May 6, 2021 - 6:00pm
It is testament to how Wales is viewed through the prism of British politics that a by-election in the North of England can get more media attention than a once-in-five-year event. As voters go to the polls in Scotland and England today the Welsh will select their next government too.
Or will they? Some will, of course, but turnout in Senedd elections is depressingly poor.
Fewer than 50% of eligible voters have come out in the previous five polls. The original 1997 devolution plebiscite was when that watermark was broken; fourteen years later, when the public voted for direct law-making powers for the Welsh Assembly, a little over a third of people turned up.
(By contrast, over 70% of eligible voters in Wales headed to the ballot box during the Brexit referendum and over two-thirds did so in the 2019 UK General Election).
There is some cautious optimism that a larger profile for devolution throughout Covid-19 has awoken a new spirit across the country, but even half of those newly enfranchised 16-and-17-year-olds have failed to register to cast their ballot today.
Alas, here we are again: the slumbering dragon continues to drag its feet while the Scots rush to cause a constitutional crisis and the English put two fingers up to Labour.
Wales’s embrace of partial self-government was never especially enthusiastic. In 1979, the idea was rejected by a majority of 4:1 and almost twenty years later the Welsh voted for devolution by the slightest of margins: 6,721 votes.
Structural issues may partly explain this. The first few terms of devolution in Wales essentially meant that the Welsh Assembly took over the roles and responsibility of the country’s Secretary of State, while primary legislation remained the domain of parliamentarians in Westminster.
Welsh Labour remains in power after 22 years. Political opponents have and continue to be rather hopeless. An electoral system — with votes in a constituency and then a regional list — appear nonsensical and difficult to understand. And our depleted media landscape continues to better reflect Westminster and Scottish politics than the bubble in Cardiff Bay.
Perhaps Wales’s apathy is explained above all by the failure of politicians to ignite the public imagination. They are, to be frank, boring. There has been no Boris Johnson nor Jeremy Corbyn throughout the era of the Welsh Assembly-cum-Parliament who has generated much excitement; no figure to transcend party politics and reach out to communities who now feel so distant from the institution in the Bay.
The prospect of a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition, a repeat of the outcome after the 2007 election, may breathe a little more life into Welsh politics. But we will only know how engaged the public are as the votes are counted.
“Not brilliant, but then not apocalyptic”, the former First Minister Carwyn Jones described the turnout in the 2011 referendum. In this election, I hope Wales can aim higher than that.
Theo Davies-Lewis is the National Wales’s chief political commentator. He is a native Welsh speaker from Llanelli, west Wales.
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SubscribePeople do not understand how pathetic the politicians are in Wales compared even to those in England. A few examples:
Drakeford saying that he didn’t want to hurry the vaccination program because there would be a time when the people (the vaccinators) would have no work.
Adam Price, leader of Plaid Cymru, was asked how independence would be financed with no money coming from England replied, “I think we should just give it a go.”
A senior Labour member of the Senedd said that England’s lack of respect for Wales was demonstrated by Boris Johnson failing to learn to speak Welsh.
How can you survive with this garbage?
The Welsh should be made for the Senedd out of their own direct tax. Than might concentrate their minds a bit.
Ditto the Scots.
Can you actually write a sentence in English? I’m assuming it’s your mother tongue.
The OED* plural noun used to describe persons living north of the border is Scotch, as in Scotch Corner (on the A1) and Scotch Egg.
(* Oxford English Dictionary)
Reading ‘The Invention of Scotland’ by Hugh Trevor-Roper, this is not quite so clear.
The tribe which invaded the north of Britain (from Ireland) were the Scots. So the people now call themselves Scots but the adjective should be Scotch, as in Scotch Egg and Scotch Corner. Therefore, Scottish is totally wrong as an adjective.
“The cost of the UK Parliament per citizen represented is £8.10 a year, compared with £18.25 for the Scottish Parliament, £17.50 for the Welsh Assembly and £19.70 for the Northern Ireland Assembly”.*
Additionally with a smaller population the Northern Ireland Assembly manages to have a staggering 106, members, whilst the Senedd gets by with just 60. So Wales is not doing too badly by comparative analysis.
Off course all these ‘National Assemblies’ are in effect ‘Kindergartens’ stuffed with parasitical, wannabe, political pygmies on the make, but it was ever thus.
Incidentally the Roman Empire, at say the time of Hadrian, got by with one senior official per 300,000. By comparison 12th century Song China had one senior official per 15,000. So perhaps bureaucracy is yet another pernicious Chinese disease/import?
(* source: Institute of Government).
Your figures on NI are a bit out of date. The NI Assembly originally had 108 members but following a review, now has 90. Ministerial Departments were reduced from 12 to 8. Apart from that minor detail, you’re right. It is one of the most bloated & inefficient public administrations out there. Sadly, no politician seems to have the will to do anything about it.
Democracy sucks because people are lazy and stupid.