Go West(on-super-mare), Young Man!

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A joy of the present life is the view across to Rowan Williams's pad on the way to work each morning.

But sometimes the soul needs more than a glimpse of an ecclesiastical palace. There comes a time when you want a cocktail of sea and country air. And where else to find such a sensation than a place with a superlative in its own title? Weston-super-Mare!

I'd always wanted to head across the watery channel which divides Wales from England and explore this outpost. Fortunately, some excellent comrades were up for the trip.

The view was smokin'! (and so was almost everyone on the pier, as in there was a lot of tobacco use going on... and you could go for a simulated camel ride; we didn't. You've got to leave something for next time).

But the best delight was cooking duck risotto and enjoying conversation that crackled like a log fire with some of the finest folk with whom you could dander along a country lane as the day readied for dusk.

The Tarantino Cull and Welsh Democracy

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Tarantino’s film Kill Bill climaxes with an epic battle in the House of Blue Leaves between a samurai sword-wielding Uma Thurman and countless men in suits whom, the viewer knows from the start, will end up dead.

A similar frenzy of destruction seems imminent in Welsh politics with the number of MPs due to be culled from 40 to 30.

Politicians are used to fighting for their political lives but this time they may well be locked in combat with members of their own parties.

Of the two Conservatives representing Pembrokeshire seats today, Simon Hart and Stephen Crabb, who would win the nomination for a new super-seat? A similar contest could face North Wales Tories David Jones and Guto Bebb, and Valleys Labour heavyweights Owen Smith and Chris Bryant may have to duel in what would be a fascinating set of hustings.

There is the potential for great debates within the parties about the future role of MPs but also, to return to the Kill Bill imagery, the chance of rather a lot of blood on the carpet.

A cull of MPs is not going to excite the same wave of protest that greeted the plans for badger-dispatching but there is hard thinking to be done about whether Wales has enough political representatives.

Compare our country for a moment with the state of New Hampshire, which has a population of 1.3 million.

Its House of Representatives has 400 members – one member per 3,290 residents – and its Senate has 24 members. On top of this, it sends four members to the US Congress and has its own judiciary.

Wales has a population of three million and 60 Assembly Members – one per 50,000 residents – and will shortly have 30 MPs.

Northern Ireland has a population of 1.8 million but 108 members of its Assembly. If a similar ratio was applied here Wales would have about 180 AMs.

Despite a rapidly developing body of legislation Wales has no dedicated legal jurisdiction, no prospect of an increase in AMs to even 80 – as recommended by the Richard Commission – and zilch likelihood of the creation of a second chamber.

In this time of cuts, no Welsh taxpayer will want to shell out on ermine robes for a new set of peers. But if a reviewing chamber is considered an essential safety valve in the Westminster machine why is one not needed in Cardiff Bay?

Wales has fewer sets of eyes to review legislation and a far smaller band of backbenchers to ask difficult questions. This makes it harder for a brave, far-sighted AM to kill a bad Bill.

A Thursday Column

Bucking Destiny

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Champange flutes and pint glasses will clink next Tuesday when the 21st anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s departure from office is marked.

Her former political secretary, John Whittingdale, this week gave a fond tribute to his erstwhile boss, who is portrayed by Meryl Streep in the movie about to hit cinema screens.

She didn’t just put this country straight, he argued. She actually helped to put this world straight.

This is the type of remark which drives Thatcher critics to distraction. The Tory leader’s battles with trade unions are seen by some on the Left as nothing less than a war against the working class.

What links her fans and detractors is the sense that Thatcher interrupted the natural course of things, that she put Britain – and arguably the world – on a different trajectory.

Left-leaning idealists argue that Britain, as a European nation, should have used its North Sea oil wealth to follow the social democratic model of the Scandinavian countries or built up a modern economy with a revived manufacturing core capable of fuelling German standards of prosperity. They remember her reign as an ill-fated embrace of an American vision of capitalist society which has weakened both the economy and our social fabric.

But her admirers rejoice that she helped to end the Cold War and that she gave Ronald Reagan unstinting support in confronting the Soviet Union. They celebrate her chutzpah in sending armed forces to fight a war off the coast of Argentina and shredding regulations to ensure London remained a world financial capital.

Mr Whittingdale, who is today an MP and chairman of the Culture, Media & Sport select committee, admitted that for a few moments she wondered whether she could continue as PM but not as leader of the Conservatives. She was quickly persuaded this was impossible, but at a time when eastern Europe was throwing off Communist shackles and a global coalition was about to battle Saddam Hussein, she was not ready to leave the stage.

More than two decades on, a sense of unfinished business defines Westminster. On the left, the dream of the UK as a social democratic paradise remains distant; on the right, her successors still view the EU as a threat to national sovereignty and look at the country’s slippage in international competitiveness league tables with alarm.

Thatcher remains a compelling figure because she forces us to ask what type of country we want. She shows that even in the confines of modern politics the parameters of conventional wisdom can be challenged; in this sense she can inspire iconoclasts on both the Left and the Right.

A Thursday Column

The Best Trilogy Ever

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The greatest trilogy in the history of cinema doesn't feature ewoks or hobbits but is Polish director Krysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours Trilogy.

