Huw was intent on not giving a straight answer to fairly straightforward questions but one contribution stood out. He said that during the 1997 referendum campaign he had occupied a senior organising post in Welsh Labour HQ. A decision was taken to prioritise the push for a ‘yes’ vote and the Labour party brought in 20 full time organisers and put in £300,000 to pay for the campaign.

All-in-all Huw told listeners the cost to the Labour Party of winning the narrow majority to set up the Assembly was about £600,000. They certainly do not have that sort of money to spend now.

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In a debate between the three candidates on ITV last night Huw Lewis made it clear that he would not push for an early referendum on new powers if he wins the contest. The formula he has devised to frustrate his potential cabinet colleagues is one poll at a time:

‘It would be reckless and wrong for a Labour leader to take their eye off the ball, and the ball in play is ‘Let’s stop the Tories gaining power at the next general election,” he said.

But Plaid Cymru director of elections, Helen Mary Jones was not amused. She said Labour had committed to supporting a referendum before 2011 when the two parties agreed to share power in the One Wales pact, that there had already been enough consultation and that the Government now needed to get on with it:

‘This isn’t a matter for internal party politics. People like Huw Lewis need to remember that the deal was supported by the overwhelming majority of his party rank and file as it was by mine… The timing of the referendum should depend on the Convention’s advice and when the referendum is most likely to be won and not on an election to another place.’

Carwyn Jones also backtracked on the agreement he had signed up to as a Government Minister, keen not to lose the vote of the 15 MPs he has already signed up to support him. He told the programme´s viewers that it is essential there is ‘broad agreement within the Labour Party’ before the pre-referendum campaign begins:

‘It’s important that we actually talk to our colleagues in Westminster and talk to our party members and to the trade unions so they feel part of the process.

‘It would be a very bad move if it was simply Labour AMs who were seen as moving the process towards a referendum without consulting without anyone else in the party.’

Even Edwina Hart was cautious, saying that the decision to go ahead with a campaign would have to be discussed within the coalition cabinet and individual parties. She did though stress her own record as a supporter of new powers, saying: ‘I have been before the Assembly was even established back in 1999. It is about powers for a purpose – I believe it so we can get on with doing things.’

The timing of the Welsh Labour leadership election could not have come at a worst time for the One Wales Government. Rhodri Morgan will still be in place when the All Wales Convention reports next month, but the decision as to how to proceed with its conclusions will rest with his successor.

It is unlikely that any of the three candidates would want to upset the rank and file so early in their tenure and with a General Election looming, nor will the role of the Secretary of State for Wales be insignificant in this process.

Although the odds of a referendum taking place within the timescale allotted by the One Wales Agreement remain good, there appear to be significant factors at play that may well sabotage this happening. It is no wonder that Plaid Cymru are getting jittery.

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As Media Wales reported at the weekend it is already the case that the attitude of the three candidates for First Minister ranges from luke warm to stone cold, whilst Plaid Cymru Assembly Members (and Welsh Liberal Democrats for that matter) are straining at the bit.

They say that two of the Welsh Labour leadership candidates – Counsel General Carwyn Jones and Health Minister Edwina Hart – are entirely non-committal:

Mr Jones said: “The All Wales Convention hasn’t published its report yet and this has to be the next stage of consideration on this matter.”

A spokesman for Edwina Hart said: “The report will be discussed by the Cabinet after its publication and it would be inappropriate to say more in advance of that.”

They point out that Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney AM, Huw Lewis, was more explicit about his own position:

“A ‘no’ vote now would, I feel, undermine the devolution settlement we already have, let alone any further expansion of powers and responsibilities.

“Beat the Tories first, think about the referendum next.”

With Secretary of State for wales, Peter Hain, firmly in the Huw Lewis camp, arguing that a referendum cannot be won before 2011, then it seems that it may not happen at all. That is, unless an incoming Conservative Government were prepared to play ball.

Quite how that will play out amongst the Plaid Cymru grassroorts is difficult to predict. After all Ieuan Wyn Jones passed up the chance to become First Minister because he believed that Labour were more likely to deliver a referendum. How ironic it will be therefore if Labour ignore the opportunity, fracturing the One Wales Agreement in the process, whilst it is the Tories who deliver.

Personally, I do not think that the Tories will agree to a referendum unless they believe that it will sink or hold back the devolution proiject. For me the best chance of getting a plebiscite is if the voters return a Parliament next year with no one party in overall control. At that stage, the Liberal Democrats, with over a century of commitment to devolution, could force the new government to bow to the will of the Welsh Assembly and grant a vote.

Whatever happens, unless a ‘yes’ campaign gets off the ground soon then we will not win a referendum. Perhaps that at least could happen following the publication of the report, with all-party support.

