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Can the Welsh Liberal Democrats pull ahead in Welsh politics?

WHEN Kirsty Williams forecast back in November 2008, during her successful campaign to be Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, that her party could win 31 seats in the National Assembly, she also predicted that: “Project 31 is at the very edge of what’s possible. Psephologists will laugh. Pundits will sneer. But they do that when we predict winning just 10 Assembly seats.”

Well, this pundit certainly spilt his morning coffee even if he didn’t sneer. Yet even if he doesn’t buy the absolute majority idea, he certainly doesn’t write off the possibility that the Welsh Lib Dems could hit double figures in Assembly representation in 2011. And neither should their opponents.

It is all too easy to assume that the Lib Dems will forever be the also rans amongst the big four parties in Welsh politics. They have contributed much to this perception themselves, most notably through their stagnant poll returns across three Assembly elections. In 1999, 2003 and 2007 they returned the sinister pattern of 6-6-6. Equally worrying was not just the demonic score, but the fact the party has only won the same six seats. Where other parties have ebbed and flowed, proving they can take battle-ground seats even if they cannot hold them, the Lib Dems have appeared to be singularly incapable on capitalising on the problems of others and making an advance.

In 2007, for example, they needed only to add around a thousand votes to their tally across South Wales Central in order to take a regional list seat. With the Conservatives looking likely to win Cardiff North, the Lib Dems were banking on making a gain and quite frankly every pundit, on that occasion, assumed they would. Yet it was not to be. Ultimately it was the Conservatives who leapfrogged them, taking Cardiff North and holding both seats on the regional list.

Even more worryingly perhaps for the Lib Dems, back in the 2003 the party received no electoral dividend whatsoever for its three-year role in the Welsh Assembly Government alongside Labour. To not have picked up the few thousand votes they needed for the South Wales Central list seat in that election either must be seen in the context of Labour winning three new first-past-the-post seats in the same contest. It was clear which of the two parties had profited from power.

Assembly elections matter, and not just to enable the group to get into government. The Assembly group desperately needs an injection of fresh blood. That is not to denigrate its current composition, but rather to reflect on the rejuvenating power of new entrants. Just look at the impact some of the new AMs in other parties elected in 2007 to see how important fresh faces are. Lesley Griffiths for Labour, Bethan Jenkins from Plaid and the Conservative Darren Millar all took part in a panel discussion which I chaired back in July, looking especially at politics from the perspective of a recent entrant to the Assembly. They were chosen deliberately as examples of Assembly Members who have brought something new to the political scene in the Bay. Each of them has been highly effective since arrival. And looking at their fresh, energising perspectives, it was clear that the Liberal Democrats need new – and additional – members in their Assembly group, too.

Those who write off the Lib Dems are convinced that nothing much will change in 2011. Certainly the Euro elections this year gave no sign for optimism, with the party failing once more to take a seat in Wales. Indeed, the 2009 Euro Elections was arguably their worst result this decade. With Labour on the slide, it was the parties of the right which profited. The Welsh Conservatives topped the poll and UKIP took the fourth Euro seat, beating the Lib Dems into a poor fifth place. At a time when Welsh Labour was falling, the detractors of new Welsh leader Kirsty Williams were quick to point out that her first electoral contest had been a failure.

Yet there is no reason to assume that the Welsh Lib Dems will flatline come the next Assembly election or that they will automatically perform badly in the forthcoming General Election either. Those who confidently predict them to lose Montgomeryshire to the Conservatives or have already written off Ceredigion as a Plaid regain in 2010 are forgetting a few key facts about Lib Dem performance over the last decade.

The first is Cardiff Central. Back in the Assembly election of 1999, my interest was aroused by the convincing win they made there, taking a seat held by Labour in Westminster. Everyone else seemed to be obsessing over Plaid in the Rhondda or Islwyn and forgetting that gain in the heart of the capital. In the subsequent Assembly elections they consolidated their position and by 2005 took the Parliamentary seat, too. More strikingly, in 2004 and 2008, they won every single council ward in the seat. Which other Welsh political party manages that? The problem any other party has in Cardiff Central now is that in the space of little over 10 years the whole patch has become completely synonymous with a single party. It is a Meirionnydd of the South.

Such campaigning fervour is exportable, and during the past decade the party has also made further inroads across the whole of the city, most particularly in the southern wards. And it carries further, too. In the 2004 local elections the Lib Dems took control not just in Cardiff but also in Swansea, Newport and Bridgend. In terms of local government in Wales they were becoming the urban alternative to Labour. And once more, it was a position they managed to consolidate. After 2008, the Lib Dems are now in coalition arrangements and running over half the councils in Wales, over twice as many as Labour. Indeed, they form part of more governance arrangements in local authorities in Wales than any other party. Hardly the position of an also-ran party in Welsh politics.

Yet people persist in thinking they just don’t matter, imagining that local pavement politics just doesn’t translate. This is a major tactical mistake and was the type of thinking that in 2005 saw Plaid Cymru totally gobsmacked when they lost the Ceredigion seat to the Liberal Democrats. On the same day the party also took Cardiff Central and held off from Conservative challenges in both Brecon & Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire.

But the story of 2005 is also one of an incredible advance for the party. In that UK General Election the party pulled off the biggest single rise in total voters than anyone had achieved in Wales since Labour in the 1990s. In 2005 the Welsh Lib Dems took over 66,000 votes more than they had four years previously in Wales. They jumped from 189,254 to 256,249. To achieve such a movement of close to a 35% increase in voters is the success story of that General Election which people have forgotten. In doing so they motored ahead of Plaid Cymru and took third place in Wales on share of the vote. Over the same four-year period the Conservatives only picked up 11,000 new votes and were still adrift by 20,000 of what they had achieved back in 1997, which people assume was their lowest watermark in modern Wales.

If the Lib Dems achieve such a surge in one election, is it inconceivable they can replicate it in another? It was they, not Plaid, which successfully capitalised on popular dissatisfaction with Labour over the Iraq war in 2005. Is it not feasible that they could do the same with the anti-politics feeling that has pervaded our politics since May?

The Welsh Lib Dem staff team is probably stronger now than they have ever been. And they always emphasise that they have learnt from past mistakes. One of these is to keep expectations of achievement a lot more realistic and grounded than in the past. With a new leader at the helm, they sense that politics in Wales is a lot more open than it was at the start of the New Labour project, and they are keen to demonstrate what they can achieve.

Despite the calamity of the European election this year, the Welsh Lib Dems have an opportunity to prove whether they can really motor forward. In 2010 they should be judged not just on whether they hold their current four seats or whether new targets like Swansea West and Newport East fall to them; but also on whether they can further boost the total number of Welsh electors voting for them. Beyond this, in 2011 they also need to make several Assembly gains and get close to if not beyond the double figure which has remained a paper goal until now.

Don’t assume the Lib Dems are irrelevant in Wales. And don’t judge Kirsty Williams on this year’s Euro Election result. Give her two years and two elections to show what she and her party can do. She may just surprise you with a result that’s a lot more credible than the very edge of what’s possible.