ANALYSIS:Unknown outside Wales, Carwyn Jones could shortly become Britain's most powerful Labour politician despite a lacklustre campaign
FOR THE last 18 months, Carwyn Jones, since he took over as Welsh First Minister from Labour stalwart Rhodri Morgan, has been in coalition with the nationalists of Plaid Cymru. It has been a comfortable alliance.
In the May 2010 Westminster election, however, he had grounds for worrying about his future after Labour secured its worst election result in Wales since 1983 – significantly poorer, in fact, than Labour did there under Michael Foot in 1983.
Since then, however, warm winds have come behind Labour in Wales, as the public fretted about the impact of a Conservatives/Liberal Democrats alliance in Westminster. Today, Jones could be on the cusp of winning a majority in the Cardiff Bay assembly.
The Welsh election has some similarities, but also major differences, with what is happening in Scotland: unlike the Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru is struggling. As in Scotland, the Liberal Democrats are facing the voters’ ire.
Though Cardiff Bay will have greater powers from now on, there appears to be little appetite to use them and, certainly, there is little push for tax-raising powers, or even independence, as is pressed by the SNP in Scotland.
During its term, the Labour/Plaid Cymru alliance has been castigated for the failures of the Welsh education system, which is ranked below Bulgaria’s in some research, while the performance of the NHS is equally criticised.
The Conservatives, despite the narrative of austerity emanating from Westminster, are doing well, with the latest poll putting them at 21 per cent in the constituencies’ elections and 20 per cent on the regional lists.
If repeated on Thursday, such a performance would give the Conservatives 15 seats, putting them ahead of Plaid.
If they are to do so, the Conservatives must defeat Labour in the Vale of Glamorgan, which Labour won narrowly in the last assembly elections – but where the Conservatives won by 4,000 votes when local voters decided on their Westminster representation last May.
Following a referendum earlier this year, the next assembly will be more powerful than its predecessors, with the authority to introduce legislation itself without the say-so of Westminster.
Sixty members are elected to the assembly: 40 of them from constituencies under first-past-the-post rules, while 20 more are elected, four at a time, from five electoral districts, using the D’Hondt form of proportional representation.
With 26 seats in the assembly just ended, Jones is bidding for 31 – promising to rule on his own if he gets it, without Plaid – though many doubt that a stable four-year administration could be built on such a meagre lead.
“In part because of the disproportionality of constituency section, regional lists will be a complete lottery. They will be very hard to predict,” cautions Prof Richard Wyn Jones of Cardiff University.
A workable majority would require Labour to win several more in South Wales, along with improving its performance on the regional lists – though this could be hampered by the fact that Labour’s local branches are weak and, in many places, defunct.
The reason for that is historical. In so many places, Labour candidates were the only credible ones in Westminster elections, requiring merely to stand rather than having had to do much in the way of campaigning, says Prof Wyn Jones.
Prof Roger Scully of the Institute of Welsh Politics in Aberystwyth University casts some doubt on the belief that Labour’s rampant polling figures will translate into extra seats, pointing out that Labour held 10 of its seats in 2007 by a whisker. Marginals may just become safe, he predicts.
The most high profile of the contests for outsiders could be Labour’s battle in Caerphilly against Ron Davies, the man often described as “the architect of devolution” who was Labour’s former Welsh leader and one-time secretary of state for Wales under Tony Blair.
In 1998, just weeks after he had defeated Rhodri Morgan for the top post in the assembly, Davies endured “a moment of madness” when he says he was attacked with a knife on Clapham Common after he had gone for a meal with a man that he had just met.
His explanation to Blair, recounted in the latter’s autobiography, The Journey, left his Downing Street colleagues baffled. Blair is clearly baffled still, but Davies has maintained his popularity with voters in Wales, so his chances cannot be written off.
Like the referendum campaign earlier, this contest has failed to excite. Keeping the message simple, Carwyn Jones has portrayed himself as “standing up for Wales”, urging voters to send “a message to David Cameron and Nick Clegg”.
Indeed, it is hard to disagree with one local commentator’s verdict: “In terms of strategy, it’s less Barcelona and more Blackburn Rovers – not pretty to watch, unentertaining, but broadly effective at doing the job in hand.”
