From devo-phobe to devo-philes, Tories not ripe for Wales’ top spot
In the second of three articles on how political parties have adapted to devolution, Chief reporter Martin Shipton looks at the Conservatives
THE great paradox about the Conservatives and Welsh devolution is that while no party was more opposed to it 20 years ago, the arrival of the National Assembly acted as the Tories’ big-time saviour in Wales.
In 1997, in Tony Blair’s landslide, the party lost all its Welsh parliamentary seats.
Even in the knowledge that an Assembly would deliver it representation because of a commitment to introduce an element of proportionality to its electoral system, the Conservative Party campaigned against devolution in the run-up to the referendum.
However, aware that it remained a toxic brand in many parts of Wales, it did so quietly, allowing the public face of opposition to be fronted by two female pensioners who were members of Rhondda Constituency Labour Party, Carys Pugh and Betty Bowen.
After the referendum there was no overnight conversion to the principle of devolution.
Grass-roots Tories elected former Welsh Office Minister Rod Richards rather than the more emollient Nick Bourne, who nevertheless had been involved in the No campaign himself.
Richards – who lived up to his Rottweiler nickname – was scathing about the yet-to-be-born Assembly during the first election campaign, making it clear that he would be looking out for any evidence of wrongdoing by Labour – the party he clearly expected to win – whose councillors he had described while a minister as “short, fat and fundamentally corrupt”.
There was little doubt that under Richards the Tories would not be signing up to the kind of “inclusive politics” promised by Ron Davies. But in politics, unexpected events can change things very rapidly. An unfortunate encounter between Richards and some young women in a pizza restaurant in London ended up with him on a GBH charge, from which he was later acquitted. But with the charge hanging over him, he had no alternative but to resign the Tory group leadership.
Richards’ departure left the way clear for Nick Bourne to succeed him, and to change the party’s approach. Speaking this week, he said: “Although the result of the referendum was close, I decided there should be no looking back, and that we needed to take full part in the Assembly, which was obviously going to provide a new focus for Welsh politics. I would say that I changed from being a devo-sceptic to a devo-enthusiast – not that I agreed with a lot of what the Labour administration was doing. Nevertheless, there were things we were able to agree on with them: the creation of a Children’s Commissioner and an Older People’s Commissioner, for example, and later the need for primary law-making powers and legislation like [Labour AM] Ann Jones’ proposal to install sprinklers in all new homes as a fire safety measure.”
It was co-operation on such matters that gained the Assembly in its early years a reputation as a place where most politicians agreed with one another most of the time – or, putting it more negatively, a cosy consensus developed.
Part of this was undoubtedly down to Bourne, and several “One Nation Tory” colleagues like David Melding and Jonathan Morgan, deciding to do what they could to rob the party of its old combative image and prove itself as one that was prepared to take a constructive approach.
From that day to this, the Tory group has never provided any support to those within the Conservative Party or outside it who advocated abolishing the Assembly.
Bourne – now a Conservative peer and a UK Minister in the Northern Ireland Office – said: “Of course there remain members of the Conservative Party who would like to see the Assembly abolished. But the same applies to the Labour Party too. Such people have very little support in the party itself, which long ago accepted devolution as a fact and realised there is no chance that the Assembly would be abolished.”
While the collegiate approach to politics developed with the help of Bourne and his colleagues, there was also an opportunity in the Assembly’s first term for collaboration between the opposition parties. The failure of the Labour administration under First Secretary Alun Michael to secure match funding from the UK government for the EU Objective One aid programme for a large chunk of Wales precipitated a crisis, at the culmination of which Michael was voted out of office by the combined opposition parties.
This led to continued co-operation between Bourne, Plaid Cymru’s then-leader Ieuan Wyn Jones and the then-Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, Mike German. In the aftermath of the third Assembly election in 2007, when Labour was reduced to 26 out of the 60 Assembly seats, the close working relationship between the trio nearly dislodged Labour from power.
The so-called “rainbow coalition” was only thwarted by a split vote at a Lib Dem meeting. If that hadn’t happened, Nick Bourne and his Tory reformers would have brought off a huge coup: taking the Conservative Party into power in the supposedly socialist bastion of Wales.
Bourne said: “When we had the negotiations for a coalition in 2007, we had three columns of proposals: policy areas where we could easily reach agreement, areas where we knew there was no chance of agreement – on Welsh independence, for example – and a column in the middle where agreement might be possible through negotiation.
“The object was to move as many policies from that central column to the one where we had agreement.
“I think we reached enough of an agreement to have created the possibility for a workable non-Labour government. If that had happened, Welsh politics would have been changed for good.
“We’ve now had continuous Labour governments for nearly 20 years. As things stand, the only way to get an alternative government – which would be good, I believe, for Labour as well as for the other parties – would involve co-operation between the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru.”
The failure of the rainbow coalition has put Welsh politics into a logjam – and in current circumstances it is difficult to see a way through that would involve opposition parties