To answer this we need to understand who and what has gained from devolution so far? When compared with the pre-devolution expectations, there is a clear mismatch. The groups who have gained the most are the insiders – those who knew how to work access and networks pre-devolution and have adjusted to continuing to influence and shape decision-making post-devolution.

Scotland's insiders, the business community, leading corporates and major institutions, whether public or private, have fostered two things. First, a stultifying economic conformity that has no real radicalism, no sense of political economy, and is obsessed with economic growth and the supposed challenges of globalisation, and which runs from Wendy Alexander, the former Scottish Labour leader, to the SNP leadership and most of institutional Scotland.

Second, it contributed to boom times for the professional middle classes, lots more well-paid jobs and initiatives, along with student tuition fees abolished, higher teacher pay and higher health professional awards. What has been lacking in devolution has been any understanding – from Labour, SNP or anywhere – of the distributional consequences of devolution and who has gained and missed out. The institutional, ‘corporate capture’ of devolution has meant that those who have gained the most have been those who already have power, income and voice. Those who have not gained have been some of the people who were among the most passionate supporters of a parliament pre-devolution, and who do not have much power, income and voice.

Glasgow North East and Glasgow East, scenes of the two recent Westminster by-elections, are parts of a ‘forgotten Scotland’, places only mentioned in the media to confirm a set of middle-class prejudices about today's poor and welfare recipients.

Forgotten Scotland has for decades solicited very little interest, connection or relevance from the four main political parties. Tommy Sheridan's Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), before it self-imploded, threatened to give some of the marginalised communities a voice. Whatever you think of the attractions or not of Trotskyite politics (or at least what began as that), Sheridan's single-handed destruction of the SSP has left a void that none of the mainstream parties seems to have any interest in filling.

Tackling the double exclusion of forgotten Scotland – its real physical and psychic separation from society, and its exclusion from the political world – is clearly complex.

A start would be for our politicians and media to stop using the invidious language of the ‘underclass’ and ‘dependency culture’. This has slipped out from the world of the New Right into popular usage, used by commentators such as Andrew Neil week in and week out to denote that ‘these people’ are not like the rest of ‘us’.

Second is the issue of voice, hope and power. How can places such as Glasgow North East find and nurture a collective voice? A common cliche talking about the deprived parts of Glasgow is to lament the lack of hope which to many seems to be pervasive everywhere in such areas. This is a deception. In the Glasgow 2020 project I recently led for Demos we undertook nearly 40 events involving more than 5,000 people across the city, and in the most disadvantaged places we always found a sense of hope. When people were asked to imagine their future and that of their family, community and friends using stories, play and creativity, they found a way to slowly – and hesitantly at first – give voice to things working out, kids growing up supported, people keeping out of trouble, and in short, living normal lives like the rest of ‘us’.

Alex Salmond talks of independence giving Scotland "responsibilities other countries take for granted". This is the idea of independence as a normalising force, the ‘Scotland Why Not?’ argument, which underplays the scale of change this would bring about north and south of the border.

Gordon Brown and Jim Murphy's vision of a confident Scotland in a diverse United Kingdom seems oblivious to what has happened to the UK under their tutelage. The past decade has seen the humiliation of the progressive story of Britain, and the corrupting of the character and purpose of the British state, with the rise of the neoliberal state at home, and the emergence of a blinkered Atlanticism internationally which has placed the UK permanently on a war footing.

Somehow Scotland's social justice traditions, to the left of the UK, have to be brought to the fore – the successful smoking ban in public, the SNP's public health strategy, the proposed alcohol minimum pricing in a culture saturated with drink. At the same time, the economic conformity, found in both the SNP and Scottish Labour leaderships, and which has taken hold so emphatically of the whole Westminster village, needs to be challenged.

North of the border there is a historic opportunity to bring about change that could have a major contribution to politics far beyond its boundaries. That is to contribute to the defeat of the neoliberal leviathan. Scotland starts with a couple of advantages here. First, the Scottish state for all its limitations and conservatism is far removed from the practices of the British neoliberal state. Second, Scotland's institutional class, who were part of the bulwark against Thatcherism and have been the main gainers of devolution, have only ever paid lip service to the neoliberal, market fundamentalism so beloved of New Labour and the Westminster classes.

