Politics is defined as the art of the possible – and there is nothing like a good upheaval to define what’s possible.
The Conservative-Liberal coalition’s plans for electoral reform are modest and will not take us up to the standard of representation long enjoyed (or endured) by many of our European cousins.
However, the British constitution is rather like a giant woolly jumper which has proved stretchy enough to accommodate successive generations. It can be altered and amended but each time one strand of wool is pulled another element unravels.
And David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s plans to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote method of election and to reduce the number of constituencies will create challenges and opportunities for Wales.
At present, the National Assembly has just 60 AMs – 40 of whom represent the same constituencies as their Westminster counterparts and are elected using the identical first-past-the-post system.
If the number of constituencies in Wales shrinks, it is unthinkable that the number of AMs would be allowed to be slashed. The Scottish Parliament has 129 members and the Northern Ireland Assembly – which serves a population of just 1.78 million – has 108.
The Government of Wales Act will have to be modified to prevent a cut in AMs. But what should the new system look like?
Will unique constituencies be drawn up? Or will the number of directly elected AMs fall and be replaced by more chosen through the regional list top-up system which today sends 20 men and women to the Assembly?
In exploring such questions, an appetite for greater change may gurgle.
Will it look odd if Westminster adopts the Alternative Vote method and Wales still has the bulk of its AMs chosen by first past the post? Is there a case for giving the Assembly at least as many members as sit in Cardiff’s council (75), especially when the workload and responsibilities have increased so strikingly since AMs first gathered?
Even if a referendum grants new powers to the Assembly, the level of devolution will be far more limited than in Scotland and Ulster and the question will be increasingly asked: “Why?”
Throughout election campaigns, Liberal Democrats speak with pride of being the true federal party of Britain and the Conservatives boast about their role in creating S4C, the Welsh Language Board and the Welsh Language Act.
Now that the two parties are united in Government, will adventurous spirits want to go further than anyone now imagines? Their plans to remodel UK politics mean they will be forced to reshape the way Wales works.
They can either approach reform with a grudging spirit and a box of sticking plasters or they can pursue a true federal vision which could serve the United Kingdom well in the 21st century and beyond.
A Thursday column
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Amish Dad
Through a chain of events I have not quite unthreaded, I came home recently to find four children raised in an Amish community leaping around the dining room.
Their father had perhaps the coolest beard to have graced a chin since Abraham Lincoln’s and he had a fascinating take on modern life, but the kids were the real revelation.
If these children had been raised in Britain they might have been defined as (a) future GDP-boosters who have to be pushed through the education system as fast as possible; (b) consumers who demand to be pacified with high-sugar foods and plastic toys at regular intervals; or (c) a noisy nuisance.
But instead they were loved by their parents as young people blessed with the imagination, energy and wide-eyed curiosity that only a child can possess.
I’m told the family had recently celebrated a joint memorisation of St Paul’s 2,000-word letter to the Colossians. This is a different way to spend a few evenings than playing on a Wii but the children – who were taking immense delight in watching a trainee teacher set fire to teabags in the kitchen (they go shooting up into the air!) – did not seem in the slightest browbeaten.
Without a hint of precocity, they could talk on a wider range of topics than the running order of the Today programme.
They did not have the joyless demeanour of children who have only grown-up company and are old beyond their handful of years, but it was clear their parents respected their intelligence and understood their potential to change the world.
I didn’t get the chance to ask the mum and dad about their plans for the future or go through the usual chat about work and entertainment, but it was obvious that whatever they hope to achieve in life would be bound up with the lives of their high-spirited offspring.
It is fascinating to watch a new Government take its first steps, but it is actually parents now nurturing bumbling toddlers who are on the front line of shaping society.
Victor Hugo said: “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.” Governments can provide parents with childcare and put teaching assistants in classrooms, but no legislator can make love and devotion mandatory.
They can, however, help create the conditions in which parents are more likely to be able to spend time with the young people on whom our future depends.
The hard work of raising a child will never show up as part of a nation’s GDP, but it is only in their company that we can see our disjointed world through their uncluttered gaze.
As the great Groucho Marx once quipped: “A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five!”
A Thursday column
Their father had perhaps the coolest beard to have graced a chin since Abraham Lincoln’s and he had a fascinating take on modern life, but the kids were the real revelation.
If these children had been raised in Britain they might have been defined as (a) future GDP-boosters who have to be pushed through the education system as fast as possible; (b) consumers who demand to be pacified with high-sugar foods and plastic toys at regular intervals; or (c) a noisy nuisance.
But instead they were loved by their parents as young people blessed with the imagination, energy and wide-eyed curiosity that only a child can possess.
I’m told the family had recently celebrated a joint memorisation of St Paul’s 2,000-word letter to the Colossians. This is a different way to spend a few evenings than playing on a Wii but the children – who were taking immense delight in watching a trainee teacher set fire to teabags in the kitchen (they go shooting up into the air!) – did not seem in the slightest browbeaten.
