Labour: The Remake
If you drive past Transport House these days - Labour HQ - and if you believe in pathetic fallacy, then take a good look at the building.
If you've ever been to a rugby match in Cardiff, whether in the days of the Arms Park or the Millennium Stadium, you'll know the office block I mean. It's the one opposite the Westgate pub, just where the police prevent you from driving into town on match days, a green triangle outside, where protesters with their banners used to gather before marches. It's where I went (yes, as a young reporter) to interview Rhodri Morgan MP in 1993 about the appointment of John Redwood as Welsh Secretary and where he railed against "the Pol Pot of privatisation" coming to Cathays Park. I rushed back to the BBC's offices in Llandaf to get the clip onto the lunchtime news, though it's the Yorkshire Post that's credited with coming up with that particular label.
I drove past Transport House this morning as usual and it looks bombed out. It sits in a sea of mud, surrounded by steel barriers and scaffolding, the handful of Welsh Labour posters stuck up during the election campaign not disguising the fact that the place looks under siege.
If you wanted a metaphor for a party machinery that's 'broken', 'kaput', 'incapable', 'non-existent' - all words I've heard used to describe it over the past few days - then there it is and that's by its friends. 'The machinery' is down to a handful of people, working without fistfuls of cash and with their own members now pointing a finger directly at them through those steel barriers.
What's worse is that those Labour members seem convinced that the other side have got it sussed. "I didn't see a single Conservative out campaigning" said one pretty sharp Labour operator the other night. The conclusion? That given they made in-roads in areas where Labour hadn't seen it coming, the Tories are well-resourced, tightly-run and making use of modern campaigning tactics behind the scenes. Knocking on doors isn't where its at.
For what it's worth I'm not sure that's true, unless you still think phone-bashing and telephone campaigning is 'modern'. It was in the days of the Arm's Park perhaps .. but I am pretty sure they'll have just those sorts of techniques in place and ready to go long before a General Election.
Lack of cash played its part in hindering the campaign, says Rhodri Morgan. Add it to "the toxic combination" of anger at expense claims and the economic downturn and there you have a stab at explaining why Labour lost in Wales.
But this morning Huw Lewis AM came out and said more bluntly and more directly than anyone else so far that the First Minister is wrong to stop there.
Here's a sample of what he had to say:
Labour's nosedive in popularity in Wales goes back way before the recession but when he put his head above the parapet after the Assembly election in 2007 and said that something very basic was going wrong and needed addressing, he wasn't very popular. Only now has the penny dropped within the Welsh Labour movement, he says.
"There is something specific about the Welsh dimension of politics that is bad for Labour" is how he put it. Yes, it's chronically under-resourced but there is "something else amiss here" with the political message. The party shouldn't be trying to come up with "silver bullets for parts of Wales" but should rather be searching for a message for every man and woman in Wales, one that must be found and communicated rapidly.
He ended with a rallying cry along these lines: We need a remaking of Labour in Wales from top to bottom, not just the Labour party but the Trades Unions and all the progressive allies we've made over the past ten years that are deserting us.
All of this in a three minute interview on ampm.
In the middle Huw was asked why then did he - leadership contender - want Rhodri Morgan to stay on? Why would he want the man who has presided over this nosedive, who voiced a specific concern for voters west of the Loughor and Clwyd rivers, who steered the Welsh party away from the modernising machine of New Labour, to continue in his job?
Because, he said, there was "something particular about this moment" that made things searingly bad for Labour and it would have been even worse if Rhodri Morgan wasn't there at the top. "Rhodri is held in very high regard, especially by the voters".
That's patently true. His recognition and popularity scores in a recent BBC Wales poll caused a polling expert in London to send me an Email: "With figures like that, Rhodri Morgan for Pope I say". But is Huw hoping the First Minister presides over the changes needed, is there in the eye of the storm working out which way to go, or is his role simply to keep things calm at the top, even turning a blind eye when he doesn't like the look of the "remade" Welsh Labour party?
One thing must now be very clear to those in Transport House and well beyond: the Conservatives are focused on taking seats at the General Election that suddenly look winnable. They're realistic, by which I mean they're not including Alyn and Deeside on the list just yet and don't imagine they'll win more seats than Labour come a General Election.
