Some of the most famous names in Welsh politics are now found not in the House of Commons nor the Assembly but on the ancient red benches of the Lords.
Dafydd Wigley, a defining figure in the story of Welsh nationalism, now sits alongside Labour icons such as Donald Anderson and Neil and Glenys Kinnock.
Mike German, the ex-Welsh Liberal Democrat leader who won his party a share of power in the National Assembly will soon be joined by Cardiff Central AM Jenny Randerson.
The second chamber is also the parliamentary home of people who did not spend the first acts of their careers in the political arena.
Cardiff University’s Ilora Finlay, a world expert in palliative care, and David Rowe-Beddoe – the former chairman of the Wales Millennium Centre – also have the opportunity to scrutinise and support legislation.
Even people who want a wholly-elected second chamber are willing to serve in the present institution. They can put up with its anachronisms because they believe there is an important role for a revising chamber in British politics; there are few outright abolitionists.
It is also hard to find people willing to make the case for an Upper House for the National Assembly – even though its original debating chamber still exists in the red brick building next to the shiny Senedd.
Politicians are convinced that the public dislike them as a profession and it would be an act of electoral masochism to ask taxpayers to pay for more of them.
The 2004 Richard Commission called for the number of AMs to grow from 60 to 80 to cope with proposed new law-making responsibilities. Voters will go to the polls on March 3 to say whether or not they want the Assembly to gain new powers but there is no proposal to increase the number of AMs, never mind create a second chamber.
Yet if powers are transferred and the Assembly becomes a legislative engine room, people on the fringes and then the front-benches may ask why if a reviewing chamber is considered vital in Westminster one is not needed in the Assembly. A few may become convinced that the Senedd needs a Senate.
There are many models of how this could work. The men and women who would serve would not need to be employed full-time with expensive staff, but a new chamber could be a way of allowing people working at the forefront of medicine, business and the arts to share their expertise and shape legislation.
At present, the Assembly has a good record of consulting experts at the earliest stages, but a made-in-Wales could give them the chance to fashion world-class law.
A Thursday column
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Nation-making
It is hard to imagine even the most zealous horde of young Labour, Plaid, Conservative and Lib Dem activists clambering into a minibus with cases of dynamite and the goal of carving images of their party leaders across a Welsh rockface.
But just a decade ago, it would have been almost as difficult to conceive of a situation in which each of the Assembly leaders would stand side by side and urge the people of Wales to vote Yes in a referendum on more powers for the Assembly.
While this potential transfer of law-making freedoms is not the subject of many conversations you can overhear in Wales’s Starbucks and bowling alleys, the word “referendum” sends shivers and tingles through the nervous systems of every Welsh politico.
The 1979 referendum to create an elected assembly was a spectacular blow for people who longed for self-government in Wales. Only one in five of the people who made it to the polls voted Yes.
This was an emphatic rejection of devolution, but the troops who gathered on that constitutional battlefield did not evaporate in a Celtic mist.
Many went on to have children who would join them on the doorsteps again in 1997 for the referendum in which Wales voted Yes by a majority of just 6,721.
The next referendum will be held on March 3 and the most recent YouGov poll showed only one in four people plan to vote No.
Even though the Welsh people may not be consumed by a burning excitement about devolution, it appears as if a quiet revolution has occurred. Somehow, the polls suggest, the instinctive position for many people is now to vote Yes.
For those who believed in devolution when it was only the aspiration of a minority faith, this is a cause for celebration, and may explain why a referendum to transfer limited powers in strictly defined areas has kindled such excitement among activists.
An emphatic Yes vote would be empirical proof that a “people group” – many of whom would have raised an eyebrow in 1979 if you had described them as part of a Welsh “nation” – finally gave the Assembly the benefit of the doubt and now see it as the natural birthplace of the laws which will govern their lives.
This is unlikely to be the last time we go the polls. Expect future referendums on tax varying powers and perhaps the transfer of responsibility for the police and the creation of a distinct Welsh legal jurisdiction.
There is no certainty that all four party leaders will join together to support these goals. This is a unique moment, which some may well look back on as the time when Welsh politics came of age.
A Thursday column
But just a decade ago, it would have been almost as difficult to conceive of a situation in which each of the Assembly leaders would stand side by side and urge the people of Wales to vote Yes in a referendum on more powers for the Assembly.
While this potential transfer of law-making freedoms is not the subject of many conversations you can overhear in Wales’s Starbucks and bowling alleys, the word “referendum” sends shivers and tingles through the nervous systems of every Welsh politico.
The 1979 referendum to create an elected assembly was a spectacular blow for people who longed for self-government in Wales. Only one in five of the people who made it to the polls voted Yes.
