A Tory–Plaid Cymru pact?

28 April 2007

Liam Byrne says the English must be less apathetic about the United Kingdom, and about the threat of Scottish independence that looms in next week’s elections

Campaigning styles for these assembly elections do not dwell on these unhappy truths — since all the parties share responsibility for what has happened. Even when not socialist in name or in theory, opposition parties have colluded in a form of state control by failing to argue for any genuine alternative. These Welsh elections should really be a very specific test case for the newly revived brand of Cameron Conservatism — all the more so if the Tories are going to be part of a coalition running the country. An aura of controlled benevolence has now replaced that wilful eccentricity which became the defining feature of English conservatism in the 1990s. From the point of view of their own electoral interest, Conservative party leaders should certainly cultivate a reputation for being benignly accommodating rather than needlessly provoking. This is especially true in times of economic prosperity — as has been true in England for the past 14 years. But in Wales the situation is entirely different and corresponds to what would have happened right across the UK if the Labour party had won the general election of 1979 and persisted with its brand of economic policy-making.

Wales’s politicians have certainly been amiable enough — mostly with each other — while presiding over a major socio-economic decline. They have cast envious eyes across the Celtic Sea at Ireland and that country’s economic growth. ‘Wales in Europe’ and further consequent subsidies have been cast as a solution. But it is low rates of corporation tax which have fuelled the advance of Ireland — a country where two conservative parties take it in turns to run the country. Wales’s independence is a reasonable enough aim in a continent where Estonia and Latvia have recovered their sovereignty. Perhaps it is only in those circumstances that Welsh political leaders will be able to see that liberal capitalism is the necessary future for their country’s economy. When that happens, a Conservative–Plaid Cymru alliance will have rescued Wales from a decadent state-ism and truly liberated a whole country.

Hywel Williams is a contributing editor of The Spectator.