An exciting time to be Labour
Labour leadership race — By Alun Davies AM on November 28, 2009 6:00 am
Can Welsh Labour get its nose back in front?
THIS IS a fascinating and exciting time to be Labour. On Tuesday. we will have a new leader here in Wales and a renewed determination and resolve to win the General Election next year. As the opinion polls reflect a close and keenly-fought electoral contest many of us feel a spring in our step as we deliver the leaflets and knock on doors in constituencies across Wales.
The last two months have been good for the party. We’ve had a high-quality, intelligent and invigorating debate and contest. That is good for the party and I think good for Wales.
There are three immediate challenges facing the new leader.
Firstly, what is the role? Most people have been referring to the post that we’ve just elected as the leader of Welsh Labour. But it isn’t. As well as electing the First Minister and leader of our government here in Wales, we will also be electing a new face to represent Welsh Labour. But in fact we are simply electing the leader of the Labour Group in the National Assembly. But this time we really do need to elect a leader. It must surely be time to recognise that whosoever is elected is our party leader in Wales. At present we have no post of leader of Welsh Labour. It’s time to put that right.
I say that for many reasons. It isn’t only the democratic mandate that they will have from all parts of our party and our movement. They also have a job to do. A job that will require the authority and clout that such a figure will posses. It will mean setting the political direction and strategy of the party and it will mean reforming the party to face not only next spring’s General Election – but also creating a party that is capable of returning to consisting winning and representing people throughout the whole of Wales.
The second challenge is to change the culture of Welsh Labour. In truth we have not been the same campaigning force that some of our opponents have been over a number of years. We have relied on excellent councillors, AMs, MPs and branches rooted in our communities to maintain our place both in people’s everyday lives and in the ballot box. Trades unions and workplace organisation gave us a strength and a structure that was simply unique. But that world is changing and perhaps already has changed. And for good. That means we need to change. We need to change our structures, our organisation, the way in which we meet and represent people and we must change the culture of the party.
It may stick in the throat to learn anything from the Lib Dems, but perhaps it’s time for us to do so. We need to focus on being an agile campaigning force. We need to be able to take on our opponents and win. We’ve got the unparalleled record in government and we’re grounded in a philosophy that takes the things we all think are important in Wales – social justice or chwarae teg – and make it a reality. That’s a terrific opportunity and a terrific prospect.
The new leader’s third challenge is perhaps the most difficult. Historically our greatest weakness in Wales has been the creation and development of policy. We have a civic society that is far weaker than that which exists in either Northern Ireland or in Scotland. We also have a weaker civil service – one that far more comfortable with administration than will the dynamics of policy creation and implementation. The old Welsh office was more of a translation bureau, taking English policies, translating them and then re-publishing them as Welsh Office documents. Too many of our civil servants appear not to have realised that the world has changed around them.
And if we are to be a dynamic party leading change then we need to be able to offer the electorate a compelling, persuasive and engaging manifesto. A manifesto that is designed for Wales but also is rooted not only in our values but also in the daily lives of the people we seek to represent. If we can help create new and strengthened policy communities in Wales then we will be able to not only drive and define the changes that we want to see in Wales. But we will be able to shape a future Wales in a way that would have been unthinkable in the old days.
Taken together that’s an exciting and exhilarating agenda for Labour and for Wales.
Tags: Alun Davies, Labour leadership race, leadership, Welsh Labour
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6 Comments
The problem with this line of argument is that the assumption that somehow the Labour Party in Wales can operate as a completely seperate identity from the UK Labour Party. Along with many others I am a member of the UK Labour Party. I joined a party in 1968 that I believe should represent all parts of the UK . Unlike some I have never been a member of any other party. If you want a successful party you don’t need new structures. Structures should always be linked to the political system in order to provide the machine to elect representatives. What you need to do is to present a narrative which will attract people to join the party. It would also help if those individuals are then listened to. As Nye Bavan put it in a Place for Fear the task of a political representative is to listen to and articulate the hopes and aspirations of those they wish to represent. Too often in the past too many Labour Party members have felt that they are members of a top down party.
For Labour to be successful in Wales it must also be successful at a UK level. The most important Labour Leader in the eyes of the majority of voters will always be the person who leads the UK Labour party not the person who might be the leader of a regional grouping. If they not attracted by Labour’s UK Leader and Labour’s UK policies then frankly if the Labour Group in the Assembly was led by John F Kennedy it would not make any difference.