Incredibly, the three films are being legally live-streamed here. They are inspired by the colours of the French flag, Blue (Liberty), White (Equality) and Red (Fraternity). The stories are linked more by themes and motifs than events but there are little moments of crossover. Arguably, Juliette Binoche's portrayal of a widow severing all links with her past in Blue is the strongest story, though White's black comedy of a Polish hairdresser smuggled back to his country in a suitcase has many fans. But Red is a work of tenderness and a cinematic expression of beauty so stirring it leaves you wondering what to do with the rest of your life.

The Home Awaiting the Celebration

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The Institute with the Reading Room Overlooking the Lake

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The House with the Revolution Room

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The House Where the Pilgrims Partied

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The Castle Where the Sages Confer

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The Home of the Renaissance Prince

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The Castle of the Poet and Her Brother

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The Castle of the First Lightbulb

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The Castle of the Two Songs

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The Ornithologist's Home

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The Castle in the Birmingham Notebook

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The Golden Carpet

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Along the Street of Castles

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Click the picture to take a stroll.

Courting Controversy

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It is unlikely many of the pioneers of devolution imagined the very future of the United Kingdom would be in doubt today.

But another revolution was launched in a moment of “big bang” constitutional innovation which could have greater significance than its architects – or the electorate – realised.

Since 2009 the Supreme Court has been the highest judicial body in the United Kingdom. In the United States, Supreme Court judges are household names, their appointment procedure features intense scrutiny of past judgements and the search for signs of political bias.

But who are the justices who sit in their gleaming new London HQ? What does it say about British democracy that so few of us would recognise Lord Phillips, the President of The Supreme Court, if he was sitting at the next table at Nando’s?

Eurosceptics rail against the influence of the European Court of Human rights on UK law but where is the debate about the power of the Supreme Court to shape our lives through rules and regulations? In a UK with law-making legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, what role should these have in the vetting of judges?
Concern about the power of judges to strike down the decisions of democratically elected governments now extends beyond the political class into the judiciary.

Jonathan Sumption QC, the latest appointment to Supreme Court, this week asked: “How far can judicial review go before it trespasses on the proper function of government and the legislature in a democracy?”

The revolution in law parallels the speed of constitutional change.

The SNP’s victory in Scotland means a referendum on independence is almost certain to take place. A commission will report on whether Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh MPs can continue voting on England-only matters but there is potential for a constitutional crisis if this means MPs from the devolved nations would be barred from most UK cabinet posts.

A situation in which the Prime Minister is the de facto First Minister of England but continues to lead on issues of war and peace will prove untenable in the long-term but there is little appetite for a new constitutional settlement. Britain is the land of back of the envelope solutions.

Sumption’s speech was about law and not the future of Westminster and its relation to the four nations of the UK but his words are relevant: “There is surely a case for saying that constitutional change, where it occurs, should happen on purpose and after proper national debate about its wider implications. It should not come about by accident and without any acknowledgment that it is happening at all.”

A Thursday Column

Autumn Glory Outside Bath

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Why Eurosceptics Speak Norwegian

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The language of resurgent nationalism and enthusiastic devolution has swept into the mainstream of British politics and it would be extraordinary if some English MPs did not get lifted by this wave of the zeitgeist.

Members of the House of Commons will today spend several hours debating the Silk Commission – the body launched to consider giving tax-raising and other powers to the Assembly.

The commission will not meet for the first time until Friday so there is no report to discuss. MPs will therefore have the time and opportunity to share their deepest hopes and fears about the future of the United Kingdom.

The prospect of a referendum on Scottish independence – or at the very least full financial autonomy – is all but inevitable.

There is often a sense of fizzing outrage that Scottish students are spared tuition fees while English youngsters must take on years of debt as the price of entry to higher education.

But amid these outbursts of angst, English MPs must surely find themselves imagining life in an independent England.

At the last Westminster election the Conservatives won 298 seats in England, ahead of Labour on 191, the Liberal Democrats on 43 and the one Green MP.

Conservative MPs denounced as rebels last week for calling for a referendum on EU membership must shiver in excitement when dreaming of the policies such a country could pursue.

England could, theoretically, pull out of the European Union and pursue the example of Norway. Its 4.9 million oil-rich citizens rejected EU membership in 1972 and 1994 but the country is a member of the European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Association.

Instead of hammering at the gates of Brussels, people living in the land where the paper clip was invented seem to be happy eurosceptics. Polls show overwhelming opposition to full membership and the chaos in the eurozone is unlikely to woo them to the federalist cause.

But an independent England might not be a Conservative fantasia. The permanent seat at the UN would go, reborn radical liberalism might take root in the downturn-battered cities and socialist voices in local government might demand full regional devolution to challenge the dominance of London.

Cornwall, a region of beautiful landscapes and tangible deprivation, might be the setting for a modern nationalist revival.

Such scenarios are hard to imagine but the Scots have the power to force a revolution on all of us. An independent Scotland is a distinct possibility in the near future.

What once seemed a pipedream is perhaps easier to imagine than a United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland hanging together without Scotland.

A Thursday Column