Conservatives’ plan means Labour wins

BY ANNOUNCING that under no circumstances will the Welsh Conservatives do a post-election deal with Plaid Cymru, Andrew RT Davies has effectively handed the May Senedd election to Labour.

Out of a range of possible scenarios relating to the formation of the next Welsh Government, the only conceivable one in which Labour doesn’t figure is where Plaid Cymru takes control with a “confidence and supply” deal with the Conservatives.

In other words, the Tory group would support Plaid’s Budget proposals and oppose any attempt to vote down a Plaid administration with a “no confidence” motion.

But such a scenario could only come about if Plaid came second in the election and Tories were prepared to back Plaid leader Adam Price’s bid to be elected First Minister at the first Senedd plenary meeting after the election.

All other realistic possibilities see Mark Drakeford back in the First Minister’s office.

Ever since the National Assembly was established, Welsh Labour has had an advantage not enjoyed by its sister party in Scotland: the fact that its opposition is split between the Welsh Conservatives and Plaid Cymru. Neither of these parties have managed to gather a head of steam behind them in the way the SNP has in Scotland. As a consequence, Labour’s vote can go down a fair bit before seats would start to tumble.

The political reality in Wales is that neither the Conservatives nor Plaid Cymru can get into government without some kind of help from each other.

Neither of them has sufficient support to win anywhere near a majority of seats in the Senedd something, incidentally, that not even Labour has managed to do.

It would be unacceptable to Plaid’s membership for the party to enter an anti-Labour coalition with the Conservatives, or to support a minority Tory administration from outside. Ideologically they are in very different places.

But it would have been conceivable for a minority Plaid administration to receive conditional support from the Conservatives - in return for agreeing to some Tory spending priorities - as the SNP did in 2007 when it formed a minority government in Scotland. Indeed, the previous Conservative Senedd leader Paul Davies did not rule such an arrangement out as recently as January. Andrew RT Davies clearly thinks it is in his party’s interests to keep a distance from Plaid.

But in doing so he is helping Labour maintain its stranglehold on power in Wales.