But between now and then, they're getting on with the job of getting that rugby team plus elected and between now and then it's clear Labour members and activists who want to stop them are not going to keep quiet.
By the way if you want to comb through the European election results constituency by constituency, here they are. Scroll down and click under the second picture for a full breakdown.
I'm Betsan Powys, BBC Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~41~RS~)
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I would "like to comb through the election results contituency by constituency", but the link points at a news article from 2007 rather than the expected results. Any chance of a correction?
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I know Labour got a beating and that was predictable but shouldnt Plaid Cymru be even more concerned. Their Eurpean election results in light of the mess that labour are in were awful.The simple fact is that South and South East Wales, ie the regions that pay for everwhere else are fed up to the back teeth with the Welsh Language agenda from Plaid and for that matter the assembly being forced down our throats.
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Labour obviously has problems, and they may, eventually, be worse in Wales than in England simply because of the "clear red water" Rhodri Morgan is so fond of reminding us exists between 'Welsh' Labour and New Labour.
I grew up in a working class area of Swansea where all the men worked at manual jobs; they worked in steel, aluminium or tinplate mills (in my father's case, titanium), or they were dockers, lorry drivers, etc. They were working class and proud of it. They worked hard, made sure their kids behaved themselves and went to school. On a Saturday they went to watch football or rugby, and they had a few pints. But they never got into trouble and, like swans, they mated for life. They all paid their union dues.
There is still a rump of that respectable working class, but only a rump. Many of the children and grandchildren of those men have sunk into what might be termed a white underclass, while others, more aspirational, no longer regard themselves as working class and would struggle to comprehend the class system their fathers or grandfathers believed in. A system that dictated where they lived, where they went on holidays, what clothes they wore, and how they voted.
The demise of that respectable working class is one of the biggest problems facing Labour in Wales. Another is that when I was growing up it was Labour, Tory or Liberal, few members of the south Wales working class had even heard of Plaid Cymru.
Labour has to drag itself into the 21st century. Thus far it has failed dismally, and this explains its mounting problems. Labour in Wales needs a new message to bring in activists and to secure fresh sources of funding. It doesn't have long because its traditional supporters are being claimed daily by the Grim Reaper, and they're not being replaced.
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Anotheran is right, the last link is misdirected, however people can download a spreadsheet of the results from here.
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Re 2
Another member for the anti-Welsh language brigade. It may be small, but at least it has one more to continue with the paranoia and hate.
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Betsan....
This from a guy who is part and parcel of the reason why the socialiist element deserted their 'leadership'?
......"We need a remaking of Labour in Wales from top to bottom, not just the Labour party but the Trades Unions and all the progressive allies we've made over the past ten years that are deserting us....."
What does he know?
We have been telling these people for the last decade or two that they were due a fall, and that we were being led up the garden path.
Take notice of the rank and file? of course they didn't, and now when the rank and file, more or less, tell them to get knotted, they can tell US how WE are deserting the party?
How about these great leaders leading us back to where the heart of the party is, and away from the over educated and qualified top rank.
We don't all need to be Tory clones to manage socialist affairs, but we certainly have to be rather more left than the present set up, in both Westminster and Cardiff.
A lot less like Cameron and co, and more like the old guys of the party, those that built the party over fifty years.
No more in fighting, more cooperation, in the face of personal dislikes.
No more flaunting females with their easy to upset attitude.
Not that I can be dead certain, but a string out of Harman's, and others bows, would not come amiss, especially those like Barbara Castle and Jenny Lee would be appropriate.
Bessy Braddock must be squirming in rage in her wooden overcoat, to see what is happening, nowadays, to her Labour Party.
We lost one of the best with the departure of the member for that place in Birmingham, Clare Short MP.
In fighting at it's worst.
It could well pay Brown to recall her to government, at least she had a finger on the pulse, and could see whare New Labour was heading.
No wonder she took herself out of it when she did.
Here we are, one of the wealthiest nations on earth, and all we can find to squabble over is devolved powers and LCO's, whilst the Labour movement is being shredded by useless prats who have hijacked the party, as though it is a extension of their tutorials at the London School of Economics, or whererever it is these creeps crept out from.