Thus, Scotland's choice of visions isn't really about independence versus a reformed union, but between different paths of working our way out of the neoliberal wreckage which has produced such devastation to the British economy, society and life. One approach is that of continuity: the Scottish elites maintaining their historic position of privilege and shepherding the people to a post-neolib managed age. The other is to dare to challenge the rights and motivations of this class who have not served many Scots well, and begin to flesh out an alternative Scotland which looks at power, voice and status.

Such a choice would be a real historic opportunity for Scotland and would mean that the debate about independence versus the union could become a real one, filling out the detail, connecting constitutional change to economic and social issues, such as those in Glasgow North East and Glasgow East, and addressing how self-government links to aiding greater self-determination for the people.

Much will depend on what happens at the next UK election, the actions and style of a Cameron Conservative government (if they are elected) and how they are viewed north of the border, and how a programme of ‘tartan cuts’ will be seen.

One thing is for sure: Scotland is on the move at the start of journey. It would be helpful if we could widen the discussion from the non-debate on independence versus the union, which a large part of our political classes seem to be intent on having. Scotland is in the process of a long revolution and this should not be left solely to our politicians and institutional opinion.

There are two Welsh connections in this story. The first is John Hughes, the Welsh entrepreneur who founded the town in the 1870s along with some 70 steelworkers drawn from across south Wales. In itself this is a remarkable story. Hughes was born and brought up in Merthyr as a working man under the control of William Crawshay and dreamed of becoming such a powerful figure himself. He made the dream a reality in Czarist Russia.

Colin Thomas’s book is part history with Hughesovka’s experience being in microcosm an account of the Soviet Union, part reflections on documentary film-making, part travelogue, and part a fond look back at Gwyn Alf, one of the most remarkable Welshmen of 20^th Century Wales. It is he who provides the second Welsh connection.

In the television documentary Gwyn and Colin made, Hughesovka and the New Russia which is included as a DVD with the book, you witness his coming to terms with the harsh and bitter realities of Soviet Communism. The climax occurs in some remarkable scenes in the film when Donetsk miners accompany him underground in the Gorky pit just outside the city and take him seven miles to the coalface, and more than 100 years back to the 19^th Century mining conditions of the Welsh coalfield.

All this took place at the end of the 1980s, when Perestroika was signaling the revolution of 1989, the end of the Cold War and the end of Communism itself. You see Gwyn Alf Williams struggling to come to terms with all of this, the end of his own delusions, and wondering what will fill the void. The certainties of a lifetime are slipping from under his feet. Remember, too, that it was also the end of a decade in which he had published When Was Wales. This was his account of the television series The Dragon Has Two Tongues, directed by Colin Thomas, in which he had seen and recorded nightmare visions of the end of Welsh aspirations for a national future. In a remarkable piece to camera at the close of the Hughesovka film Gwyn is plainly thinking about his own homeland as well as talking about Ukraine:

“The people here come stumbling out of the carapace of Stalinism. They grope after freedom, sufficiency, dignity, while all around gibber black monsters out of Russia’s dark past. Many now stampede after the market as their salvation. The market has been proved an essential. But an unfettered market made an even bigger mess in the Third World than Communism has here. In the '30s the market almost eliminated my people from history. In that time of misery and anger many of us looked towards this place as a life-giving alternative. That was a delusion but now here in their stampede towards the market they are talking about closing every pit in the Donbass. Good God! Is the market going to kill this great city like it killed our coal industry?”

Gwyn, of course, was a powerful advocate for a National Assembly for Wales - his final line in the Dragon Has Two Tongues series was “We will live if we act”. He died a decade later in 1995. Colin Thomas, who has travelled his own journey with the hopes and disappointments of Communism, records how at his funeral the Internationale was sung along with O Iesu Mawr. Gwyn was a pessimist, but along with Gramsci he sustained an optimism of the will. He would have been delighted to have seen the referendum result in 1997. He might have even thought that the Ukraine could take inspiration from Wales.