Without a hint of precocity, they could talk on a wider range of topics than the running order of the Today programme.
They did not have the joyless demeanour of children who have only grown-up company and are old beyond their handful of years, but it was clear their parents respected their intelligence and understood their potential to change the world.
I didn’t get the chance to ask the mum and dad about their plans for the future or go through the usual chat about work and entertainment, but it was obvious that whatever they hope to achieve in life would be bound up with the lives of their high-spirited offspring.
It is fascinating to watch a new Government take its first steps, but it is actually parents now nurturing bumbling toddlers who are on the front line of shaping society.
Victor Hugo said: “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.” Governments can provide parents with childcare and put teaching assistants in classrooms, but no legislator can make love and devotion mandatory.
They can, however, help create the conditions in which parents are more likely to be able to spend time with the young people on whom our future depends.
The hard work of raising a child will never show up as part of a nation’s GDP, but it is only in their company that we can see our disjointed world through their uncluttered gaze.
As the great Groucho Marx once quipped: “A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five!”
A Thursday column
Thursday, May 13, 2010
It's Britain But Not As We Know It.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg back-patted each other on the steps of Downing St yesterday like two friendly silverback gorillas who have decided to share their supply of bananas.
Each delighted man seemed quite startled as they stepped across the threshold of a new era. But these two chaps are not the only people changing the shape of the United Kingdom. Red water could be about to gush between England and Wales.
Carwyn Jones woke up yesterday morning as the most senior elected figure in the Labour movement. This is arguably a moment of liberation for the Welsh left.
Deviations from London policy will not be greeted with a raised eyebrow. No-one will expect Labour and Plaid Cymru to pursue similar policies in the Assembly Government to those charted by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
Rhodri Morgan’s vision of Wales as one of devolution’s laboratories where progressive policies can be tested has taken a leap forward. This is happening, of course, just as the cash dries up – but in the next 12 months we will see what Carwynism looks like.
When the Queen tours the UK she will now meet ministers of every political stripe; the SNP will welcome her to Scotland and in Northern Ireland she has a Government with a wider variety of pedigrees than she would find even in her own stables.
The pluralism which now defines UK democracy points to the revolution Tony Blair unleashed when he let the genie of devolution out of the bottle. The New Britain he envisaged may not have involved two non-Labour descendants of aristocrats taking the reins of Government, but there is a radical diversity within the country; power is not so much shared as scattered.
What we may now see revealed is the great secret at the heart of Westminster politics. We have had coalition Government for decades.
Labour and the Conservatives were gatherings of different clans in two sprawling tribes. Ken Livingstone and Mr Blair found a home in the same party, as did Kenneth Clarke and John Redwood.
Cameron’s modernising clan had been under sporadic fire from the right in the days after the election but now they have been joined by liberal reinforcements.
Europhile libertarian Tories may often find they have more in common with their new coalition colleagues than fellow Conservatives who long for a return of Thatcherism.
Equally, social democrats in Nick Clegg’s party – some of whom are descendants of the 1981 Labour split which led to the formation of the SDP – may wonder if their true brethren are those led by Gordon Brown’s successor.
And all those who instinctively lean to the left will often glance at Wales as two parties which draw on socialist values strive to steer a nation of three million through the turbulent but fascinating months ahead.
Originally a Thursday column.
Each delighted man seemed quite startled as they stepped across the threshold of a new era. But these two chaps are not the only people changing the shape of the United Kingdom. Red water could be about to gush between England and Wales.
Carwyn Jones woke up yesterday morning as the most senior elected figure in the Labour movement. This is arguably a moment of liberation for the Welsh left.
Deviations from London policy will not be greeted with a raised eyebrow. No-one will expect Labour and Plaid Cymru to pursue similar policies in the Assembly Government to those charted by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
Rhodri Morgan’s vision of Wales as one of devolution’s laboratories where progressive policies can be tested has taken a leap forward. This is happening, of course, just as the cash dries up – but in the next 12 months we will see what Carwynism looks like.
When the Queen tours the UK she will now meet ministers of every political stripe; the SNP will welcome her to Scotland and in Northern Ireland she has a Government with a wider variety of pedigrees than she would find even in her own stables.
The pluralism which now defines UK democracy points to the revolution Tony Blair unleashed when he let the genie of devolution out of the bottle. The New Britain he envisaged may not have involved two non-Labour descendants of aristocrats taking the reins of Government, but there is a radical diversity within the country; power is not so much shared as scattered.
What we may now see revealed is the great secret at the heart of Westminster politics. We have had coalition Government for decades.
Labour and the Conservatives were gatherings of different clans in two sprawling tribes. Ken Livingstone and Mr Blair found a home in the same party, as did Kenneth Clarke and John Redwood.
Cameron’s modernising clan had been under sporadic fire from the right in the days after the election but now they have been joined by liberal reinforcements.