Maybe if some of these 'new born' Labourites such as Huw Lewis put away their ever so smart rhetoric, and began to speak with, and from, the grass roots, we may yet get back our pride, spirit and grasp on the party that is no longer, at the moment, the one we all grew up in, and with.
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masterbluebird believes "South and South East Wales, ie the regions that pay for everwhere else".
The bulk of south and south-east Wales is made up of the Valleys, one of the poorest areas of western Europe into which pours hundreds of millions of pounds annually. Then there's Cardiff, sucking in public money on grandiose schemes that invariably prove unviable.
Wales has no financial sector and little indigenous commerce or native industry. So do tell, masterbluebird, which parts of south and south-east Wales are wealth generating, by what means is that wealth generated, and how is it distributed to the starving masses in other parts of the country?
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Gwyn.. A brilliant summary of my life also growing up in village outside Bridgend with parents/family working for railway/undergound. There was not the money around then but "ordinary" people like my family had proper"pride" in working and making a contribution to society by living within the pretty strict social rules that applied and virtually everybody was happier. Within the village there were the "middle classes",i.e Doctor/Pharmacist/Headteacher/Police Seregeant and shopkeepers,however we now live in "seperated" world and this is not that real "community" not the artificial ones imposed to Town Planners. You are also right that the children of that "generation" who got educated or street smart are in the main in "professional" jobs and have moved to leafy areas,and their children have also moved higher up the social ladder (In Theory).With regard to BP blog the welsh labour party are under self delusion if they think that the conservatives gor the support they did because of some "mystical"selling of their ideas. I received the normal "gumph" from all parties,but nothing else. This idea of "mobilising" the working classes in wales is the same sort of "brown matter" that the Bennites were putting about during the era of Mrs. Thatcher and we know what happened there with larger and larger defeats in GE's until 1997. They could'nt even with Lord Kinnock (CND/Pull out of Europe/ etc etc,and it took publically school educated/Oxford grduate/Barrister leader to get them back into power. I've said before that it my humble opinion when I talk with friends who are all from similar backgrounds there is deep/deep disillusionment with current public policy emanating from both Westminster and Cardiff Bay. People will never tell "pollsters" their real opinions as they dont want to be seen to be selfish/uncaring but in the privacy of polling booth they can tell their political masters what they really think about them.
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anotheran + MH
Apologies for the misdirected link. I've put it right.
In fact I'd better get things right for the next few hours. Off to chair a political quiz between politicians, anoraks, young guns from the world of public affairs and ... the BBC Political Unit. Outcome posted tomorrow ... as long as the BBC Political Unit don't get thrashed.
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Betsan, this is one of your best posts.
mapexx, its time to stop whining and get out there and do something, whether you like him or not when Huw Lewis AM said .....
"The party shouldn't be trying to come up with "silver bullets for parts of Wales" but should rather be searching for a message for every man and woman in Wales ....."
..... he is right, the important part of the expression is "every man and woman in Wales". Its time to tell the party to get out of bed with Plaid, they have your party by the nose, and for what? they don't have any workable policy, except the one I am sick of writing about, it's a political wilderness aligning with them, they have nothing.
And DC has many interesting policy changes for the near future, the first being cutting the numbers of politicians by a hundred, AMs to 35, well its a start, the party list will have to go.
The future is bright blue, with a social responsibility.
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http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/welsh-politics/welsh-politics-news/2009/06/09/welsh-european-election-results-by-constituency-91466-23820598/
The Western Mail constituency results.
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#10 TheStonemason wrote:
"The future is bright blue..."
The air might just be blue, after five years of Dave.
You might also have to cross the border to vote Tory. Hehe
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An ammendment to my #10 .....
"workable policy"
should have read
"defined policy"
Workable it is not.
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Cheryl Gillan, .....
..... at Westminster, said .....
In welcoming the return of the new Secretary of State, I also wish to express my admiration for his predecessor. I have enjoyed working with the Right Hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), a decent and straightforward man. We will miss his common sense and dedication to Wales. I wonder what sort of Prime Minister we have, who can so easily dispense with his services.
..... interesting how opposites can appreciate one another when working for a better Wales.
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message 10...
No whining, just being practical.