This was an emphatic rejection of devolution, but the troops who gathered on that constitutional battlefield did not evaporate in a Celtic mist.
Many went on to have children who would join them on the doorsteps again in 1997 for the referendum in which Wales voted Yes by a majority of just 6,721.
The next referendum will be held on March 3 and the most recent YouGov poll showed only one in four people plan to vote No.
Even though the Welsh people may not be consumed by a burning excitement about devolution, it appears as if a quiet revolution has occurred. Somehow, the polls suggest, the instinctive position for many people is now to vote Yes.
For those who believed in devolution when it was only the aspiration of a minority faith, this is a cause for celebration, and may explain why a referendum to transfer limited powers in strictly defined areas has kindled such excitement among activists.
An emphatic Yes vote would be empirical proof that a “people group” – many of whom would have raised an eyebrow in 1979 if you had described them as part of a Welsh “nation” – finally gave the Assembly the benefit of the doubt and now see it as the natural birthplace of the laws which will govern their lives.
This is unlikely to be the last time we go the polls. Expect future referendums on tax varying powers and perhaps the transfer of responsibility for the police and the creation of a distinct Welsh legal jurisdiction.
There is no certainty that all four party leaders will join together to support these goals. This is a unique moment, which some may well look back on as the time when Welsh politics came of age.
A Thursday column
Friday, January 14, 2011
On the Pitch
David Miliband’s zealous support for Arsenal was legendary when he was Foreign Secretary but he may be about to become a champion of Sunderland.
The Premier League side is reportedly in discussions with the Labour MP and he could become the club’s latest non-executive director.
Both the team and the politician will want to prove that their best days are not behind them.
Sunderland won the FA Cup in 1937 and 1973, and Mr Miliband made heads turn when he took the helm of the Foreign Office at the still-tender age of 41. Today, Sunderland sits in the top half of the table and its devoted fans cram into the Stadium of Light, but this is not one of the glitziest clubs in the country.
In contrast, Mr Miliband is one backbencher among many but he remains cloaked in political stardust.
Hillary Clinton famously admitted to a crush on the well-spoken Foreign Secretary and although he lost last year’s Labour leadership race he was backed by a majority of MPs and MEPs. A marriage between Sunderland and Mr Miliband could be a masterstroke of brand management for both players.
It is understood the role would involve responsibility for international and community work, and the presence of Mr Miliband can only raise the club’s global profile.
Mr Miliband, cruelly caricatured for geekish tendencies and never forgiven for being photographed in public holding a banana, will benefit from association with a hard-working northern team where winning is everything. At 45, he is too young to become an elder statesman and years of working at Cabinet level mean he has too much excess energy to be satisfied solely by going through his South Shields constituency mailbag.
He has been reportedly pitching ideas to the BBC and will soon go back to his old school to do stints as a volunteer politics teacher. It is easy to imagine him carving out a lucrative life of multiple directorships and worthy excursions into the charity sector. Great non-leaders of the parties have played epic roles in national life, as demonstrated by Roy Hattersley, Tony Benn, Denis Healey and Michael Heseltine.
If fact, how many young politicos today would rather achieve a career on a par with these men than endure the thwarting frustrations of party leaders such as James Callaghan or Michael Foot? But there would be a sense of unfulfilled promise and a suspicion of sourness if Mr Miliband quit the political stage. In fact, it would be a mighty own-goal.
He may not have top billing in his party but there is no doubt his talents would be better used at this time on the pitch instead of in the commentator’s box.
A Thursday column
The Premier League side is reportedly in discussions with the Labour MP and he could become the club’s latest non-executive director.
Both the team and the politician will want to prove that their best days are not behind them.
Sunderland won the FA Cup in 1937 and 1973, and Mr Miliband made heads turn when he took the helm of the Foreign Office at the still-tender age of 41. Today, Sunderland sits in the top half of the table and its devoted fans cram into the Stadium of Light, but this is not one of the glitziest clubs in the country.
In contrast, Mr Miliband is one backbencher among many but he remains cloaked in political stardust.
Hillary Clinton famously admitted to a crush on the well-spoken Foreign Secretary and although he lost last year’s Labour leadership race he was backed by a majority of MPs and MEPs. A marriage between Sunderland and Mr Miliband could be a masterstroke of brand management for both players.
It is understood the role would involve responsibility for international and community work, and the presence of Mr Miliband can only raise the club’s global profile.
