the limits of bilingulalism

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Hat tip: Inside out @ Swansea

Is it A’Bientot or Au Revoir to Eluned & Jane?

Recent days have seen two of Wales’ leading women politicians announcing their intentions to stand down to, in that ubiquitous phrase which has become the sole lasting legacy of Norm Fowler, ‘spend more time with the family’.

The story over the weekend that the Sustainability Minister and former Education Minister and Deputy Presiding Officer would not be seeking reselection by her Pontypridd constituency party was followed on Tuesday by confirmation that Eluned Morgan after 15 years in the European Parliament would be vacating her position at the head of Welsh Labour’s 4 strong list of candidates for June’s Euro elections.

These announcements follow the departure from the cabinet of Ruth Kelly, but also the return – 3rd time lucky? – of Peter Mandelson. Is it to early to be waving farewell to two of Welsh Labour’s most prominent women?

It is a particularly interesting development in terms of timing. Welsh Labour is gearing up next year not only for the June elections, but also the contest to succeed Rhodri Morgan as Leader of Assembly Party and presumptive First Minister, which will presumably occur in July, followed of course by the contest to replace him in Cardiff West.



The entry of Rhodesian born and Malvern educated Jane Davidson into Welsh Labour circles came when she worked as Rhodri Morgan’s secretary in the early 1990’s, bringing a semblance of order to his legendarily shambolic operation. Appointed to the Cabinet following Rhodri’s assumption of the position of First Minister, she is generally regarded to have been a successful Education Minister. Vibrant and energetic, she is one of the Assembly Government’s better communicators. Though now charged with the huge remit but lower spending ‘sustainability’portfolio, Davidson was responsible for implementing Labour’s free school breakfasts initiative and handling the issues thrown up by the introduction of tuition fees in higher education. Davidson took pains to keep largely onside with the teaching unions, for instance by abolishing national testing in Wales and declined to follow England in stripping school funding out of the overall local government settlement in favour of direct grants. The world standard PISA study published last year however showed Welsh students performance in maths and science ‘significantly lower’ than their English peers, with Wales bottom among the ‘home nations, ranking alongside countries such as Croatia and Azerbaijan.

What lies behind Davidson’s decision to stand down, or what she plans on doing now is anyone’s guess. She may have calculated that whoever replaces Rhodri Morgan would ease her out of the government and decided to pre-empt it, though there is no evidence of any public tension with Morgan’s preferred successor, Carwyn Jones. Her children are now grown-up and while her statement mentions walking and cycling it would be no surprise to see her back in public life, possibly with some role in the Yes campaign for the promised 2011 referendum on devolution. There may also be an outside chance of her succeeding Ponty’s MP Kim Howells if he decides to call it a day following his departure from the foreign office just a fortnight ago. Her decision certainly does benefit the new FM by increasing the flexibility to bring in new faces without having to sack existing ministers. Leighton Andrews may well prove a benificary.

What Davidson’s announcement certainly does mean is a vacancy in what should be a safe Labour seat. Despite a swing to the Lib Dems of over 11% in 2007 Davidson won well over 40% of the vote and on a 40% turnout her majority was a healthy 3k+. The Welsh Labour Executive will have to decide whether the Pontypridd selection should be all woman shortlisted. The constituency party is likely to be hostile to such a constraint on members choice and Transport House officials are still scarred by the backlash against AWS in Blaenau Gwent. Moreover, the Welsh Assembly Labour Party is already feminised (16 women, 10 men), so there is no gender deficit as such. Nor is there likely to be one even after 2011. Of Labour’s 15 safest seats 10 are currently represented by women. Potential candidates include: Sophie Howe, Martin Mansfield, Delyth Evans, Christian Hanagan and Paul Griffiths, but doubtless others will emerge, particularly if the selection is held back until post May 2010.



Eluned Morgan’s announcement presents a more urgent but more straightforward problem for Transport House. Back last March Eluned comfortably topped a ballot of party members to rank the four strong Labour list of candidates for this June’s Euro elections (Glenys Kinnock having long made it clear she was standing down). The remaining candidates were, in order of votes cast: Derek Vaughan (Leader of Neath Port Talbot Council), Gareth Williams (former diplomat, special adviser, policy officer for the European Socialist Group and specialist in cohesion funding) and Lisa Stevens. Owing to Labour’s policy of zipping however, until Friday the list was: (1) Morgan, (2) Vaughan, (3) Stevens, (4) Williams. Since Labour should be hoping to get their top two elected, this means if everyone shuffles up a place that Ms Morgan’s 28 year old researcher, who has never held public office and was until now regarded as a ‘safe’ (i.e. unlikely to commit any ‘gaffes’) paper candidate is fairly likely to step into her bosses shoes. At this stage there’s not a lot the Party can do. Re-running the selection would be time consuming and (given the state of party finances) probably prohibitively expensive. Most likely therefore Labour will leave things as they are and lean on some semi prominent female member to pile up some brownie points by taking one for the party and filling the fourth slot.

