Wales scored a first in the modern political history of Britain this last month. It became the first area of the UK to survive-quite happily-without an elected government. For over three weeks after the inconclusive elections to the Cardiff Asembly the parties squabbled on who should form a coalition. Meanwhile, schools, hospitals and transport systems continued to operate and life continued much as before. Under-developed,de-industrialised countries do of course always benefit from the shock effect and overall stimulation which spreads throughout the body politic when government withdraws from the scene and stops giving itself too much to do. Wales’s progress to a flat-tax Baltic paradise however was interrupted last week when government returned and the Labour party resumed its sway over the broken-backed economy and social deprivation which it has turned into its own vote-producing domain during the past 80 years.
It’s been an instructive month for the politics of coalition generally-the most important lesson to be drawn from the Welsh experience being ‘keep away from Lib Dems at all costs.’ The element of PR in the devolved arrangements reduced Labour to 26 out of 60 Asembly seats but could not jack the Lib Dems beyond 6-a real rump still dreaming of Lloyd George. They are the reactionary-conservatives in Welsh poltics-insanely self-mportant in the style of cantankerous sects everywhere. How very appropriate therefore that their party members should have met in Llandrindod Wells-an obscure mid-Wales spa town dominated by grimly red-bricked Edwardian hotels -to discuss tactics.
The ‘rainbow-coalition’ involved Plaid Cymru, Tories and Lib dems uniting to get rid of a Labour adminsitration. Being a rainbow-it dissolved. But Tories and Plaid were serious: it was the Lib Dems who proved trivial, withdrew from talks, and condemned a country to the resumption of its socialist ruination. There was much talk-of course-of morality a la Lib Dem: participation in government would have been ‘politically irresponsible’ . Ethically shameful too-apparently.
Poltics in Wales is really very simple-despite a profusion of inter-connected interest groups reminiscent of an Austro-Hungarian province c.1910. Plaid and the Tories mistrust each other to a degree less than either party hates Labour. Here the poltical is the personal-since very little separates the parties’ mainfestos which consist mostly of wish lists for grants and subsidies. This means that the clientage system is very extensive in the country since so many are state-employees. Family connections are pretty important too- genealogy having always been a Welsh obsession.
Lib Dems as an interest group feel unfairly left out of all this-rather like decayed aristos deprived of their estates they think their lineage deserves more respect than it gets. In coalition with Labour in the first devolved government of 1999-2003 they got a whiff of a revived glory-which only increased their self-importance. Now they indulge themselves with internal splits on who to ally with. It’s conventional to call this kind of thing ‘ironic’: a party wedded to PR and coalition-talk refuses to play the coalition game in practice. But irony involves reversal of expectations. Self-serving introspection of the ‘mirror,mirror on the wall’ kind is an established Lib Dem trait-and the Welsh of the species are are just running true to form. Elections to Westminster are still weighted against the emergence of coalition politics. Absence of PR is one reason-but the much-derided adversarial style also tends to deliver the knock out blow however tiny the majority. The alternative means dalliance with the Lib Dems-flighty and frivolous despite all their talk of virtue. Look west and learn.
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