UK Labour is wrecking Welsh Labour's election chances, says ex-Minister Lee Waters

Martin Shipton

Labour MS Lee Waters has accused UK Labour of adopting a contemptuous attitude towards Welsh Labour and damaging the party’s chances ahead of next year’s Senedd election.

In an article for the website Labour List, he compares the current Westminster government’s dismissive attitude towards devolution with that of earlier generation politicians like Aneurin Bevan and Neil Kinnock.

Mr Waters, a former deputy minister who is stepping down as MS for Llanelli next year, places the current Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens in that tradition.

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'Distraction'

He writes: “Brought up some 10 miles from the English border in north-east Wales she has little sympathy for treating Wales differently to England. Much like Kinnock, and Nye Bevan before him, she sees these debates as a distraction from the issues facing working people in all parts of Britain.

“That is not the view of the overwhelming majority of Labour politicians in the Senedd.

“In fact the leader of Welsh Labour, Eluned Morgan, recently set out in a landmark speech a ‘Red Welsh Way’. ‘I’m interested in making sure I stand up for Wales on every occasion, and now and again that means that I will take a separate path from the UK Labour Party’ she said in asserting her distinct mandate ‘as the leader of the nation’.

“These differences reflect different traditions in the political thinking of the Labour Party, indeed in socialism more widely. But less than a year out from the most difficult election the party has faced in 26 years of devolved power, they are not just of theoretical importance.”

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Condescending

Mr Waters argues that the UK Labour government’s attitude towards “trains and windmills” is indicative of a condescending approach that risks destroying Welsh Labour’s claim to be standing up for Wales.

He states: “Rail infrastructure isn’t devolved to Wales (though it is to Scotland). Around 12% of all the UK’s rail network is in Wales, yet there is no proportional share of investment set aside. In fact we haven’t even been getting the 5% share of money spent on rail in England that the population-based ‘Barnett Formula’ assumes for most policy areas. For years we’d had to settle for around 1% of all rail investment in the UK. Rail expert Mark Barry reckons conservatively, that the current constitutional arrangements have/will cost Wales circa £2bn.

“It is easy to get lost in the weeds of how rail funding works, the bottom line is that Wales has been – and continues to be – significantly underfunded. This was something Labour MPs recognised when we were in opposition but clearly not something that the Treasury has been persuaded to put right.

“The recent spending review allocated £445m of funding for Welsh rail improvements over 10 years. £34bn of enhancements for England were announced at the same time.

“Treasury Chief Secretary Darren Jones unhelpfully told an opposition MP who pointed out the inequity: ‘You might want to be a little more grateful in future’. Not great.

“Renewable energy is another glaring inequity. The seabed off the Welsh coast is the property of The Crown. But unlike in Scotland, where the Crown Estate’s revenues are devolved, the substantial fees from hosting giant offshore wind farms projects go direct to the UK Treasury.

“The Welsh Labour Government has consistently argued Wales should be allowed to leverage our rich renewable energy resources, much like how the City of London and southeast of England capitalise on their financial and political strengths."

Economic levers

He continued: “There aren’t many economic levers Wales can pull to overcome our plight as one the UK’s poorest regions – at the wrong end of every league table. One revealing indicator is the number of people eligible to pay the additional rate of Income Tax – the top rate paid by those earning more than £125,000. Across the UK it’s 3% of earners. In Wales it is 0.4%. Just 6,000 people in a country of 3 million are additional rate taxpayers. We are poor.

“This is why First Minister Eluned Morgan has described the devolution of the Crown Estate as “an important cause for our nation”. In an overwrought section of her ‘Red Welsh Way’ speech Eluned Morgan channelled Braveheart to cry defiantly, ‘We saw them take our coal. We saw them take our water. We will not let them take our wind, not this time, not on my watch.’

“The UK party has dismissed this out of hand. And Jo Stevens defiantly said last week that her opposition to devolving the Crown Estate has been ‘vindicated’ by a round of private investment in the Celtic Sea off Pembrokeshire. It’s a hollow victory.

“Given that Eluned Morgan has set her stall on demonstrating that two Labour governments working together in office will deliver for Wales, it is hard to understand why UK Ministers are standing in the way of the Welsh Labour leader delivering one of the party’s Senedd Programme for Government commitments. And in such a defiant fashion.

“Wales gets the tap end of the bath every time. But the thing about the tap end is that the water is hotter. And in 10 months time, the temperature is set to rise.

“The last YouGov MRP poll put Labour in third place in next May’s Senedd elections, squeezed by a nationalist pincer movement of Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. The number-crunchers at Cardiff University think that if Welsh Labour’s numbers drop by another 2% the party could see our Senedd group shrink from 30 to around 12 (and that’s in a Welsh Parliament that will expand at the next election from 60 to 96). A century of Labour majority support in Wales would be over.

“There are those amongst the Welsh Labour MPs who take a short-term view that this would have some advantages for the next general election campaign. Instead of the frustration of having to contend on the doorstep with the record of a Labour-run Senedd they’d be free to run against an Opposition-led Government. A seductive, but myopic, logic.

“Put aside the fact that in the case of trains and windmills Wales is clearly being treated unfairly, the polling data should signal to orthodox Labour unionists that they are on the wrong side of history.

“Plaid Cymru now has the support of the bulk of younger Welsh people. 46% of 16-24 year old voters say they’ll vote Plaid, and another 21% would back the Greens. They also hold a clear lead among 25-49 year olds, with 36% of the vote – outpolling Labour on 22%.

“A year ago I warned that Welsh Labour faced its Scottish Labour moment. Since then the polls have got (a lot) worse because of decisions made in Westminster (not Cardiff).

“The lessons of ‘the strange death of Labour Scotland’ have not been learned. The indifference to the reasonable claims of a devolved government, the control of the party machinery by London HQ, and the disdain of Westminster MPs towards their devolved counterparts were features then and now.

“Scottish Labour paid the price for it in 2007. The SNP seized on its chance to form a minority Government and used it to build a generation of dominance. Plaid Cymru aims to do the same.

“If that comes to pass, boasts of ‘vindication’ at beating away popular demands by Welsh Labour will be pyrrhic.

“And that’s the problem of being at the tap end of the bath: you can pull the plug out if you’re not careful.”