• John Osmond is Director of the IWA. Dreaming a City is published by Y Lolfa at £10.

“Welsh Labour's Welsh joint policy committee has met, prioritised the need to campaign for a general election victory, and agreed to start considering the All Wales Convention report in detail as a prelude to stepping up wider party consultation with AMs and MPs, councillors, trade unionists and members as soon as the general election is over."

Threatened with the collapse of the coalition government Rhodri Morgan was forced into a humiliating retreat in the course of the afternoon. Within hours he had signed off a joint statement by himself and Plaid leader Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones reaffirming the position in the One Wales coalition government looking to have a referendum ahead of the 2011 election. It stated that all options for the timing of a referendum remained open:

"Nothing has been ruled in or ruled out, including, if it proved practical, a referendum in the autumn."

It was the Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams who articulated the primacy of the Assembly over the Labour Party most emphatically, in her response to Peter Hain’s statement on the Queens Speech in the Assembly the following day. Making the point that if a referendum was to be held next October then the mechanisms to put it in place had to be kick-started in January and couldn’t wait for the Westminster election, she continued:

 “I was told yesterday that Welsh devolution has been delivered to us all by the Labour Party. Undoubtedly, the Labour Party will be crucial to the delivery of a ‘yes’ vote. I am not so naïve as to not recognise the huge role that your party will play in delivering that ‘yes’ vote, but your party alone cannot be the block on moving this nation forward. I would ask you to clearly state this afternoon that you believe that it is up to us here, in the Assembly, to choose when that vote should be held in the National Assembly, and that you will in no way use your position within the Government and within your party to prevent that from happening.”

As with most of his answers, Hain clung to his essential position that he was in favour of a referendum at a time when it could be won – though he acknowledged with the Convention itself, that this could not be guaranteed. But he was also forced to accede that the timing was out of his hands. If the Assembly voted by the two-thirds required majority for a referendum he would not attempt to block it. In this he was following the position laid down by the Conservative leader David Cameron in his Broughton speech a few weeks ago. Sovereignty on this matter is with the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, by attempting to assert its authority over the speed and direction of the devolution process the Labour Party demonstrated that it still has to wake up to the realities of political life in 21st Century Wales. Labour is no longer the arbiter of the nation's affairs. The lesson surely will not be lost on the party’s new leader who will take over in a week’s time.

·      John Osmond is Director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs.

We can safely predict, therefore, that an immediate consequence of a Conservative victory would be the onset of an agonised Welsh debate over public spending. These will be uncharted waters. In the decade of devolution budget planning for coming years has been an extrapolation of what has come before, generally following an upward flowing curve. A culture shift will be required to cope with a curve going in the opposite direction.

The courageous response will be to think strategically. That is to say, a structural shift in budgets of the kind that is coming will mean digging up the foundations of large swathes of spending policy and thinking in terms of a new architecture.

One approach explored within the civil service is to divide Wales up regionally and calculate the total amount of public expenditure allocated it by all sources within the remit of the Welsh government and see what strategic back office savings can be wrung out. This has the smack of a war-time approach, with the a steamrollering of objections from organisations on the ground, whether they be Universities, local authorities or health boards.

It will be ironic of the loudest objections to such radical measures that imply the overruling of local discretion and autonomous cost centres come from the new breed of local representatives that will accompany a Conservative administration in Westminster. These will be the new Conservative MPs in Wales. Given the kind of Conservative victory being anticipated we can expected the present crop of three to jump to around a dozen.

A key question for the future of Wales and Welsh politics is the extent to which this new band of politicians will be willing to coalesce with the Conservative Group in the National Assembly to defend Welsh interests, rather than merely toeing a party line in London. Certainly, the future prospects of the Conservatives taking a leading role in the Welsh Government may depend on it.

For it is no secret that Labour strategists are relying on the impact of a Conservative London government to persuade voters back into their fold come the 2011 Assembly elections. Therein lies an opportunity for Welsh Conservatives to demonstrate that they have as much clout and determination as the next party in standing up for Wales, and in particular the Welsh budget.