Despite having a very young family however few people really believe that spending more time with the children is Eluned’s sole, or indeed prime, motivation. Since the advent of devolution she is known to have been frustrated by the marginal policy input and influence afforded to her as an MEP and is known to be very interested in standing for the Assembly in 2011, probably in Rhodri’s vacated seat of Cardiff West. As the fluent Welsh speaking daughter of an Ely councillor and ex leader of South Glamorgan Council she would seem ideally suited to the seat, which stretches from the posh parts of Pontcanna and Llandaff to still solidly Labour estates such as Ely.

Speculation about other safe Labour Assembly seats whose AMs may be considering stepping down focuses mainly on Gwenda Thomas. Democritus remains rather dubious about this, but suspects that Ms Davidson will not by any means be the last Labour AM to decide to call it a day before 2011.

What would Tony do?

As the problems confronting our beleaguered PM continue to mount, I wonder if he ever stops to ask himself "what would Tony do?"















Bow out shortly before the chickens come home to roost and let his successor cop the blame as he struggles to sort things out ...

Ruth Kelly reaction

Well Gordon now has a little more room for manoeuvre in his reshuffle than was the case yesterday. Fraser Nelson reckons she jumped instead of being pushed. His theory is plausible, but so is the official line. Personally I suspect it’s a combination. Kelly’s seat is pretty marginal (85th on the notional Tory target list) and I suspect she will now be focusing on it intensively. If she were to lose she has a young family (four to date) to support, so will be relieved not to be restricted by the two year purdah that former ministers are expected to observe before working in fields with which they were connected whilst in office.

Kelly is an amazingly bright and driven woman whose officials had a high regard for. She is still young enough to have reasonable hopes of ministerial office again, assuming of course that she retains her seat and that there is a Labour government to serve in.

Reshuffle wise, Democritus tips Jim Murphy for promotion and will be watching to see what happens to Douglas Alexander …

UPDATE: Jim got Scotland. No change for Douggie ...

Hard Labour

‘Need not greed’ seemed to me to be the main theme running through the PMs speech to Labour’s Conference this afternoon. It was a fairly good speech delivered with authority and it will probably shore-up the PMs position for at least the next 3-4 months. The Labour government however still appears doomed come May 2010.

Brown can expect his “No return to boom and bust” soundbite to be hurled back at him relentlessly next week. Like George Bush Snr’s “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Pledge, the aspiration was always unrealistic and beyond the power of any individual politician to deliver however powerful the office s/he holds. The consequences of the credit crunch are already apparent on main street, but the full impact will take months to feed through and rightly or wrongly Gordon Brown will cop a load of blame. Nor have his government’s troubles been purely down to the turmoil in the massive, impersonal global finance markets. The bottling of calling an election 12 months ago, the 10p tax fiasco, hesitation over nationalising Northern Rock, 42 days and the overall impression of a dysfunctional No 10 falling back on gimmicks and appearing out of control all ultimately can be laid at the PM’s door. The only reason he remains in office is that most players in the senior reaches of the party are unpersuaded that unseating him would save their careers. No alternative leader could escape the economic crunch currently gathering pace. Moreover Labour has already ditched one PM during this parliament and repeating the exercise would risk the party and government becoming so riven as be incapable of being led by anybody!

Brown therefore has a stay of execution, but if he fails to get a grip on his government the calculation come next summer may well see him eased out by Jack Straw et al. Short of hoping for a Falklands war or David Cameron to self destruct there is only a very limited amount the PM can do to change the weather. Quite simply the cupboard is bare, people are fed up and the frontbench resembles a range of exhausted, spent volcanoes. There will be a reshuffle shortly, but Brown’s political position is too perilous for him to dare to let go of many further big beasts, and nor are there so many stellar ministers of state to step up. There are no certainties in politics and one can never be sure what’s coming round the next corner, but Brown and Labour are probably in terminal trouble. It will be for Brown’s successor, whomever s/he may be and whether before May 2010 or not to lead the recovery – and it will not be an easy job!