Cameron vs Salmond: the squabble continues
In many ways now is the perfect time to be a Tory Prime Minister. Cameron currently has the dream scenario – an opposition Labour party who are still unsure of exactly where they want to be in the political spectrum and the LibDem party compromised by a weak coalition agreement.
He has even secured a fixed five year term in the top job – what could possibly go wrong? Well, just a small matter of Scotland. And more specifically Alex Salmond.
Maybe we should feel sorry for Cameron. Being Prime Minister is the height of his career, but to constantly hear people refer to Alex Salmond as one of the most influential and successful politicians of our time must hurt. Poor David wants people to say things like that about him!
It’s a personal battle and Cameron has a natural disadvantage which is why he has often seemed surprisingly naïve in his handling of the referendum debate. An Englishman telling the Scots what they can and can’t do will automatically win support for the SNP. What an own-goal that was!
But when you think about it Cameron, like most English people, has a relatively poor understanding of the subject. The Scottish people, and the Welsh, have been discussing subjects like devolution, nationalism and independence for a couple of decades now. It’s such a matured topic of conversation that you will often hear people talk about it in pubs, work, families and all over the place. It’s as comfortable a topic of conversation as the last big football or rugby match – and you will hear strong and convincing arguments on all sides.
But why should English people have an equal understanding of the debate? Apart from sniping comments around the West Lothian question, the English media and politicians have largely ignored devolution. Many English people even struggle to understand what the Welsh and Scots mean when they use the word Nationalism. These issues are just not so important in England as they are in Scotland and Wales.
When I asked some London-based friends recently what they thought the UK would be named if Scotland removed itself, they answered “England” – demonstrating a complete lack of awareness of the countries which make up the Union.
But despite all this only a fool writes off the Tories. They have a nasty habit of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and it’s very likely that behind the veneer of an Englishman bumbling towards an almighty battle, Cameron probably has another trick or two up his sleeve.
GOV.UK: Sorry, we can’t find any results for Cymraeg
The new gov.uk is currently available as a test website. However, unlike it’s predecessor Directgov, there is no link for the Welsh language version.
In fact, if you search for Cymraeg you get the response: “Sorry, we can’t find any results for Cymraeg”.
We need to let the Government Digital Service know this isn’t acceptable and that the central website for government services across the UK (including Wales) needs to be accessible in the Welsh language. The fact that this website has gone live, even as a “Test”, without the Welsh language version ready isn’t acceptable.
Green Party needs to focus now on General Elections
In May it will be two years since the first Green MP in England was elected. There has certainly been a period of change within the party with membership growth and increased media coverage centred around Caroline. My general feeling is that the party has now adjusted to these changes and many members of the party, including me, are starting to get fidgety.
It’s about time to set a new plan with more ambitious goals. This isn’t growth for growths sake – if you’re involved in a political party it’s because you believe that the country and society would benefit from the changes your party wants to implement. The only way to implement our policies is to get more people elected. Crucially, the party needs more MPs to bring about improvements to the environment and social justice.
What’s the alternative? Gradual growth through taking a few extra councillors here and there is one possibility and very much how it feels the party works at the moment. But councillors numbers could stagnate unless the national presence is improved. A more ambitious target, perhaps 15 MPs in 15 years, could do so much to indirectly help increase presence within councils in the slipstream.
I’ve been involved in a a couple of elections now in a fairly minor level and I each time I’ve felt ‘If only we’d started 12 months earlier’. If we don’t start seriously working towards the next General Election now, and setting a short term but ambitious target of maybe four MPs, it will be too late for us to make gains. Sticking with just one MP means that Green politics in England will remain fringe politics.
Here are my seven ideas:
- We need to seriously target four constituencies in the next general election. We should pick, without compromise, the four where we are most likely to win. This means having paid organisers on the ground in those constituencies, local party offices and proper strategies for any intermediate elections such as locals and European elections – geared around building our presence in those constituencies.
- Our national media work needs to be better resourced and a lot more active. Despite hard work from those involved, nn a number of recent big media issues (for example the European economy and the English politician’s attitude to Scottish independence) that party has failed to get the Green view in to the media. We seem particularly weak on economic and social justice issues – the media still looks to us as an environmental party.
- To resource the above we need to accept that we can’t do everything. All parties have limited funds and limited people resources and the most successful parties in elections are those that target these successfully. This means we need to look hard at everything we currently do as a party and question whether it is worthwhile for the next five years or a distraction from a core agenda. For example, some committees and other activities could perhaps be put on hold for five years until the membership grows, which it will as soon as we get more MPs. Local parties who aren’t in the target constituencies may need to fund themselves. Change is hard, but just keeping on doing what we’re doing, even if we do it faster, won’t necessarily get us to where we need to be to make real difference. So let’s think about all our structures, tear them up overnight, and work out what we really need just to get four MPs.
- Accept we can’t be all things to all people. As soon as we start working towards a clear direction, some will leave. For me this means moving the party a bit further to the left than it is at present and working more with the anti-cuts movement. As a political party we need to frame anti-cuts messages within a full calculated economically-sound picture. No other party has yet got this correct – this could be a unique selling point to be the only party genuinely looking after people who have been hit by the economic crisis rather than those who helped cause it. Once we set a clear direction and get more success we will gain more members than we will lose in the intermediary period.
- Work out what we mean by campaigning. It’s great that the Greens are often involved in local campaigns on a number of issues but sometimes we need to decide when we are being political and when we are wearing other hats, such as other local campaign groups we may be involved in. In the areas that we are serious about getting MPs elected we will need to work extensively in terms of election campaigning, and all our party structures will have to be working hard to support that. We need to learn how to gear up fast for big elections (that’s when we also get more members joining and more donations) and cut our costs in a co-ordinated way during the quieter periods.
- The party has staff who are employed to run the party on a day-to-day basis so we need to ensure our committees are there to set the direction for them and support them but not try and micromanage them. This may mean we need to rethink how GPEx and GPRC work, and tweak their relationship with the party staff.
- Listen to parts of the community we don’t currently appeal to – and find out why. Like all parties we are often too white, too middle class and too male. Let’s be open minded and make changes.
I know some of these may be controversial. I’d love some comments, especially from those within the party or who are interested in getting involved, who challenge these!
Is bonus scandal a Labour spin-doctor creation?
As news hit over the weekend that the RBS boss Stephen Hester has rejected his £1m bonus, Labour were quick to chalk it up as a victory following the pressure they put on by threatening to force a commons vote to saved the tax-payer a little cash. Miliband is now calling for a change in City bonus rules, and as such is pitting himself head to head against Cameron and organisations like the CBI who would prefer that politics is kept from interfering with the rights of the banks to set their own rules.
However, this is a suspiciously non-controversial battle for Labour. On the one hand core Labour voters will back the idea that one man should not be able to receive such a large bonus while on the other hand many Conservatives will disagree with the idea that someone employed by an organisation which is 83% state owned should receive such large sums.
This is a very good media story for Labour to push, but what does it really mean? Are Labour saying there should be a national limit to earning or extra high taxes for those who receive large bonuses? No, not really – they are more carefully choosing their targets which makes me suspect this campaign is driven more by the spin doctors than any true idealogical basis.
Labour have chosen to create a sideshow which distracts from the need for the widespread reforms to the banking industry which caused the 2008 crisis. The banking crisis cost the government many billions, for which each year there will be hundreds of millions of pounds of interest to pay – which puts Hester’s bonus in context.
Obviously bankers shouldn’t receive these ridiculous bonuses. But we should be more concerned that Labour are showing no ambition to challenge the government on big issues, which were once seem as obvious left-wing territory, because it would require admitting that they were wrong to allow the banks to act so irresponsibly when they were in government.
Green Party needs progressive approach to policy
Some people think that it’s important to immediately find a solution to every disagreement. Dare I say, this in my experience is often quite a male attitude that winning an argument, or solving issues, is more important than appreciating the actual process of discussion and learning from one another. This is reflected in our entire legislative process which is based on conflict, debate, some level of compromise and finally one party winning and another losing.
In less than a month the Green Party of England and Wales will hold Spring Conference in Liverpool. Unlike the larger parties whose conferences are glitzy affairs aimed at the media our conference still has a great level of democracy and there will be plenty of debate around policies which then feed in to the Policy Website. This is an important part of the party’s democracy as all members are able to influence the policies.
The Policy Website is a uniquely Green feature – other political parties don’t have such a public and thorough display of policy. However, while this openness seems great, I think it needs a lot of work to make it progressive – as does our entire approach to policy. The policies are in some areas incredibly detailed, but in others are very sketchy – depending almost entirely on the specialist knowledge of the volunteer enthusiasts who are pushing through the policies.
Recently someone who was considering joining the Green Party explained to me that the reason he didn’t was that he took offence to the wording of our policy on Nationality. When I checked this policy, it seems in places old and very irrelevant. How many others are put off by policies which no-one has reviewed for years? Or what if the media pick up on a part of a policy which was narrowly voted through years ago and is no longer reflective of the current opinion of the party?
The aim of the whole process is always to create one very clear black or white policy on each subject. There is no room for shades of grey. The best debaters and those most familiar with the process tend to win at conference. I suggest this is a very old-fashioned way to form policy and needs to be reformed.
The party clearly needs over-arching policies which set the general direction of the party, however a lot of the more detailed policies need to be removed from the public domain. They should be replaced with something more useful to a party which doesn’t whip politicians but allows its politicians to use their own informed judgement. What’s needed is a policy site which can be used by those elected – whether councillors or at a higher level – to understand both sides of the arguments held at conference and form opinion and vote in line with both the party and their own views and conscience.
In other words, the aim at conference should not always be to rush to blind uninformed agreement or compromise, which no-one is obliged to stick to anyway, but to bring in experts who can help shape sensible discussions on the major issues of the day. Then the party can have a closed members’ only policy site which don’t just show which argument won the vote at conference, but also captures conflicting popular opinions within the party and reflects by how much they were voted down or if it was a close call. These policy documents should be acknowledged as a reflection of a point in time on a specific subject, not pretending to be building towards some kind of complete collection of policies on everything, which we will never actually achieve anyway.
If tomorrow there were suddenly fifteen Green MPs elected, I think most of the policies would need to be reviewed and rewritten straight away. So why do we spend so much time debating so many policies which we know are not fit for purpose?
Plaid Cymru and Greens need to co-operate
Following last years national elections, Wales goes back to the polling booths again this May, this time to elect councillors. I’m expecting like many others for Labour to put in a strong showing – they usually do when the Conservatives control Westminster. I’ve noticed that many of the Labour Party campaigners have been hitting the streets of Cardiff for many months now. They seem determined to try and take back control of the capital city from the current Libdem/Plaid Cymru coalition.
Across Wales candidates are being announced by all the parties and Plaid Cymru will be keen to show that they can bounce back from the disappointment in last years election where they fell to third place behind Labour and the Conservatives. The Green Party currently have no Unitary Authority councillors in Wales and are working hard to rectify this.
There is no love loss between Plaid and the Greens among local campaigners in my experience. Elections are tiring battles that often feel very personal and tribal – so when I’ve been asked what is the difference between Plaid and the Welsh Greens I have felt quite taken aback and confused that others can’t see the differences. But the fact that this question keeps being asked in parts of South Wales means it needs to be addressed properly.
George Monbiot has recently described Plaid leadership contender Leanne Wood as the “Caroline Lucas of Wales.” And there is of course history as local Wales Green Party activists once supported Cynog Dafis, the former Plaid Cymru MP. This agreement did not end particularly well, but both the Green Party and Plaid Cymru have matured since then.
I now think that because the two parties are seen in some areas by the public to be so close politically, the only way forward is a level of co-operation. Otherwise the two parties are stealing votes from each other unnecessarily. This doesn’t go for every part of the country, and I certainly don’t think this needs to be a form of formal coalition or even public support for each other. Neither party can stand candidates in every single ward, they just don’t have the resources, so all that’s needed at this stage is for a sensible dialogue between the leaders of the two parties in Wales over where each party should decide not to stand to allow the other party a better chance.
There are other benefits to opening dialogue. Plaid Cymru could do with support from England, especially if Scotland leaves the United Kingdom, and the Greens could become a natural friend over the border. Also, in the European elections it could be possible to do a joint Plaid/Green slate, and agree not to target the same seats in future general and Wales elections. If Leanne Wood is selected as Leader, Plaid could soon resemble a strong socialist party for Wales, and she could mimic Denmark’s “Queen of a Red-Green-Alliance.”
Anything is possible, but negotiations would need to begin right now if anything can be sorted out in time for this May’s election!
Do Plaid lack vision for Welsh language?
Last week, an internal review within Plaid Cymru suggested the party should adopt an English language name. Following on from the disappointment in the Welsh election last year, the idea is that the proposed name of the Welsh National Party would be more appealing to voters who can’t speak Welsh. The party would therefore be refocused on Welsh independence and try to win the same kind of support at the Scottish National Party.
However, I think this shows just how far off-course Plaid have gone, and how the party’s leadership is failing to acknowledge that Wales has a very different political context to Scotland. My fear is that the party has become so addicted to growth it may actually put the Welsh language movement at risk by trying to appeal to everyone in Wales rather than maintain the party’s core ideology and aims.
I have met a number of Welsh speakers over the last couple of years who still vote for Plaid but who express a lot of dissatisfaction with what the party has become. Promotion of the Welsh language was, along with political independence, one of the core principals of the party when it was founded.
I have also been surprised recently at how many of its election candidates can not speak Welsh. More importantly, I’ve been disappointed that the party does not often speak of a vision for the future of the language. The more the party moves towards supporting socialism the less focus there seems to be on the language, which I find very strange given that promoting culture and language should be a core part of a modern left party. Why does the party need to choose one or another and not do both?
Welsh-language usage has increased from around 18% in 1991 to over 21%, and many Welsh-language schools are now in high demand even among parents who can’t speak Welsh but who want their children to be able to. When you combine this with the increase in the number of services available in the language, particularly from public sector organisations who are often legally required to provide services bilingually, there has been undeniable success in reversing the previous decline of the language. However, to be a truly bilingual nation, Wales would need to aim for a figure over 50% and for Welsh to be the language of choice, not just when people are legally required to use it.
This may seem a crazy target but I believe it could be achieved with a long term more radical vision. Maybe this could include abolishing our current two-tier system of Welsh and English language schools and instead making all schools properly bilingual. And a vision for Welsh to be used not just on a few signs but every day in the workplace – from the board room to the staff room.
The question isn’t really if this is possible, but whether it’s wanted. I think it’s about time Wales had a decent debate on whether it wants to be a truly bilingual country or not – people have passionate arguments both for and against. If Plaid wants to continue to be the party to promote the Welsh language it must stop trying to win popularity at all costs, and start building a true vision for a bilingual country. My concern is that without a clear plan for development of the language, we will fail to maximise on the current popularity and Welsh usage will start to decline once again. And reversing that decline a second time could be much more difficult.
The review apparently has many other recommendations, some which concern the question of the Welsh language, but this isn’t yet public.