A key test in this arena will undoubtedly prove to be the future of the National Assembly itself. Sir Emyr Jones-Parry will be speaking at the conference about the unfolding of his Convention report’s recommendations on the Assembly taking its next step towards full legislative powers.  The Conservative Group in the Assembly are fully signed up to this agenda. And they’re also on record as favouring a move towards a needs-based formula for calculating the Welsh block grant, which would entail a much-needed boost to Welsh resources.

Will the new crop of Welsh Conservative MPs in Westminster follow these leads? If we could answer that question with confidence we would have a better idea of what life under the Tories will be like.

• John Osmond is Director of the IWA. For more information on the "Life Under the Tories' conference click on the Events button on this wesbite.
  

The Digital Economy Bill, published last week, states that when defining areas during the renewal of Channel 3 licences, the areas “must at all times include at least one area that comprises or falls entirely within Scotland”. It also gives Ofcom the option of creating a licence for the whole of England. There is no parallel provision for Wales, even though Ofcom itself suggested the idea in its own review of public service broadcasting.

Scotland currently has two licence areas. In the past they were known as the Scottish Television and Grampian areas. The two licences continue to exist, but are now both run by one company, STV.

Broadcasting in Wales has constantly been dogged by this link between Wales and the West of England. It began in radio, largely because of the demands of transmission engineers, before campaigners forced a separation. It was then copied in television. ITV in Wales began in 1958 with TWW (Television Wales and the West) which, in the 1967 round of franchise renewals lost out to Harlech Television, later known as HTV, and its programme offshoots, HTV Wales and HTV West. There are even echoes of it in the existence of digital radio multiplexes that bridge the Severn.

Ever since HTV was subsumed into the one ITV company that now covers the whole of England and Wales, people had thought that ITV regional licences ceased to matter. Many had begun to wonder whether ITV had a licence in perpetuity.

But the Digital Economy Bill reminds us that that is not so, and that Channel 3 licences are due for renewal - in 2014. But isn’t this academic? Who could envisage a separate ITV company for Wales any more? Perhaps. But the future is unpredictable. It is possible that Channel 3 licences might not be renewed, or that, at some point, ITV might choose to drop all its public service obligations and become a fully commercial broadcaster. What would happen to that spectrum?

Moreover, the Bill takes into account the possibility that the continued decline of ITV is not inevitable. Indeed, its fortunes may revive. The Bill gives Ministers greater flexibility to respond to market changes, by allowing them to alter the conditions that Ofcom must impose on Channel 3 and Channel 5 licensees and to change things back at a later date.

It is at least plausible that circumstances will arise when Wales would need to state its case in its own terms and need all the leverage it can muster. A discreet licence for Wales might, at the very least, help. It would have, as the legislators say, a declaratory effect.

Of course, a discreet Welsh licence could be created by default – by creating a licence for the whole of England. It could also happen under Section 216A of the Bill, but it would give the existing licence holder, ITV plc, a veto. Section 216A insists that, Scotland apart, the area for a renewed licence “must include all or part of the area to which the licence being renewed currently relates”. It may also include all or part of another area “if the holder of the licence for the other area gives (and does not withdraw) consent before the determination is made”.

So Wales’s fate will be decided by a market stitch-up rather than an act of public policy. Now that is something for Welsh legislators to get their teeth into.

·      Geraint Talfan Davies is a former Controller of BBC Wales and Chair of the IWA.

This will also impact on the way Ofcom conducts its five-yearly reviews of television. The Bill would extend this duty to consider also “the wider delivery of public service media content on other platforms, such as the internet and on-demand programme services, and review the extent to which such content contributes towards the fulfilment of the public service objectives”. It will also be obliged to report on “the manner in which those objectives have been fulfilled”, and set out Ofcom’s conclusions on “the current state of material in those services”.

Does this presage a much more detailed qualitative examination of the content of our public service providers, much as the IWA had suggested as a role for a Welsh Media Commission in Wales? [See English is a Welsh Language –Television’s Crisis in Wales, IWA, 2009].