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This time ‘party sources’ are quoted as criticising Huw Lewis for skipping an Assembly plenary session on Wednesday afternoon. Huw rightly points out that in fact he had arranged to ‘pair’ with Kirsty Williams so as not to affect the outcome of any votes, a common practice in any legislature.

As the Welsh Liberal Democrat whip I can confirm that this is in fact what happened. As a group we do not normally pair because we are too small to sustain too many absenses at votes. However we are happy to help teh Labour Party facilitate such an important leadership election by ensuring a level playing field for all candidates.

It is of course none of my business but neither of the other candidates seem to need our help in this way. It appears that they have no problem getting pairs through official channels – their own party whip.

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And So, With Tears In Either Eye

In fairness to him, Rhodri Morgan pretty much kept to his end of the bargain in announcing that he would stand down as First Minister after the Assembly budget was agreed on December 8th (but since the promise was that he’d announce his intentions on or around September 29th, his end of the bargain wasn’t that hard to keep up). The inevitable political and journalistic encomium followed and you can’t begrudge it him; whatever his political failings, his personal popularity is unmatched in recent memory.

With the flag dropped, Larry, Moe and Curly were soon off and running to succeed him (not that they hadn’t been before, unofficially).
First to show was Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney AM Huw Lewis, of whom it’s difficult to report much new as he’s basically been running for the leadership since July 2007, when he was moved aside (read: sacked) to make way for a Plaid minister as part of the coalition agreement (read: because he opposed it).

The campaign launch reflected the manifesto he’s been hawking around the country ever since, namely that Llafur should break with history and have their traditional post-defeat lurch into communism before they’ve actually lost. It’s a bold strategy, and he certainly found the right face to help him launch it; Jessica Morden, the virtually anonymous MP for Newport East whose upcoming electoral arse-kicking at the hands of our very own Ed Townsend looks likely to mirror Huw’s own over the next eight weeks.

The trouble with Huw from a blogger’s standpoint is that, despite being the outsider, as the candidate who’s been out there the longest he’s the easiest one to write about. On the funny side, there’s his insistence on implicit comparisons to that heroic liberal American President, Josiah Bartlet, as his campaign slogan, “Let Labour Be Labour”, demonstrates. Less humorously, there’s the question of whether in his courting of the Jon Cruddases of this world he doth protest too much.

The key exhibit for the champagne socialist prosecution, particularly in this time of expenses scandals, is the question of where exactly he lives. The Mythbusters section of his website claims that he lives in Merthyr and that his house in Cardiff Bay is not for profit, but that’s not the point; Huw’s wife is the AM for Torfaen, so which residence is most likely to be his main one for them and their children? One of their respective constituency homes in the Valleys, or the second home they share in middle-class Penarth? On that issue, comment comes there none.

Next up was in many ways the wild card, Edwina Hart, the AM for Gower. Long considered a contender, the Health Minister had generally stayed out of the preliminaries only to leap straight into the race and establish an early lead, at least among her Assembly colleagues.

Nevertheless, that lack of preliminary business makes Edwina’s campaign the most intriguing, not least because of the fundamental dichotomy she represents. Her appeal is clearly based on her record as a decisive and/or divisive Health Minister, but while it’s easy to imagine her being an excellent leader of the Welsh Labour Party, you get the feeling she’d be an absolutely dreadful First Minister (not that that logic stopped Gordon Brown, of course).

Last in, however, was the theoretical heir apparent, Carwyn Jones, the AM for Bridgend. A cabinet veteran, Carwyn has spent the last two years in the highly important role of Minister For Not Doing Anything Anyone Might Notice And Thus Be Annoyed By. His campaign launch also captured the fundamental essence of his offer, namely that while he’s meant to be the next Rhodri Morgan, he looks and sounds rather like the next Tony Blair (or in the dullness stakes, the next Iain Gray). Nevertheless, as the only fluent Welsh speaker of the contenders, Carwyn embodies the issue likely to be at the heart of the campaign, namely how a party that after the next General Election will have been wiped out west of the Loughor and the Clwyd can speak for all of Wales. If any of them realise that the first step in that would be to speak for any of Wales, things might get interesting …

Charles The Verb

For a moment, however, it looked as if Rhodri’s departure, pre-announced as it was, might be overshadowed by a somewhat more surprising leap from the ship of state.

Adam Price’s speech to Plaid conference was widely seen as his coming out party, the moment his accomplishments caught up with his ego in which he has always been The Next Leader Of Plaid Cymru™. Admittedly it wasn’t clear whether that was because it was so good or because, by comparison, Ieuan Wyn Jones’s speech was so utterly atrocious (and if you haven’t time for Freedom Central’s excellent coverage of that, let me suggest that the level of IWJ’s speech may be described as follows; low, lower than low, hades low, spinning iron core of the planet low, low …).

