Stagnation and Hope: Reclaiming Wales’ Democracy for a Better Future

Simon Paul Hobson

Someone recently shared with me the Life in the UK: Wales 2024 report. A collaboration between Ipsos and Carnegie UK, the report presents a measure of Wales’ collective wellbeing.

Out of a possible score of 100, Wales’s collective wellbeing in 2024 was just 62.

The report presents a ‘stagnant’ Wales: just as it does for the rest of the United Kingdom. It goes on to state that this stasis in living standards is driven by persistent and entrenched inequality across the four core domains of social, economic, environmental and democratic wellbeing.

A festering swamp

I was struck by the word ‘stagnant’. Conjuring up in my minds eye an image of a festering swamp: complete with seeping poisonous gases, tuffs of reeds and the occasional territorial croak from a frog.

And in many ways, this vivid image is analogous of where Welsh Labour has brough our nation.

In the 25 years it has been presiding over the reigns of power in Cardiff, that tribe of politicians, has failed to drain the metaphoric swamp of its inherited Westminster habits.

Just like the Conservatives at the parliament in London, Welsh Labour is responsible for entrenching the status quo.

Infected by a malaise

The arrival of the then Welsh Assembly, in 1999, ought to have been the opportunity for a new government in Wales to reinvigorate democracy.

When the Senedd was born from the Assembly, the increased confidence and powers of that institution was a second opportunity to pull Wales away from the clutches of Westminster.

A third chance to seize on change has been the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, published in January 2024, and the proposed 2026 increase in the number of Senedd members.

Just as is true of the Independent Commission report, this latest Life in the UK report, highlights that most people in Wales feel that they cannot influence political decisions affecting the UK, Wales, or their local area (74%, 66% and 55% respectively).

In walks Del Boy

As Elon Musk seeks to corrupt UK democracy through a speculated bung of $100 million to Reform UK, now more than ever, the citizens of Wales need their voices to be heard by the political establishment. Continuing to ignore concerns over immigration, energy bills, food security and the cost of filling up our cars, will leave society ever more vulnerable to the grifters and liars: groups of people such as Reform UK, its Nigel Farage, the Tory’s Boris Johnson and Welsh Labour’s Vaughan Gething. All of whom seek self-aggrandisement at the expense of our democracy.

And in addressing such concerns, Welsh Labour have failed. Instead of instigating fairer, more accountable governance, they have consistently placed political party ahead of Wales and the needs of its citizens.

What could be

It is time for the citizens of Wales — anyone who works for the betterment of our nation — to come together. We must all be bound in a belief that representative government can only be built out of reason, debate and a fair system for elections.

That means a complete rejection of the Westminster ways — a complete rejection of populists from Right and Left.

Is it not the duty of every citizen of Wales to challenge Westminster’s insistence that we engage in their version of society? Is it not for every citizen of Wales to challenge the conventions imbued in each of us, the cultural indoctrination of our English colonial masters?

Is it not the duty of every citizen of Wales to want better for our nation? The answer to all these is ‘Yes.’

For true change to occur, the first task before us is to create space for opposing voices. For critiques of the way things currently are must be heard. This begins with acknowledging the difference between what is, and what ought to be — or what could be. For ‘is’ and ‘ought’ are not the same. And yet, the status quo, that advocates the perpetuation of the Westminster system, endeavours to make them seem so. Persuading us that the way things are is the way they must be, thus stifling any alternative imagination.

Too often, this acceptance of ‘the way things are’ is accompanied by a pervasive fear. Fear that to step out of line, as Westminster and its mouthpiece parties: such as Welsh Labour, would put it, is to risk losing what little we have. And so, like school children dreading detention, we conform. But this fear, this submission, erodes our freedoms and prevents us from asserting even the most basic of our rights; a living wage, housing, control over our own economy, immigration, justice — the power to decide our own fate.

For Wales to reach its full potential, we too, each of us, must also open those spaces inside us to criticism. We must allow ourselves to question the ‘common sense’ view which binds us to our perpetual wasting of energy.

To spark the transformation that must come, we must first ask something of ourselves.

Let us not take for granted what has been ‘taken for granted’. For it is only through questioning and challenging what has seemingly always been, that we can surpass what has gone before and create a Wales which rises to claim its place in the world.

As the Life in the UK: Wales 2024 report concludes, wellbeing cannot be ‘done to’ people: it must be done by and with them.

Giving people voice and choice, enhancing transparency, and promoting dialogue between people, sectors and communities, are all influential enablers of collective wellbeing. And to achieve this, we will have to leave behind Westminster’s ways.

Simon Paul Hobson is an approved Parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats