Wales election: different language but the same issues – coalitions and cuts

Welsh assembly's four-party politics creates air of uncertainty as voters decide whether to punish Cardiff or London

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Michael White
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 April 2011 18.28 BST
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Facing a Labour resurgence at the Welsh election? Plaid Cymru figures, from left, MP Elfyn Llwyd, Iwan Huws, candidate for Aberconwy, heritage minister Alun Ffred Jones, and former party leader Dafydd. Photograph: Steve Peake for the Guardian
Patriotic yellow-and-orange flags festoon Conwy's narrow high street in honour of the legendary Owain Glyndwyr. It is more than 600 years since Owain, Shakespeare's Owen Glendower, briefly captured Edward I's intimidating frontier fortress - just down the hill - during the long Welsh revolt against Henry IV.

"Who'd have thought it? Glyndwyr's flag flying in an old garrison town like this," whispers a Plaid Cymru politician canvassing for votes in the 5 May elections to the fourth Welsh assembly to sit in distant Cardiff Bay.

Even if few nationalists still pay lip-service to the revolt-and-independence agenda, Wales still nurses resentments against its large neighbour. But Wales is changing too, more cosmopolitan and outward-looking, its spruced-up capital competing for business with English cities like Leeds and Manchester.

Nowadays non-Welsh speakers and English incomers can see the point of preserving what its adherents proclaim is Europe's oldest living language - spoken today by 600,000 Welsh people, one in five and rising. If saving the language is no longer the primary issue (coalition cuts to S4C, the Welsh TV channel, certainly are), there are plenty of others to fill the gap.

Unlike Scotland, Wales after devolution in 1999 did not fully share the British boom. Income per head remains about 75% of the UK average. Alone in Britain, Welsh unemployment rose in the last quarter, by 3,000 to 8.6%, higher than in Scotland, Northern Ireland, let alone England's 7.8%. Alarming new data shows Wales falling behind England in GCSE and A-level results - a first.

Are these figures all the fault of Labour as the historically dominant party of Wales, champions of newly expanded legislative powers for Wales, but also in power in London and Cardiff Bay for most of the past 15 years? Its three rivals, Tory, Lib Dem and Plaid Cymru, certainly want voters to conclude as much on 5 May. In 2007 the three parties even discussed a "rainbow" coalition until Labour wooed Plaid into a red-green coalition. Plaid's leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones, served as economics minister to Labour's Rhodri Morgan and his successor as first minister, Carwyn Jones (no relation).

There have been few public coalition bust-ups and all four parties united to back expanded powers in last month's referendum. It carried in all counties except (by 51% to 49%) semi-English Monmouth, last survivor of the sharp east-west split which ensured only a narrow yes to devolution in 1997.

Combined with coalitions - past, present and future - such proximity gives a slightly unreal quality to their manifesto offers and petty jibes against each other in this campaign. Everyone knows that economic growth is central and all have some sensible ideas – and daft ones.

But the Lib Dems are accused of backtracking on free NHS prescriptions and of manifesto spelling errors. Labour has what Plaid calls " a tragic lack of ambition" for Wales but counters that Plaid is a "passenger" on economic policy, drifting back to small-c conservatism.

As for Labour's schools policy, it is as elitist as the Tories who are blamed for the cuts. The funding gap with England favours Wales on the NHS (by £106 per head), but not education (-£600). Both are falling behind. Yet the most dramatic Welsh election event so far has been on the lunatic fringe, when a BNP assembly candidate burned the Qur'an in his garden. "More Muslims in Britain than Welsh people" is a BNP campaign theme.

The result is that in the volatile, uncertain public mood of 2011 no one seems confident of the outcome. In a country where "keep the Tories out" is both a rallying cry and a strategy, no coalition options are quite off the table and no UK party can have policies too different from London.

Welsh Labour is hoping voters will decide to blame the other coalition, the Tory-Lib Dem one cutting Welsh budgets from London. Fingers firmly crossed, voter anger just might deliver Labour a working majority of 31 in the 60-seat assembly, the first ever.

Even in all-conquering 1999 Labour got only 28 seats to Plaid's 19, still Plaid's highpoint. In 2007 the result was 26 Labour, 15 Plaid, 12 to the recovering Tories and just six to the Lib Dems, whose position has since weakened further. This month polls giving Labour 50% of the vote (Cons 20.3%; Plaid 16.7%; Lib Dems 7.6%) suggest outright victory is possible, especially if 5 May vindicates the theory advanced by some Welsh academics that the junior partner in most coalitions is the one voters punish. That would hammer Plaid locally and the Lib Dems - their poll share sharply down - for the Clegg factor.

"I can't remember a Welsh election so dominated by UK economic issues," avows a Welsh Labour MP.

"He would say that, wouldn't he?" reply Labour's many critics who suspect that, as in Scotland, 2011 may prove too soon to forgive disappointments of the Blair-Brown era.

What's the difference between Tory and Labour policies on cuts, education or health, Plaid candidates craftily ask voters. "Who will be the chief beneficiary of the Lib Dem collapse, that's the big question?" asks Elfyn Llwyd MP, Plaid's leader at Westminster.

Few sound sure and in Wales's four-party politics, where some assembly members (AMs) are elected on the additional member (AMS) regional list, the maths are tricky. The decision of north Wales's returning officer, Dr Mohammed Mehmet, to postpone counting until Friday 6 May will enhance the weekend drama.

In Conwy's picturesque high street voters still seem immune to any prospective drama, despite assurances from the political class and Welsh blogging wonks that this is the most interesting contest for years. Most passers-by are English tourists with no local vote anyway.

In the Welsh-speaking Conwy valley farming is central (and coalition policy unpopular), but along the sandy, history-laden coast east of Caernarfon - so close to Liverpool and Lancashire - tourism is king in sepia-tinted Victorian resorts.

In a back room of Conwy's Castle hotel Plaid's ex-MP-now-Lord Dafydd Wigley, nearby MP, Elfyn Llwyd, and the assembly's culture minister, Alun Ffred Jones, discuss the industry with local businessmen. They have brought along their local candidate for AM, Iwan Jones, a first-time political wannabe who just happens to be the former head of the Snowdonia national park, a heritage specialist.

All are keen to get help from London and Cardiff but fear that Cardiff - they really mean Labour politicians in south Wales - still don't regard tourism as a proper industry. Historically difficult road, rail and air links between north and south Wales are improved, even the bendy A470, but old tensions resurface.

More important than north-south or east-west today is a problem that all parties complain about, that most of Wales is dominated by English media that take little interest in Wales or its political agenda. Yet any mention of 5 May's all-Britain referendum on the alternative vote (AV) for Westminster and an air of uncertainty descends on north and south, tourist and locals alike.

"That's the new voting system, is it? I like the idea that all votes count, but I need to study it a bit," admits a politically engaged Conwy railworker on his way to the station.

As elsewhere Welsh parties are divided on the merits of AV and the likely referendum result, though Plaid politicians in north Wales hope it may help them in a string of local seats. The railworker's vote in the three-way marginal of Aberconwy migrates between Labour, Green and Plaid Cymru (his wife votes Plaid) and will probably return to Labour in the hope that Welsh leaders in Cardiff Bay may be more radical than Labour in Westminster.

Plaid won Aberconwy with 38.6% in 2007's assembly election, but the Tories won the Westminster seat last May on 35.8% of the vote, Wigley tells voters. Under AV they would probably have lost to second preferences of the other voters.

There is a similar three-way race next door in Clwyd West and in distant Carmarthen West.

But Welsh politics are run on the AMS version of PR, designed to make it hard to win a majority, so a constituency seat won on a strong swing may mean a seat lost to the same party when the region's top-up seats are allocated to be fairer to also-rans.

So Lib Dem assembly leader, the well-regarded Kirsty Williams, may hold the fate of Tory leader, Nick Bourne, in her hands. She is expected to hold her rural Brecon and Radnor constituency. But if she falters and the Tories surge then Bourne, who currently holds top place on the Mid and West Wales regional list may end the night without a seat.

As with much else in PR- and coalition-driven politics no one can be sure. England may soon have to get used to it too.