Unless I have it completely wrong, something I do not usually do, the Tory party has never changed it's spots. It has ALWAYS been on the side of the wealthy, they make sure it stays that way, because they pay for the privilege, and expect privilege in return.
On the other hand, the Labour party has let itself be ambushed by a cabal of trendies, and well educated pseudo Tory wanna-bee's with the disastrous results we are no being subjected to.
It should learn to meet the Tories, word for word, line for line and to follow the same pattern of behaviour. Stick to genetic principles and stop trying to become what is never can be. Tory in all but name.
I prefer my early days when we knew where we were in politics, you either voted to be skinned, while the top table ate high off the hog, or went into a social contract with your fellows in the workforce, to try to dish the goodies out on an equal basis.
However, no matter what the Labour administrations of each decade attempted to do, we never got beyond the fact that 80% of the wealth of the nation, we held by 10% of the population.
Things are the same today as they were in the early part of the last century, a hundred years gone by, and we are effectively heading backwards.
The difference being, the poor get poorer and the wealthy get yet richer.
Relatively speaking we are little better of than in 1909, we have technological gadgets to play with, but our disposable wealth is exactly the same if not actually less than in 1909.
An indictment of failure and bad policies.
Yes, we've been conned into thinking because a few millionaires have been the result of putting a few quid on the lottery, we are now living in a more equitable society, we are not, and unless Labour gets it's act together, and really makes inroads into the inequality we have in the UK today, we will never be a decent society.
All the fancy talk from the current top guns, wherever they reside or operate will not change the situation, that has to come from the disgruntled lower orders, and I am convinced the grumbles will turn into more than just whining, in the not too distant future.
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Welsh Labour is dead.
Rhodri spins it as lack of cash and the expenses.
Lack of cash should send some sort of message, loss of progressive allies another, all parties are suffering from the expense issue.
Labour stopped being progressive back in the 40's - they learnt nothing from the collapse of their policies in the 60's & 70's.
Blair inheriting a strong economic position, revised the way the socialist ideology was implemented, but the fundamental flaws are still there.
But in Wales of course its not Rhodri's fault!
Its us - we the Electorate must learn to accept (and pay for) a bunch of AM's, a third of whom are not answerable to the electorate, delivering second rate public services, our money wasted, constant battles over powers and unwanted LCO's, etc.etc.etc.
Rhodri should compare his achievements against; Cledwyn Hughs, Thomas, Morris, Edwards or Redwood - he may argue that he heads a real government for Wales.
But all the SoS's can point to achievements that gave real benefits to people, putting anything he or this sorry Assembly has done in the shade.
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I must agree with Stonemason, the future is definitely blue, and non-Rhodri types should be thanking Conservative voters.
If the next government is Conservative, they'll know that a substantial proportion of Welsh folk share their Unionist values.
Checking out the constituency results, the proportion of votes for UKIP is substantial, they're bound to work with the Conservatives, yeap, the future is definitely British blue
I'll repeat, what has devolution done for the English speaking Welsh of any class?
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#18
Alas, you remain monoglot, monotone and monotonous!
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"but our disposable wealth is exactly the same if not actually less than in 1909."
Interesting hypothesis Map - got any evidence to support that at all?
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Alas, you remain monoglot, monotone and monotonous!
No no, the reverse is true, I worked in Colombia for eight months, I learnt enough Spanish to indulge my every whim.....Fantastic!! The satisfied sighs of...Malo hombre, will live with me forever.
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Labour's best men and women are dead and buried. Long gone.
All that's left is a shell, inhabited by people who briefly made good on the coat tails of celeb leader Tony Blair.
Stare into the abyss, Labourites!
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#21
..... lest the abyss stares back at you.
As of course it is, the abyss of intolerance, the abyss of elitism, the abyss of separatism.
There is also the black hole of "Tomorrow's Wales with their Declaration for Welsh Democracy", an attempt to influence democracy with the culture of celebrity, a sad reminder of minority politics in action, minority politics that would destroy everything that is good in Britain.
Look to the executive of this organisation, lift the corner of its proposals, what you find are the separatists wearing different clothes.
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DEAD LINKS
I attempted to contact Welsh Labour over the internet all I got was
Page Not Found - error 404
The requested URL was not found on this server
I think that should have read
Welsh Labour Party Not Found - Fatal and Terminal Error
The requested Political Party Was Not Found in Wales!