The Bill also proposes some amendments to Channel 4’s statutory remit. C4 must “support new talent and innovation, support and stimulate well-informed debate, promote alternative views and perspectives and help to inspire change in people’s lives”. In doing so, it says that C4 must have regard to the desirability of working with cultural organizations, encouraging innovation in methods of content delivery and promoting access to and awareness of services provided in digital form.

Notable by its absence is any mention of spreading production across the UK, an issue on which Channel 4 has been notably more backward than the BBC. C4’s spend on production in Wales is nothing short of lamentable. The Bill could and should be amended to make the principle clear and unambiguous.  This would be preferable to leaving it to the vagaries of Ofcom decisions subject, as with ITV, to endless corporate lobbying.

The Bill introduces what the government calls “additional flexibility” into the licence processes for Channel 3 and Channel 5, allowing Ministers to alter the conditions for Channel 3 and Channel 5 licensees in response to market changes, and to change things back again if they see fit. Do they foresee a time when ITV’s business model will not look as bust as it does today? [See Digital Economy 2: No Licence for Wales? on this site.]

The Bill would provide Ofcom with the power to award contracts for regional and local news providers for ITV – the ‘independently financed consortia’ that Ofcom proposed in its review of public service broadcasting. This is a power that Ofcom does not currently have. The irony is that the Bill will not be passed in time to allow Ofcom to administer the award of the first pilot contracts. That will be done by the DCMS itself. It is fairly staggering that this eventuality was not foreseen long before now.

Details of how this will be dealt with by the DCMS are currently sparse, but since the potential players in Wales are already mobilizing, expect more news soon, perhaps before Ofcom’s planned conference on ‘the future of news’ in Cardiff on 11 December.

Since the Bill requires Ofcom to publish criteria for these news franchises, the DCMS will presumably be publishing some of their own. It will be interesting to see to what extent the criteria for a news service in an English region differ from those proposed for the service in Wales. The government has said that between £4m and £7m could be available in Wales to fund this news service, paid for through a 50p levy on phone lines.

The focus on the future of television and online in Wales has tended to push the radio debate to the sidelines. But Wales now needs to start paying much more attention to the future of radio. The Bill gives the Minister the power to designate a date for digital switchover in radio, albeit that few can see a time when digital audio coverage in Wales will reach anything like the current FM coverage. Ministers will be able to nominate different switchover dates for different services, creating the possibility of a two-tier system that, if normal rules apply, is not likely to put Wales at an advantage.

However, if DAB is the way forward, the flexibility inherent in the Bill may offer the prospect of a redrawing of the radio multiplex map in Wales into something more coherent that, potentially, could do more for the audience.

As for the services themselves, the Bill holds out the prospect of greater freedom for local radio stations to alter the nature of their services. At present they have to stick by agreed formats fixed at the point the licence is awarded. In future, they may be able to change the nature of the service as long as they promise that the programmes continue to be made in their licence area. However, the Bill would also clarify Ofcom’s power to permit local radio stations to make their programmes in centres outside the station’s  licence area.

There is more than enough here to keep Welsh policy makers and legislators busy.

·      Geraint Talfan Davies is a former Controller of BBC Wales and Chair of the IWA.

The final document sets out, with real clarity, the current position of the Assembly and the working of the Legislative Competence Order (LCO) and Measure processes. It analyses with precision the powers which the Assembly would acquire under Part Four of the 2006 Act, which Labour put on the statute book. In this sense, the Report is likely to be a work of record, setting out in a way which will be consulted for many years to come the relative merits of different ways of acquiring legislative powers.

The core of the Report, however, lies in its penultimate chapter, where it records its findings in relation to public opinion. The democratic arguments in favour of Part Four powers – clarity, simplicity, accountability – seem to me to just as important as the policy benefits which such a move would bring.

As Health Minister I have been responsible for steering the first-ever Welsh Measure onto the statute book. Through the Carers LCO, the LCO on domiciliary care charging and the Mental Health LCO, I am directly familiar with the process for acquiring new powers which we have operated since May 2007. It has proved to be a useful apprenticeship for Ministers, back-benchers and civil servants, alike.

