A Tory–Plaid Cymru pact?
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
The party which opposed devolution most stoutly has also been its greatest political beneficiary. Tories in Wales were invariably the second-biggest party in terms of numbers of votes cast in general elections, but first-past-the-post relegated them to the margins. And the seats where they were elected tended to confirm their outsider status in Welsh cultural terms: Monmouth in the south-east and Conwy on the north coast could easily be dismissed as alien enclaves populated by an anglicised suburbia.
The rural north and west of small market towns had an electorate who would have voted Tory if placed in an English context. Farmers often did — being grateful for the subsidies which kept them in business. But most of the natural Tory voters in these regions found the party’s local product unappealing. Snobbery had much to do with it. As one local candidate put it, ‘The problem with these Welsh Tories is there’s no officer class — the sergeants’ mess has taken over.’ Some electors therefore stuck to the Welsh Liberal Democrats — a party whose stuffiness may have driven its Montgomery MP Lembit Opik into the arms of an obscure Rumanian songstress as a counter-reaction. Yet others found themselves voting for Plaid Cymru, liking that party’s defence of the language and turning a blind eye to its nostalgic fondness for economic interventionism. Meanwhile, Labour continued to record its huge majorities in the industrialised south and north-east: areas whose apathetic brand of socialist feudalism provided career-building politicians with a convenient base.
Proportional representation in devolved Wales changed the structure, but its consequences also changed attitudes — most importantly so in the case of the Tories, who now found themselves elected in decent numbers. In the last elections of 2003 they won 11 Welsh Assembly seats, in close contest for second position with Plaid Cymru on 12 seats. Labour’s defence of its 29 seats is therefore vulnerable to an advance from the two main opposition parties. It suffers from its association with the Blair-led party over the border, but it’s the fact that the Tories have now acquired a Welsh identity which gives them something of a campaigning edge.
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