I think I will try a phone call to see if they still exist.
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What different clothes? What elitism and what intolerance?
You throw these charges around and never justify or expand in any way that makes any sense.
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No.22 - As of course it is, the abyss of intolerance, the abyss of elitism, the abyss of separatism.
For someone who regularly vilifies Welsh language speakers as the enemy within (intolerance), who backs the Conservative and Unionist Party (the elite) and who champions the crazed rantings of extreme right-winger Daniel Hannan and his campaign to get the UK out of the EU (separatism) accusing others on this board of these traits is rather like Nick Griffin accusing others of being racist.
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Like all parties the Labour Party is made up of ordinary men and women who want the best for their communities and their nations. Where has Labour gone wrong? Well in relation to Wales it has had a clientist attitude, Wales was Labour, Labour was Wales. Patently untrue but that was an attitude at the centre of the thinking of Labour in Wales. Hence Scotland got a Constitutional Convention and Wales got a White Paper on Devolution. More generally people have to be reconnected to politics, and the people as a whole have to throw off generations of thinking themselves and see things as a whole, no more improved services and cuts in expenditure, a new realism has to come into politics and the divide between two classes, the people and the politicians, has to end.
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message 19...
Right then, where to begin?
How much have you in the bank?
If there was no social security of any sort, how would you manage to exist?
If you 'own' your house, (keeping in mind, if you sold it for any rational reason, you would need to spend the money obtained to buy another), is it's 'value' now less than it was last year?
Are you secure in your job?
A public service job paid out of taxation, which did not exist in 1909, and with a pervasive depressed condition of the economy, could cease to exist in an instant, or a manufacturing job with both limited prospects, and a potential to have it outsourced to some el cheapo overseas low wage economy.
So as I said, take away your technological toys, Flat screen TV, iPod, car, how much better off are you than your predecessors in 1909?
Could most working people actually survive if all the present funding was to be removed from them? How many weeks could any avergae person survive on their 'savings' if finding themselves without ANY means of support?
It has been a media mantra for some years that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the gap being wider today than in any time over the last century.
I cannot recall where I saw the figures, but I did see, not so long ago, figures that stated, quite emphatically, that the average person is, relatively speaking, worse off than his counterpart in 1909.
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#20 Jack_Wilkinson wrote:
"I worked in Colombia for eight months, I learnt enough Spanish to indulge my every whim.....Fantastic!! The satisfied sighs of...Malo hombre, will live with me forever."
Says it all, doesn't it? Eight months in Colombia and you learn a smattering of the language. Live your life in Wales and you learn nothing of your country's native Language, and you come here and villify it at every opportunity.
It tells us more about you, than it does about Wales, its people, language and culture.
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Re 22
Actually I'd like to congratulate Stonemason because in one sentence:
"As of course it is, the abyss of intolerance, the abyss of elitism, the abyss of separatism."
he has summed up the history, philosophy and indeed the whole raison d'etre of the Conservative Party.
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Not one of you have commented on the fact that Huw "suddenly" doesn't want to be leader. Too busy slagging each other off I suppose
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Map you said:
"but our disposable wealth is exactly the same if not actually less than in 1909."
Any other hypothesis concerning happiness or general well being might be legitimate (after all we all spoke Welsh ...(only kidding !)) but the statement above is false.
Our disposable wealth is far greater than in 1909. I quote a 1999 House of Commons Research Paper (admittedly for the UK and in averages so your point about wealth concentration would have some effect)
"Since 1900 GDP per capita at constant market prices rose by an
estimated 298%.26 There has been a marked contrast between
the two halves of the Century. Between 1948 and 1998 per
capita GDP rose by 191% compared to a 37% increase between
1900 and 1948."
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harri,
I do not regularly vilify Welsh language speakers as the enemy within, that would be Plaid, to the language I am indifferent.
You don't like the Conservatives do you.
Daniel Hannan champion of "Democracy in Europe", you prefer the unelected law givers?
FiDafydd,
The "abyss of intolerance, the abyss of elitism, the abyss of separatism", wrong party, you should read DC's speech to the Open University, it shames the Nationalists amongst us; I've said it many times, Plaid has nothing to bring to the party of democracy, except despair.