Europhile libertarian Tories may often find they have more in common with their new coalition colleagues than fellow Conservatives who long for a return of Thatcherism.
Equally, social democrats in Nick Clegg’s party – some of whom are descendants of the 1981 Labour split which led to the formation of the SDP – may wonder if their true brethren are those led by Gordon Brown’s successor.
And all those who instinctively lean to the left will often glance at Wales as two parties which draw on socialist values strive to steer a nation of three million through the turbulent but fascinating months ahead.
Originally a Thursday column.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Give this man a publishing contract!
Three of the very finest writers I know use blogs to communicate but I would subscribe to any magazine which gave them a column. I went to school with this chap and he is incapable of boring the reader with his atlas-vast knowledge and the self-deprecating honesty with which he explores the world in front of his nose. He's nothing less than the Irish Miles Kington (oh, Wikipedia has just informed me that Miles Kington was born in County Down - there you go!). Go on, read this:
I have yet to meet Kevin Hargaden but while he has plenty of respect for the likes of Donald Miller and the theo-literary wiseguys of our generation, for my money he trumps them all. He's Frederick Buechner with bite, or Douglas Coupland after a donkey-fall on the road to Damascus. He frequently terrifies me by putting into perfect words things I've tried to articulate on many floundering occasions. Here he is on the Swiss theologian Karl Barth:
I know I am prone to hyperbole, but these men spin gold. Like a botanist who rejoices in the discovery of a Technicolor turtle in an Amazon stream, I am glad that the internet has brought me into contact with their life-enriching writing.
I am so smooth sometimes it hurts. Take the other day for example. I was filming a wedding locally. Everything was going well and I was getting along royally with one of the bridesmaids. We were making serious eye contact throughout the day and as the evening party approached I had made up my mind that I was going to save the last dance for her.
One of the services I offer in my wedding packages is called the Diary Room. That is where I find myself a spare, quiet room in the Hotel (usually a broom cupboard), set up a camera and allow guests to leave private messages for the happy couple. On this occasion the bridesmaid offered to help me set up (result!)
As we worked we made small talk – and for a change I did pretty well. Pretty well that is until it all went wrong.
With the room set up the bridesmaid prepared to leave the first message. As she was sitting down she looked up, smiled sweetly and said, “When you’re editing this you will be sure to make me look pretty.” Now, I wasn’t really concentrating, I was adjusting the settings on the camera. So when I thought I heard her say “…make me look prettiER” and replied with an ultra charming, “Ah, now we both know that’s not possible.” You can understand my surprise when she didn’t speak to me again that night. The whole thing was captured on film – but you’ll understand why I don’t youtube it.
I have yet to meet Kevin Hargaden but while he has plenty of respect for the likes of Donald Miller and the theo-literary wiseguys of our generation, for my money he trumps them all. He's Frederick Buechner with bite, or Douglas Coupland after a donkey-fall on the road to Damascus. He frequently terrifies me by putting into perfect words things I've tried to articulate on many floundering occasions. Here he is on the Swiss theologian Karl Barth:
[W]hen I read Barth, a man who wrote 12,000 words a day, who listened to a Mozart symphony every single morning before setting down to work, a fellow who spent every Sunday morning preaching the Gospel and smoking cigars with prisoners in his city’s jail, the man who Martin Luther King sought out before he began his Civil Rights campaign, this same Barth comes to me in my office with run on sentences and footnotes longer than most books chapters and with Latin dabbled here and Greek over there but he speaks with such precise clarity. He speaks to the now of your life and he grabs you by the collar and shakes you, rousing you from thinking that this is simple and packaged and pre-prepared for you. He slaps the religion out of you and replaces it with the person of Jesus. Then he kicks you in the groin because you are letting his presentation of Jesus as the centre turn religious.Lastly, one of the most joyous internet discoveries is Charles Leck. He's a 69-year-old veteran of the civil rights movement who lives on a farmstead in Minnesota. If you could walk into a bar and ask for a cocktail made up of Garrison Keillor, Kurt Vonnegut and Howard Zinn, this is what they would serve you. He is spectacularly prolific - he had 356 posts in 2009. But even more remarkably, they range from reminiscences of an early meeting with Jesse Jackson to reviews of Coen Brothers moves to recipes, polemics about politics and - most brilliantly - portraits of the people he loves. He is a true Liberal Lion in the Ted Kennedy tradition, but also someone who darn glows with kindness.
His words are hard like Jesus. I mean by that they have to be turned around and reflected on again and again. His words are like Jesus in that they don’t seek to flatter you or compliment you. He writes with a certainty that isn’t his own- he is certain only that if he points you towards the category shattering reality of Jesus he will have pointed you the right way...
I know I am prone to hyperbole, but these men spin gold. Like a botanist who rejoices in the discovery of a Technicolor turtle in an Amazon stream, I am glad that the internet has brought me into contact with their life-enriching writing.
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