In a policy sense, its limitations are also identified in the Report. While LCOs allow powers to be drawn down in a specific policy area, they are much less well equipped to allow a pan-Government approach to tackling problems which span a series of Ministerial portfolios. Moving to Part Four will put that right, and make for more effective government for Wales.

I am on record, many times in this leadership campaign, as being a supporter of an early and successful referendum. As I have also explained, many times, the second of those adjectives is more important that the first. The Convention suggest that a vote on a referendum can be won - but that it is by no means already in the bag.

There is a basic predisposition to support devolution, and a strengthened Assembly, but for many people there are questions which still need to be answered. Indeed, as the Report makes clear, the framing of the referendum question itself is a matter which needs very careful attention, as different formulations of the same basic issue produce different responses amongst potential voters.

Inside the Labour Party this process of discussion and refinement will also need to take place. The debate will not be about whether to have a referendum. There is already a commitment to doing so. Our focus will be on testing public readiness to support such a vote. In the end, what all this means, of course, is that politicians will have to exercise their responsibility to make a judgement.

The Convention is just one example of exactly the sort of issue which ends up in any First Minister’s in-tray. I believe that my record demonstrates an ability to deal with complex issues and to make the sorts of decisions which political leadership requires. That’s why I hope to be Labour Leader in Wales and the next First Minister.

Writing for this website, Geraint Talfan Davies for example rightly talks about the need to develop a programme of radical policy deliverable with new powers – but only after raising the false assertion that we will be regarded somehow as a “lesser people” without a Scottish style settlement. Carwyn Jones rightly dismisses this in his own article published by the IWA, where he points out the different political history and culture which exists in Wales. As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, “No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent”.

The Convention's report is a good piece of work. It is engaging, important and it raises serious questions in addition to the answers it provides. But the report does not explain how, in social terms, more powers will deliver better outcomes for our communities - a better economy, better schools and a cleaner environment. Nor does the Convention really deal with how you actually win a referendum.

My leadership will focus on answering those questions because I believe it will be Welsh Labour’s job to answer those questions. The Tories are too split on devolution to do it; the Lib Dems are not a serious enough party to do it; and Plaid Cymru don’t want to answer those questions. As emphasised again by Adam Price last week, their’s is an argument based on a vaguely distasteful pretence that we are a subjugated people. As Orwell reminds us, “nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception”.

That is why I believe Wales requires an honest-broker at the helm in the coming months and years, someone who is committed to devolution, but committed, too, to developing and explaining a radical new agenda that will move the devolution project back to its original purpose as I saw it. Delivering better services for our communities. Essentially, that is what my leadership campaign has been about. Putting a long-term vision back into the heart of the Labour movement in Wales, developing ambitious end goals – like eradicating child poverty and then working up a plan of how we do it.

In practical terms, too, it will again be down to Welsh Labour to play the central role in delivering a ‘Yes’ vote, as it was in 1997. As Labour's organiser for the referendum vote in that campaign I remember full well how close we came to losing. The ‘Yes for Wales’ campaign had bankrupted itself with two weeks remaining, and we were haemorrhaging support across Wales. Without the huge financial support and organisational skills of Welsh Labour that vote would have been lost. I'm not sure there are many people arguing for an early referendum who understand the nuts and bolts of how you win a campaign like this. There's a huge amount to do to raise the money you need, and to put the organisation in place. That is why I have been consistent, and the other two leadership contenders have come on board with this now, that there should be no referendum before the General Election.

As for inspiring people to vote yes, with a vision for a better Wales, only deliverable through further powers - well I think that remains the elephant in the room. Tactically, is it possible to win a referendum saying you want parity with Scotland for the sake of fairness? Possibly. But without explaining how that delivers a better economy and a better society, it is an electoral con trick. I don't want to con the people of Wales. I want to inspire people to vote yes.

·      Huw Lewis is AM for Merthyr and a Labour leadership contender.

