A matter of timing

It is beginning to get to the situation whereby we do not know what the One Wales Government have promised anymore in relation to a referendum for further powers.

Allegedly, it is meant to be held before the Assembly elections on 2011, but the Electoral Commission has quite rightly ruled out holding it on the same day as that poll. However, at a time when key services are being cut back all across Wales the Assembly Government is spending £1 million of taxpayers money to fund a talking shop under Sir Emyr Jones Parry, which is supposed to advise whether a pre-2011 plebiscite is possible at all.

The odds are that he will report that the One Wales commitment is undeliverable simply because his Commission (and this is not their fault) have spent so long talking about it when the four political parties who are commited to further powers should have been out in every community as part of an all-party campaign convincing people of the need for them.

There is of course the economic argument put by many Labour MPs that the last thing people want is to worry about a referendum for a proper law-making Parliament when they are facing job losses, mortgage repossessions, high fuel bills and more. However, as more than one person has said on this blog and elsewhere it is the job of a 'Yes' Campaign to make the case as to why more powers can help to alleviate this situation.

As if to add to the confusion the Presiding Officer, speaking in a personal capacity as a leading member of Plaid Cymru, has gone on the record today to urge people to chill out. He believes that with the All Wales Convention not reporting until December next year then this will leave it a “bit tight” to stage a referendum. Surely, that was factored in or was it? Perhaps that was the calculation made by the Labour Party when they signed up to the commitment but Plaid Cymru only twigged later. Maybe the Nationalists really were taken for a ride back in 2007 when they went into government.

Dafydd Elis Thomas also says that he would not want to see a referendum unless it was clear there was a 20% majority in favour of the move to law-making powers. That is a bit like wanting your cake and eating it. You only get those sort of margins if you campaign for them and that sort of activity has been conspicuous by its absence from the Government parties.

Dafydd's vision of working "with the grain of Welsh society and Welsh political life" is absolutely right but sometimes you have to show some leadership so as to shape that grain. It is leadership that is missing here. I am perfectly content to hold the referendum when the time is right but that was not what was promised in the One Wales Partnership Agreement.

What I will not accept is that we should sit back and wait for our time to come. If we do that we could be waiting for ever. It is likely that Plaid Cymru and Labour have already blown the possibility of a positive referendum vote before 2011 but that should not rule out an attempt shortly afterwards. If those who are supposedly commited to that outcome stop talking about it and start campaigning for it then we might begin to get somewhere.