It turned out, however, that he’d passed up the chance to make his performance even bigger, as the draft speech included the announcement he made a week later, namely that he was stepping down as MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. That much was unsurprising, since to be leader of Plaid he needs to be in the Assembly and even if Rhodri Glyn Thomas had been willing to step aside, he wouldn’t have been able to sustain the dual mandate for three to four years.

The surprise was that he’d found a better excuse than “I want to be leader of Plaid” which, while true, might not have endeared him to wherever he ends up parachuting himself. Instead, he announced that he would spend a year studying in America on a Fulbright scholarship, thus inventing the political verb, “to do a Kennedy” (as any fule kno, Charles was a Fulbright scholar at Indiana in 1983 when he came back to stand for Parliament).

Whether the excuse helps at all remains unclear; Plaid’s top targets seem fairly settled for candidates, including the pundits’ favourite to receive him, Neath. He could be hoping that there’ll be a wave of unexpected Plaid wins that clears the way for him in a raft of seats, but you’d have to be pretty delusional to expect that … Ah …

* Gareth Aubrey is a councillor in Cardiff and blogs at Long Despairing Young Something. Barcud Oren appears (theoretically) regularly at Liberal Democrat Voice and is cross-posted at Freedom Central.

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Oh, and advance warning that there probably won’t be an update next week because it is our conference and I will be too tired/hungover to do this next Sunday. I can tell you’re gutted. If anyone wants to volunteer to take my place for a week, feel free to volunteer!

As pointed out by Glyn Davies, tomorrow is likely to see Mps expenses return to the headlines. The fact that they have pretty much already announced that Gordon Brown will be asked to repay some cash will guarantee it becomes a high profile story even if no new information is revealed. Inside Out suggests that a new batch of MPs could be dragged into the media storm. I wonder who will be looking nervous tomorrow morning?

The soon to be ex MP Adam Price has posted an essay he wrote for the Western Mail, explaining why he thinks that Labour’s best chance is to stick with Plaid and not to ’hook up with some yellow tinged party of the centre’. Should Labour decide to ditch the ‘green stained party of daffodils’ then any yellow tinged party would surely be foolish to consider getting involved with Labour. Such an action would be akin to rats swimming towards a sinking ship, a ship that everyone would be best place in staying well away from. If Plaid want to remain onboard, then please feel free to, but prepare to get very wet.

I think Lee Waters of the Bevan Foundation’s blog ‘This is my Truth’ is getting a little carried away with his assertion that having a week where the Labour leader and First Minister is ‘hardly a recipe for stability’. If it was a long term arrangement, then it wouldn’t work, but for a week? I’m sure people will cope. It will be clear what Rhodri is there for, and clear that his successor will be in charge a week later. What will potentially be more controversial is the make-up of the cabinet. Presumably whoever takes charge will want to shape their team as they see fit, and with the likelihood being that there will be at least one vacancy in the cabinet at the time they won’t have much choice. During that week will Minister’s have to take decisions knowing that the new Labour leader wants to move them?

Cambria Politico are looking for films that can be compared to Plaid Cymru. I have a suggestion: Twilight. Like Twilight, Plaid lack any coherent narrative, point, value and seem to have a number of followers still complete convinced of the positives and showing a blind, unshaking faith in everything about them. Both also fill me with anger based on one point each that I feel needs to be put in capitals IEAUN WYN JONES HAS NOT SAVED THE WELSH ECONOMY and REAL VAMPIRES DO NOT SPARKLE. Ahem.

Guerilla Welsh-Fare seems to think it’s bizarre that Labour aren’t allowing proper scrutiny of their leadership candidates. While I agree with his reasoning as to why they should allow it, it isn’t exactly surprising they aren‘t. We’re talking about a party that puts so much faith in their members that their votes will only count for 1/3 of the final outcome. They do not believe in internal party democracy, which is fine, it’s their party and their choice how they run it. But if I was a Labour member, I would have to question why the hierarchy puts so little faith in my opinion? Maybe being in the Lib Dems has just distorted my view to the extent that I believe democracy should always be the default outcome. And there is a second question, if they are worried about awkward questions from their own members, are they not worried about awkward questions from the media and the other parties?

In the web side of the battle for Labour leadsership, my favourite site has to be Huw Lewis’s. Not only is he showing a sense of humour with bloopers and myths (which I very much approve of, humour has an important part in making politics bearable), he now has five pledges. The one that interests me is his pledge to build ‘more and better affordable housing’. What makes this interesting, is that it’s currently in the control of a Plaid Deputy Minister. Is he suggesting Jocelyn Davies isn’t doing a good enough job? Will he be trying to get her to change her approach to the issue? How exactly does he plan to deliver this promise? Don’t get me wrong, I agree with him, more needs to be done and if he can give credible suggestions on how he will achieve this goal then fair play to him. I hope that we will see exactly what he plans to do in this regard during the contest.