In the Summer 2009 issue of Agenda I argued that “for those in Cardiff Bay used to hearing gripes about the calibre of Assembly Members, it must have been a vicarious pleasure to hear similar complaints about MPs”. But I also argued that we need to take care with this language: “To argue about the calibre of elected members seems to be an act of personal denigration, in the vast majority of cases undeserved. The real issue is about the increasing narrowness of the gene pool from which elected members are drawn, and that is certain to be a much bigger issue for a body of 60 members in Cardiff Bay than for the 646 in the House of Commons”.

This set me wondering whether the general impression of a narrow gene pool within the National Assembly was well founded or not. On the basis of a review of publicly available biographies of all those elected in the three elections - 1999, 2003 and 2007 – there is one unequivocal conclusion. The dominance of the public sector in Wales has been given full expression throughout the Assembly’s first decade.

In the three elections 89 people have been elected. Of those, 33 (37 per cent) claim some experience of the private sector, including the private professions. Of these 33, nine are no longer serving as a result of retirement, death or defeat, leaving the current Assembly with 25 (42 per cent) claiming some time in the private sector: Labour with 9 (26 per cent of their group), Plaid with 4 (27 per cent), Conservatives with 9 (64 per cent) and Liberal Democrats with 2 (33 per cent).

But this is to stretch the definition of private sector experience to the limit. For example, it would include two of the three candidates for the Labour leadership – Carwyn Jones, as a barrister, and Edwina Hart out of banking, although her key involvement was as a trade union official. It would also include Plaid’s Gareth Jones, as an educational consultant, although his work would undoubtedly have had a primarily public sector focus, plus the Conservative Nick Ramsay’s two years as a driving instructor. I think it is fair to count three farming AMs -  Mick Bates, Kirsty Williams and Brynle Williams – in the private sector, although farming puts you pretty close to the public till.

Many careers cross the public/private divide. Every one of the 41 Labour AMs since 1999 has had some prior work experience within the public sector (excluding political service), either in local government, the health service, education, or the BBC. The same is also true of all but four of the 23 Plaid Cymru AMs. The exceptions are Dafydd Wigley, the accountant Mohammad Asghar, and two new regional list members, Nerys Evans and Bethan Jenkins, whose only post-university work experience has been within the party. Amongst the Liberal Democrats only Kirsty Williams has had no work experience in the public sector. The Conservatives are the one party to buck this trend, with only six of their 18 past and present members having had some public sector experience.

It can be argued, of course, that experience of the public sector is just as important, if not more important to the Assembly, given that the role of government is primarily to do with the delivery of public services. But even then it is pertinent to ask what are the reserves of senior experience in larger organisations – whether public, private or voluntary – on which the Assembly and the Welsh Government can draw. Inevitably, any assessment involves some subjective judgements both about organisations and about the definition of senior experience.

Any tally of those with experience of sizeable organisations would not encompass more than a dozen members across the three terms, half of whom are no longer serving. This leaves Leighton Andrews (BBC), Andrew Davies (Ford), Edwina Hart (BIFU), Rhodri Morgan (South Glamorgan County Council), Nick Bourne (Swansea Institute of Higher Education) and Paul Davies (Lloyds-TSB). Those no longer serving would include two former leaders of large local authorities, Sue Essex (Cardiff) and Pauline Jarman (Rhondda, Cynon Taf), a deputy chief constable, Alison Halford, a vice-principal of an FE college, Alun Pugh, and Dafydd Wigley a financial controller with, successively, Ford, Mars and Hoover.

Such work experience as exists within the Assembly is primarily derived from small scale enterprise, with almost none drawn from the senior ranks of any kind of organisation. Arguably, Alison Halford and Nick Bourne (Deputy Principal, Swansea Institute of Higher Education) are the two who have held the most senior managerial positions in organisations of any size.

The work experience of AMs does, however, cover the gamut of the Assembly Government’s functions – health, social services, youth work, teaching and lecturing, equal opportunities, farming, banking and finance, and the quasi-private sector of small business consultancy. It can also boast no less than seven drawn from journalism, marketing, public relations and the media, not to mention one minister of religion. But what marks out the non-political work experience of too many in this cohort is not the lack of range, but the brevity not to say shallowness of the experience. 