There are far more interesting things happening at Westminster, particularly the Law Lords, the happenings show Cardiff Bay for what it is, a democratic irrelevance.
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Message 31....
Sorry Dewi, but 'per capita', is the amount generated by the economy based on an average per person basis, not what each person actually earns.
Let me put it another way.
Wylfa power station generates two billion quids worth of power.
it is sold across both domestic and commercial markets.
The profit is...say...1 billion.
The total workforce is again say...1000 people.
To make your notion work, would mean the pay packets of the workers would be 1,000,000 quid each.
Effectively the GDP from Wylfa would work out at that level. One thousand workers into one billion quid.
IT does not work out that way, The GDP of a region is what is totally generated, not what each worker gets out of it.
ON figures, as I said before, I cannot recall where I saw them, the worker of today is, in effect, about as realistically worse off than his counterpart in 1909.
Our disposable wealth, described just a few months ago in the media, was such, that in the event of a total collapse of the economy, the average person on the average pay, in the UK today, (a few months back) would not have enough to keep him afloat more than six to eight weeks.
And keep in mind, that is the average, the vast bulk would hardly keep afloat for more than a single week.
The savings of the average worker is almost at zero level.
GDP, as I say, has no bearing on what the average person has to play with.
I do agree that the GDP has risen dramatically over the last century, and had wage levels kept pace, the lowest paid worker today should be taking home a over a thousand pounds a week. he is not.
The weekly pay for the lowest skilled man in 1909 was no more than about 15 shillings a week, (75p)
The present wages at the minimum level is about £230 for a 40 hr week.
The wage inflation rate since 1909 is, as best as I can fathom the figures out, about 50 times. Which would mean a minimum wage nearer to £285 or so. Which complies wit what I have said, unless proven wrong by a marging which will take the figure below £230 pw. Then it will mean the wages today are the same as 1909, but with immensly higher consumer price inflation.
(If someone can crack the ONS codes better than I, maybe they can prove or disprove that figure).
Anyway, one can see why the government set a minimum wage, too low or otherwise, it may be, but it certainly does not take into account the rise in the cost of all living expenses. Which have outstripped wage rises by a larger factor, so it seems.
The only benefit to be obtained is by purchasing a house, and living in it, until your mortgage is paid off, then selling it for what you can get, then go live in a tent somewhere, off the proceeds.
Until the day you die, when it all levels out.
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Re 32
Sorry Stonemason, but I have no time for toffs - or for those doffing their caps in front of them - telling me that I don't belong to my nation, and have a basically anti-European stance which will be given succour by some very unsavoury political parties in the European Parliament.
So I repeat, "abyss of intolerance, the abyss of elitism, the abyss of separatism", sums up the Tories perfectly.
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Betsan.
Please don't be fooled by the apparent dereliction at Transport House.
The entire building is undergoing a complete refurbishment. During operations it was discovered that numerous upper concrete panels were suffering from an excess of corrosion and presented a serious H&S risk to passersby. This has caused considerable delay to completion.
Nevertheless, the internal refurbishment has progressed apace.
Labour are now situated on the top floor in their rather swish new offices.
I paid them a visit the other day and was gratified to find that they haven't lost their common touch. They still do a very nice cup of tea, not this frothy coffee nonsense.
Call in, I'm sure that they'll be glad to see you in order that you may dispel your scurrilous rumour that they are under siege.
Please don't be put off by the new security arrangements, you can't be too careful, can you?
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GDP is a useful approximate Map but to finally put it to rest I'll use your figures:
Average wage 1909 75p a week. At current prices times your 50 gives £37.50 a week. Minimum wage £230 a week.
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Message 36...
Sorry Dewi, I put in 50, when I should have put in 500, but even then it was not accurate, as I said, I could not fathom out the figures from the ONS, they are rather complex to read through.
I missed the missing zero, when spell checking; as you know the spell check cannot do my thinking for me.
500 X was as near as I could get, but I then erred on the side of brevity, because of my inability to decipher the code as I stated.
I halved the difference between £370 PW and £230, opting for £280...ish. as where the minimum wage should really reside. Rather than get involved in nit picking, re where the true figure should be placed.
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