Mr Miliband, cruelly caricatured for geekish tendencies and never forgiven for being photographed in public holding a banana, will benefit from association with a hard-working northern team where winning is everything. At 45, he is too young to become an elder statesman and years of working at Cabinet level mean he has too much excess energy to be satisfied solely by going through his South Shields constituency mailbag.
He has been reportedly pitching ideas to the BBC and will soon go back to his old school to do stints as a volunteer politics teacher. It is easy to imagine him carving out a lucrative life of multiple directorships and worthy excursions into the charity sector. Great non-leaders of the parties have played epic roles in national life, as demonstrated by Roy Hattersley, Tony Benn, Denis Healey and Michael Heseltine.
If fact, how many young politicos today would rather achieve a career on a par with these men than endure the thwarting frustrations of party leaders such as James Callaghan or Michael Foot? But there would be a sense of unfulfilled promise and a suspicion of sourness if Mr Miliband quit the political stage. In fact, it would be a mighty own-goal.
He may not have top billing in his party but there is no doubt his talents would be better used at this time on the pitch instead of in the commentator’s box.
A Thursday column
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Drama of the City
Shivering Assembly Members returning to their offices in Cardiff Bay will drop their jaws an inch when they look out at the BBC “drama village” which has sprouted on the horizon.
The future home of BBC productions is taking shape at astonishing speed. A sweeping arc of architecture now exists in Cardiff Bay, stretching from the Wales Millennium Centre to the Senedd and this giant production house.
The concept of the great capital city has fallen out of favour.
Parties routinely promise at elections to move departments into the regions in an effort to spread prosperity. Accusations of “London-centric thinking” abound and every US senator seems to get elected by vowing to sabotage Washington DC from within.
But great cities are also places of adventure, where people who would never otherwise cross paths suddenly live, commute and work alongside one another.
A world city is in a constant state of reinvention and transformation. If it ceases to be a hub for people and ideas, experiments and carnivals, then it will quickly become a fossilised heritage piece.
Cardiff has been in perpetual evolution since the 19th century when its population started to soar.
It has experienced the cataclysm of industrial decline yet been reborn to enjoy an astonishing vitality – it feels like a city whose best days are ahead of it.
This settlement was never the capital of an ancient Celtic kingdom, but it has earned its right to call itself a capital. Institutions like the WMC, S4C and the Assembly draw people from across Wales and the world, just as the universities and the drama village are also magnets for international talent.
Whatever Wales is, you can find it on the streets of the city. When a nation locates its identity in the vanished past it can only see change as a work of corrosion; but in this country there is a political culture where people seek to embrace the nation as it is and look to the future with a generous optimism.
The Assembly can be lambasted as a citadel of cosy consensus, but Wales can take pride in an institution where people on both the left and the right approach politics with a humane set of values which prize inclusion and community.
This should be celebrated. Modern liberal European democracies have been shaken by the rise of demagogues who seek to spear scapegoats, demonise and divide.
But in these pre-election months, as the drama village moves towards completion and aspiring politicians compete to move into the adjacent Senedd, let us recognise that this is an excellent moment to be alive in a young Welsh democracy.
A Saturday column
The future home of BBC productions is taking shape at astonishing speed. A sweeping arc of architecture now exists in Cardiff Bay, stretching from the Wales Millennium Centre to the Senedd and this giant production house.
The concept of the great capital city has fallen out of favour.
Parties routinely promise at elections to move departments into the regions in an effort to spread prosperity. Accusations of “London-centric thinking” abound and every US senator seems to get elected by vowing to sabotage Washington DC from within.
But great cities are also places of adventure, where people who would never otherwise cross paths suddenly live, commute and work alongside one another.
A world city is in a constant state of reinvention and transformation. If it ceases to be a hub for people and ideas, experiments and carnivals, then it will quickly become a fossilised heritage piece.
Cardiff has been in perpetual evolution since the 19th century when its population started to soar.
It has experienced the cataclysm of industrial decline yet been reborn to enjoy an astonishing vitality – it feels like a city whose best days are ahead of it.
This settlement was never the capital of an ancient Celtic kingdom, but it has earned its right to call itself a capital. Institutions like the WMC, S4C and the Assembly draw people from across Wales and the world, just as the universities and the drama village are also magnets for international talent.
Whatever Wales is, you can find it on the streets of the city. When a nation locates its identity in the vanished past it can only see change as a work of corrosion; but in this country there is a political culture where people seek to embrace the nation as it is and look to the future with a generous optimism.
The Assembly can be lambasted as a citadel of cosy consensus, but Wales can take pride in an institution where people on both the left and the right approach politics with a humane set of values which prize inclusion and community.
This should be celebrated. Modern liberal European democracies have been shaken by the rise of demagogues who seek to spear scapegoats, demonise and divide.
