Bala baloney

Unsatisfying and lacking in variety

LIKE the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, there is a periodic predictability to former Plaid President Dafydd Wigley. Every so often, up he pops up with a speech or article on Welsh devolution. And as is often the case with the MPC’s interest rate decision, the intervention is extensively pored over and breathlessly written up, despite little actually changing as a result of it.

This week the former Caernarfon AM and MP was on the Maes in Bala setting out his preferred timetable for a referendum on further powers for the Assembly. It was an interesting enough analysis, as is the wont of various Plaid grandees. But while the likes of Cynog Dafis are afforded a brief, respectful pause before the resumption of normal politics, Dafydd Wigley’s injunctions are characterised in sensationalist style.

All such statements are automatically assumed to represent some challenge to his successor, Ieuan Wyn Jones, regardless of either content or the likelihood of Wigley ever again leading his party. It is also assumed that these ruminations have implications outside of Plaid. Someone fresh to Welsh politics might be forgiven for asking why it is that an ex-Leader of the governing coalition’s junior partner suggesting a date for a referendum promised as part of that coalition and within its stated timetable is “guaranteed to send shockwaves through Welsh politics”.

The official answer is that prevarication on this touchstone issue is suspected, and that anything that flushes out the Plaid leadership’s true intent is therefore newsworthy. That’s a sound analysis, except it presupposes that Wigley’s intervention achieves such an end. There is no evidence whatsoever that it does.

Consider Wigley’s speech to the Eisteddfod two years ago, in which he set out an impossibly high measure of success for the new coalition. The former President suggested that since the One Wales coalition was based on an uncosted programme, the Treasury should be compelled to set aside the Barnett Formula and meet in full all those spending elements which could not be delivered via the block. Despite being similarly written up as a heavyweight intervention certain to pile pressure upon his party’s leadership, nothing at all came of it.

A few months later, in an article “likely to cause serious concern to the coalition partners” Wigley warned the “days of the coalition could be numbered” without additional money and movement on the referendum. Some 636 days later, and without either demand having been met, both the numbering and the coalition appear to be doing rather better than Dafydd Wigley’s predictive prowess.

It is possible to ignore the inter-Plaid dimension and read these regular interjections as intended to pressurise Labour. If so, they should be given less – not more – weight, for it is a tactic that Wigley has employed without success since the Objective One “additionality” arguments of 1999 and 2000. Merely claiming that Welsh Labour must win massive concessions of his choosing from London or be condemned as a failure may please a certain audience but it is unclear how it is intended to move his opponents. And if all we are discussing is a little bit of crowd-pleasing, must it be treated with such gravity?

Dafydd Wigley has been regarded as a figure of substance in Welsh politics for so long that there is a grim compulsion to over-analyse and over-interpret his every utterance. His true intent in setting forth such views – either to destabilise his party’s leadership, or to deal out truths to Labour – is irrelevant if the effect is to do neither. Dafydd Wigley’s observations should be treated seriously, but perhaps not quite so solemnly.