life was so simple then: if it works, we did it; if it doesn’t, blame Westminster.

That routine was so grooved into the mechanics of Senedd business over the last 14 years that it seemed to operate reflexively. Failures in crucial devolved matters like health and education have been waved airily away by a party that had a get-out-of-jail-free card for every eventuality.

Obviously, they wanted to fund our services properly, but their hands were tied by the cartoon villains in London.

New material

Without this crowd-pleaser to rely on, Eluned Morgan’s turn at FMQs this week was like watching Keith Harris without Orville the duck. Projecting the sort of confidence you’d expect from a peer of the realm, the Baroness revealed Labour’s new material for the first time.

The First Minister is not, it transpired, to be questioned about anything that is decided in Westminster.

While it was wholly appropriate to blame the Conservative regime there for any shortcomings in Welsh governance, it is taboo to question UK Labour’s decisions on the Senedd floor.

Andrew RT Davies and Rhun ap Iorweth were instructed to seek Westminster seats if they wanted to question the impact of the UK government on Wales.

The four-legs-good-two-legs-bad naked hypocrisy of this position is untenable.

Welsh Labour (sic) has excused itself for years as struggling in the shade of unjust governance from London. It has allowed itself to continue as a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK party, reportedly without even a bank account of its own. So, the buck stops at head office, just as Morgan & Co. insisted it did when the Tories were in charge.

A poll this week revealed that a third of the Welsh electorate would like to see the Senedd abolished in favour of direct rule.

We have seen that this view does not translate into votes for parties who would enact this, but the figure is much higher than in Scotland and should be a worry for all who care about Welsh democracy.

Unionism

Mindful of incoming howls of derision, there was once a respectable Labour case for unionism.

After the war, when Labour was enacting partial socialism across the UK, the argument ran that a justly governed UK would benefit Welsh people immediately and recognise the sacrifices Wales had made.

Welsh servicemen were instrumental in campaigning for a Labour government amongst British troops stationed overseas. The new Britain was seen by many as just desserts for participating in a war on behalf of the old one.

45 years after Thatcher ended the post-war consensus, however, it is absurd to argue that a systematically impoverished Wales holds interests that are indivisible from the government in London.

In the fuel allowance debate, Labour representatives of deprived Welsh areas parroted the Treasury line about a £22bn ‘black hole’ in public finances as if chanting a Latin mass.

Do they imagine that their unusually loyal voters turn out for them in the expectation of this?

The ‘nothing to do with us, guv’ approach to UK Labour by its cohort in the Senedd is not going to wash. The communitarian values of traditional Labour voters here are being insulted by Keir Starmer’s iteration of the party.

Stockbroker belt

If the UK is to be governed according to the mores of the stockbroker belt, then the responsibility of those representing Wales is to stand up for us.

For many people, the Senedd is indivisible from the Labour Party. Casual voters see a monolith of remote power that ploughs on regardless of their complaints. If the party here persists in unrepresentative obeisance to UK Labour it will be risking the viability of devolution as voters see their views ignored.

People are exhausted with the management-class mediocrity of a government that seems to distribute jobs without regard to expertise or any track record of success.

This, right now, is what they promised us would be the sunlit uplands of Wales under a Labour UK. Here’s Mike Hedges MS on the fuel allowance.

“There is a discussion to be had over the universality of support – there’s a balance between ensuring no one misses out and the cost of provision.”

Actually Mike, there was a discussion on that, it happened in London, and nobody asked any of you to contribute to it. The result of that discussion was to draw the line just above absolute poverty.

It’s a certainty that at some point Keir Starmer will appear here to invoke the ghosts of the Welsh Labour movement and wear its clothes for the cameras.

As he stands in front of historical banners claiming that inheritance for his government, the grinning handmaids of the Senedd will applaud politely.

Just another day cheerfully managing the decline of their nation.