Why would anyone want to abolish the Assembly?
With Westminster politics turning the UK into an international laughing stock, our National Assembly deserves respect, says chief reporter MARTIN SHIPTON
AN OPINION poll this week suggested that the Abolish the Assembly Party now has more support than Ukip.
The figures are quite low – 6% and 5% – and it’s easy to dismiss both organisations as rival groups of reactionaries, but with Ukip Assembly group leader Gareth Bennett having come out in favour of abolishing the institution, those backing such a course would now claim to be in a cohort reaching double figures.
Of course we can’t forget that in 1997 the majority in favour of setting up an Assembly was tiny. But the Conservative Party, which had been attached to the referendum No campaign, quickly changed its mind and decided to embrace devolution.
In 2011, when another referendum was called on plans to give the Assembly primary lawmaking powers, a body calling itself True Wales was set up to argue that it shouldn’t. In truth True Wales was a forerunner of the Abolish the Assembly Party in all but name. On that occasion it went down to a heavy defeat.
Ever since the Assembly was set up, there has been this niggling minority who have argued for the Assembly’s abolition. Understanding why is not easy. The answer may lie somewhere in the borderland between political belief and psychiatry. There’s definitely a kind of Welsh person who has a strain of selfhatred and would rather have been born English. For some reason the existence of a specifically Welsh political sphere threatens their identity and their sense of wellbeing. Their anguish could only be assuaged by abolishing the body that disturbs their tranquillity.
Invariably those who are critical conflate “the Assembly” and the Welsh Government. They make no distinction between the two. Instead of saying: “I disapprove of the policies of this administration and will campaign as vigorously as I can to replace it at the next election”, they say: “I hate the Assembly and want it shut down.”
Against all the polling evidence, they go on to claim that they are in tune with the silent majority, and that if a referendum were held the Assembly would be voted out of existence.
Debating with such people is fruitless. They’re the sort who cheered when Michael Gove said the British people had had enough of experts. Whatever statistic or fact you quote at them will be mockingly disregarded and thrown back in your face. The Assembly and the European Union are interchangeable enemies, both of which they abhor and want nothing to do with.
In my experience, you can have a more evidence-based discussion with a Jehovah’s Witness about blood transfusions, as I once did at a compound run by the sect in Tobago.
What has the Assembly done – or rather, the Welsh Government – to attract such opprobrium from a minority of citizens? For some, as I’ve suggested, its mere existence is enough to have them foaming at the mouth. Others resent particular initiatives like the smoking ban in public places, or the fact that they don’t have to pay for prescriptions (yes, really), or that primary school pupils are having breakfasts provided for them out of public funds.
Alternatively they argue that very little has been achieved of tangible significance. New First Minister Mark Drakeford would certainly reject that, saying that the poor and vulnerable have more money in their pockets thanks to free prescriptions and other Welsh Government programmes.
Yet even if the arguments of the disappointed had some validity, that should be no reason to abolish the body, but a spur to seek improvements.
Currently we are seeing the most shambolic political drama unfold at Westminster of my lifetime – and arguably for several lifetimes before.
Nobody has advocated abolishing the House of Commons, although as each day passes the temptation to do so gets greater.
However inadequate people may consider the Welsh Government’s way of discharging its responsibilities may be, the spectacle unfolding at Westminster is of a wholly different order.
Many of us have watched with astonishment the antics of Theresa May and other ministers with a sense of profound embarrassment.
It is impossible to parody the farce that has unfolded so painfully since the EU referendum in June 2016. Recently, however, the charade has scaled new heights of dreadfulness. A satirical scriptwriter would have seen the twists and turns of the Brexit saga as too implausible.
There is a huge contrast between how Britain perceives itself, and how it is perceived by those outside it. Earlier this week, amid wishful thinking on the part of Tory Brexiteers about how to ditch the “backstop”, an unnamed senior Conservative MP was quoted as saying that the Irish “needed to learn their place”.
Such a comment could have been made by anyone from the British establishment about any colonised country at the height of the British Empire in the 19th century. And that’s a large part of the problem with Britain today – and a significant factor in what prompted so many people to vote for Brexit.
The sheer arrogance of the Tory MP’s put-down of Ireland comes naturally to people like him (I presume it’s a he) who believe that Britannia still rules the waves, and revels in it.
A recent opinion poll showed that 59% of the British population think the British Empire is something to be proud of, while only 19% think it is something to be ashamed of. People are either not being taught history properly, or not being taught it at all. How can so many praise the conquering and subjugation of populations around the world in such a cavalier fashion?
Do they realise what the subjugation amounted to, and the longterm damage that was done to so many societies, let alone communities?
Perhaps their knowledge of the Empire is framed by romantic TV costume dramas depicting the lives of comfortable ruling class whites whose lifestyle was maintained at the expense of downtrodden natives who never make an appearance but whose ethnicity is represented by sycophantic shoe-shiners and assorted servants who exhibit grins of gratitude on each occasion they are patronised.
The bizarre thing is that for many of those who voted Leave, revering the British Empire isn’t just a question of nostalgic self-indulgence – it’s the prism through which today’s politics are to be viewed.
And it’s that mentality which has conditioned the UK Government’s approach to Brexit talks. The rest of the EU are seen as inferior nations who will eventually bow to the will of wave-ruling Britain. Except that they haven’t. Instead they have cut up rough and been awkward. It’s all their fault, of course, not ours.
Or so the UK Government would have us believe. Hence the shambles which continues to unfold and which shows no sign of letting up.
One thing, however, is clear. However this ends, none of the antidevolution Brexit fools must be taken seriously ever again if they argue for the Assembly’s abolition.