As much as I despise racism, along with everyone who reads this I hope, I don’t think Leanne Wood is right to press the police to ban the protest by the right wing Welsh Defence League. Politicians have to resist the calls to censor viewpoints that are unpopular. Just because you don’t like another organisations view, doesn’t give you any right to call for it not to be aired. What is however concerning is the risk of violence at this protest, a risk which will unfortunately be increased if another protest takes place at the same time and police resources are stretched. Wales Home carries an article this week suggesting similar views about the continued existence of no platform policies.

Right, that’s it for this week.

Actually no. No it isn’t. I need to say it again. Fuck you Stephanie Meyer. I want two hours of my life back and a refund for the cost of my cinema ticket. And an apology. I mean seriously, sparkling vampires? What the hell? How did you think that would work? You just ruined the whole genre of vampire films. Every time I even hear the word vampire I’m going to think of that film and I’m going to be angry. I won’t forgive you for that.

I carry grudges for too long.

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Leaving On A Rhoose Plane

The target of said speculation is of course Rhodri Morgan, whose stated retirement date (his 70th birthday) is now just over two weeks away. With departure supposedly imminent, the pretenders to the throne have crept back into the shadows to avoid the appearance of giving an extra shove on the way off the precipice (Jon Cruddas’ trip to Wales to essentially endorse Huw Lewis as the “properly lefty” candidate notwithstanding.)

Mind you, Rhodri couldn’t have done a better job fuelling the speculation if he’d tried. First there was the suggestion that he might stay on if something serious happened; swine flu was the hypothetical example, but once you’ve established the principle, there’s a whole world of debate about how serious something has to be to count as disqualifying. Then everyone worked out that there was a distinct difference between announcing you were standing down on a date and announcing that you would announce you were standing down on that date, and now you’re off to the races.

With Rhodri not answering questions (except about where he lived, and he couldn’t even get that right) the vacuum was soon filled by the speculators. Would he stay on because if he announced he was standing down in September his successor wouldn’t be in place until Christmas, by which time the Assembly budget would be sorted and the general election would be close enough to count as the necessary extraordinary event? And if he did go on schedule, how would he announce it if his birthday fell right in the middle of Labour Party Conference? The Plaid spin machine’s efforts in cliff-shoving did at least elicit the response they deserved from Rhodri, but with two weeks to go, the silence remains deafening.

Putting The Welsh Into Assembly

If the internal machinations of Llafur didn’t take your fancy, however, there was always that great Welsh favourite, a row about the language, to keep you occupied.

The proceedings of the Assembly are of course simultaneously translated to allow members to speak in either English or Welsh, although a fair majority of business is conducted in English. A verbatim translation is then made and the official Record of Proceedings has, since the Assembly was established, been published bilingually. Nevertheless, just before heading off to Senedd-by-the-Lakeside the Assembly Commission decided that the £250,000 annual cost of producing the full translation was excessive, particularly now that all Assembly proceedings are available online and that in future the Record for plenary sessions would follow the practice of the Record for committee sessions and be in English only.

Unsurprisingly, the Welsh Language Board was pretty scathing of the idea and announced that it was taking advice with a view to legal action. It was the Commission’s response, however, that raised the matter from tragedy to comedy. They argued that the Assembly’s language scheme (a legally-defined document under the Welsh Language Act 1993, breaches of which can be investigated by the Board) was the responsibility of the Assembly (ie, the legislative body) and not of the Assembly Commission (ie, the body the manages the day-to-day needs of the members like heat and light) and that the Board was not empowered to investigate because while the Commission was subject to the Act, the Assembly itself wasn’t. I’d break out my box of metaphors at this point, but Betsan Powys has already nicked them all…

Clearly there was going to be political hell to pay and the backtracking started in earnest, with Chris Franks claiming he had opposed the plan from the beginning and was furious that the Commission’s records did not reflect that opposition. Which is fine, unless one of the other members of the Commission is, say, the Assembly’s leading blogger and instantly able to let all and sundry know that such protestations are a huge load of the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families…

Still, soon enough there was a cross-party motion denouncing the decision and a firm rebuttal of the Humphreyonics from the Welsh Language Board. And as the £250,000 of savings sails off into a sunset of lawyers fees, the saga wends its weary way onwards. Whither Llandudno…

* Gareth Aubrey is a councillor in Cardiff and blogs at Long Despairing Young Something. Y Barcud Oren appears (theoretically) regularly at Liberal Democrat Voice and is cross-posted at Freedom Central.