But in these pre-election months, as the drama village moves towards completion and aspiring politicians compete to move into the adjacent Senedd, let us recognise that this is an excellent moment to be alive in a young Welsh democracy.
A Saturday column
Saturday, January 01, 2011
A World Transformed by Hope
The people of this island rarely look at the future with wild optimism and the prospect of more months of wintry austerity could make the heartiest soul shiver.
Like drivers scraping the windscreen ahead of a long journey on snow-showered roads, our instinct is to approach the future with more caution than excitement.
But if we take 20 steps backwards and look at the moment in which we are alive we can feel grateful to exist in extraordinary times.
Yes, we have worries about the economy and politicians of all major parties face the challenge of a lifetime in trying to provide services with shrinking resources in different parts of the United Kingdom.
But nobody expects that tomorrow a German land mine will strike Cardiff’s Llandaff Cathedral and reduce it to ruin.
Yet on January 2, 1941, this ancient seat of Welsh Christendom was devastated. The city is home to many people who remember the terror of this time and the challenge of rebuilding amid the rubble.
The great triumph of their generation is that they did not just rebuild the city and its cathedral but they created a Europe in which inter-country war is now almost as unthinkable as a Martian invasion.
Yes, the international picture sometimes looks as if it was drawn by Goya after a night of nightmares. The threat of religious terrorism is grotesque. Countries which earlier generations longed to visit when they read copies of National Geographic now seem home to foes whose antagonism we strain to understand.
But before we allow ourselves to fall into apocalyptic angst, we should remember that all of us born before 1989 lived with the thermonuclear equivalent of a loaded shotgun pressed to our temples. The world tripped towards oblivion but human beings composed of the same patchwork of longings, fears, loves and neuroses as ourselves stepped back from annihilation and then tore down the Berlin Wall.
A generation ago, Latin America was defined by murderous tyranny and Southeast Asia seemed locked in a stand-off between dictators and Communist totalitarians. Now, peace and prosperity are remaking these continents.
People from across the globe who marvelled at the near-miracle of a democratic South Africa when they witnessed last year’s World Cup will be astonished by the vitality of Brazil when it hosts the tournament in 2014.
We could do worse than to slip into Llandaff Cathedral in our search for New Year hope. The Sir Jacob Epstein figure of Christ in Majesty is now suspended above a bold concrete arch that stuns us awake in the ancient church.
Hope inspired people in a rubble-strewn city to build something audacious and astonishing. We can do it again.
A Saturday column
Like drivers scraping the windscreen ahead of a long journey on snow-showered roads, our instinct is to approach the future with more caution than excitement.
But if we take 20 steps backwards and look at the moment in which we are alive we can feel grateful to exist in extraordinary times.
Yes, we have worries about the economy and politicians of all major parties face the challenge of a lifetime in trying to provide services with shrinking resources in different parts of the United Kingdom.
But nobody expects that tomorrow a German land mine will strike Cardiff’s Llandaff Cathedral and reduce it to ruin.
Yet on January 2, 1941, this ancient seat of Welsh Christendom was devastated. The city is home to many people who remember the terror of this time and the challenge of rebuilding amid the rubble.
The great triumph of their generation is that they did not just rebuild the city and its cathedral but they created a Europe in which inter-country war is now almost as unthinkable as a Martian invasion.
Yes, the international picture sometimes looks as if it was drawn by Goya after a night of nightmares. The threat of religious terrorism is grotesque. Countries which earlier generations longed to visit when they read copies of National Geographic now seem home to foes whose antagonism we strain to understand.
But before we allow ourselves to fall into apocalyptic angst, we should remember that all of us born before 1989 lived with the thermonuclear equivalent of a loaded shotgun pressed to our temples. The world tripped towards oblivion but human beings composed of the same patchwork of longings, fears, loves and neuroses as ourselves stepped back from annihilation and then tore down the Berlin Wall.
A generation ago, Latin America was defined by murderous tyranny and Southeast Asia seemed locked in a stand-off between dictators and Communist totalitarians. Now, peace and prosperity are remaking these continents.
People from across the globe who marvelled at the near-miracle of a democratic South Africa when they witnessed last year’s World Cup will be astonished by the vitality of Brazil when it hosts the tournament in 2014.
We could do worse than to slip into Llandaff Cathedral in our search for New Year hope. The Sir Jacob Epstein figure of Christ in Majesty is now suspended above a bold concrete arch that stuns us awake in the ancient church.
Hope inspired people in a rubble-strewn city to build something audacious and astonishing. We can do it again.
A Saturday column
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