Finally it doesn’t augur well for new lawmaking powers if we have AMs informing us that the civil servants in the Bay are not up to the job. Laws have to correctly drafted if they are not to become the play thing of the courts. I now realise why so many in the Welsh legal establishment want a distinct legal system for Wales. They probably can’t wait to start earning the fees from challenging the badly drawn up laws made by a future Assembly. To imply that 10 years after devolution there are still senior civil servants who see their task as merely translating documents from Whitehall is really worrying.
Jeff: “Finally it doesn’t augur well for new lawmaking powers if we have AMs informing us that the civil servants in the Bay are not up to the job. Laws have to correctly drafted if they are not to become the play thing of the courts”
The point Alun is making is far broader than legal drafting – it is about capacity to think creatively and then implement. Most government action is not about law, it is about strategy and funding. Having said that, there are clearly weakenesses in civil service performance in Wales. Edwina Hart, perhaps of all the Labour leadership candidates, recognised this when she said in her manifesto:
“No Manifesto for someone hoping to lead the Government in Wales would be complete without saying something about civil service reform. In many ways, the devolution of 1999 changed the political landscape of Wales, while leaving its administrative structures intact. Over the past decade there have been many hundreds of civil servants who have adapted rapidly to the new circumstances and provided an excellent service to the Assembly Government and the citizens of Wales. In my experience, however, such individuals are having to work against the grain of the current ways in which the civil service is organised and structured. As devolution develops further over the next decade, I believe reform will become more urgent. Wales is simply too small to sustain wholly separate public services in local government, the civil service, the health service, in higher education and so on. We need a far more permeable set of boundaries between these organisations, so that workers in the Welsh public service can move between them, contributing to the Welsh way of maximising the advantage we have as a small, clever country in which we all work together for the benefit of us all.”
Her recommended solutions were establishing a centre for public service improvement, identifying and spreading best practice and innovation across all services; and setting up a Leadership Academy for public service leaders and managers to ensure they have the high-level leadership skills needed to deliver high quality services in Wales.
Whoever wins the Labour leadership election, I hope these ideas and this analysis is not lost.
Alun also makes a fair assessment when he says: “We have a civic society that is far weaker than that which exists in either Northern Ireland or in Scotland.”
As a member of that civic society – and it is far broader than the politicians themselves or the officials who support them – I cannot dispute this statement, much as I would like to try to.
Jeff is right – the current leadership contest is really just a side issue. For Labour members, real power lies in London, whether Gordon Brown or the increasingly comical Peter Hain. The Assembly therefore remains a sideshow, except as a staging post for aspiring politicians.
Alun Davies seems not to have recognised that his previous separatist tendencies don’t play well in Labour and neither will his slur against civil servants.
Daran all the points being made by Edwina are already being implemented in some shape or form in England. The present Chief Execuive of Bridgend, for example, was a civil servant until given a taste of local government by being seconded for a year to a London borough.
Why do we need the expense of our own Leadership Academy?
In military circles, it is quite common for senior offciers to attend staff colleges in other countries. We do need civil servants and local government officers who think outside the box. But you can’t expect departments in a regional administration to have the same ‘firepower’ as their Whitehall equivalents.
We also need to be more open and stop continually reinventing the wheel just to produce a ‘made in Wales’ solution to address problems which are common throughout the UK.
For me, Alun’s most important observation was the importance of changing the culture of Welsh Labour. For every AM or councillor of any note, I could reel off half a dozen who couldn’t run a bath let alone a government department. And I write as a party member.
Labour has too often recycled the same old faces and the same old knee jerk responses: it is therefore little wonder that so few people want to get involved with part politics as attending party meetings can often feel like an episode of Life on Mars, with the same 1970s ideas attitudes and prejudices. But without the charm or humour.
Although Alun raises good and insightful remarks regarding the civil service, I lay the blame for poor administration squarely with the politicians: it really does not matter how able an administrator you are, if the politicians have passed legislation that resembles a dogs breakfast, then its little wonder that we have some of the shambles we do.
I really do hope that the Labour party does get invigorated by the election of a new leader- lets face it, it absolutely needs it.
Its not just civil servants that need a school, its the politicians that make the decisions that need to too!