Is the picture any different among the 40 Welsh MPs in what is still the senior legislature? Apparently not. If 42 per cent of current Assembly members claim some private sector experience, only 37 per cent of our MPs do so. In the largest party group – Labour – 35 per cent of Assembly members are in that category against only 27 per cent of MPs. In each of the other three parties, two of their three MPs have worked in the private sector. In the 29 strong Westminster Labour group, 24 have public or voluntary sector experience. 

Overall, one might also argue that the work experience of MPs is even more limited: one farmer, Roger Williams, against the Assembly’s three, Mick Bates, Brynle Williams and Kirsty Williams; three from journalism and PR (Ann Clwyd, Alun Michael and Don Touhig), against the Assembly’s five (Leighton Andrews, Alun Davies, Sandy Mewies, Alun Ffred Jones, Kirsty Williams). Welsh MPs can count proportionately more lawyers - two solicitors, David Jones and Ian Lucas, and one barrister, Elfyn Llwyd, to put against the Assembly’s two, barrister Carwyn Jones and solicitor, Ieuan Wyn Jones, although one might also want to count Nick Bourne, as a former law professor.

Neither is it easy to find senior managerial experience amongst the MPs. Labour’s David Hanson was National Director of a charity, the Society for the Prevention of Solvent Abuse, and Lembit Opik headed the Corporate training and Organisation Development Department for Procter and Gamble. After that it is pretty thin, and certainly thinner than the Assembly.

However, it would be a mistake to take too managerialist a view of political representation – management and politics are different disciplines. A key task of politics is representation, and that requires a different knowledge and empathy. But any legislature, especially one that also constitutes an executive, also requires some aptitude for executive action and for the scrutinising of government, for framing and scrutinising legislation, as well as some sense of what constitutes sound strategy and the impact of policy and legislation on the behaviour of organisations as well as individuals.

The only necessary caveat about the above arises from the frequent vagueness of the biographical details that elected members put on their constituency or party websites. In these days of accountability and compliance there is a strong case to be made that a detailed and public account of the life experience of candidates and members is just as important as an account of their expenses.

·      Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA. This article, reported on by today’s Western Mail, appears in the Winter 2009 issue of the IWA journal Agenda, just published.

·      Exports - how they felt about goods made in the various countries.

·      Governance - was it fair and open?

·      Culture and heritage - was there an interesting history and a wealth of tradition?

·      People - were they friendly?

·      Tourism- is it a place worth visiting?

·      Immigration and investment - is the country  somewhere worth going to live or invest in?

In that same year the highest spots were held by the UK, Germany, France, Canada and Switzerland, with Turkey, Malaysia, Estonia, Israel and Indonesia bringing up the rear. In this year’s most recent survey, which Wales has not participated in, the top order has changed. The USA is now in the top slot, followed by France, Germany, the UK and Japan.

Not bad for Wales you might think, given that of the 38 locations considered in 2007. Wales was the only one that was not a sovereign country and had the second smallest population. Admittedly some of the strongest support came from other rugby playing countries – where perceptions and knowledge of Wales are high – but nevertheless overseas enthusiasm for Welsh products, its tourism offering, its culture and heritage was encouragingly high.

Yet, an IWA-Chartered Institute of Marketing joint seminar in Swansea this month, at which a range of Welsh marketing luminaries answered audience questions, revealed an underlying feeling, whether justified or not, that Wales was not doing enough to project itself.

As is so often the case in Wales the approach was unashamedly ‘glass half empty’ rather than ‘glass half full’. The abolition of the Welsh Development Agency and to a lesser extent the Wales Tourist Board was seen as an own goal by most of those attending. Brands that had been patiently built up over a prolonged period had been cast aside, it was felt, and replaced by a much more bureaucratic civil service approach. It was argued that their incorporation into the Welsh Government had had a particularly damaging effect on the food industry.

Wales was also felt to lack a modern iconic building – the Wales Millennium Centre and the Millennium Stadium notwithstanding – to put alongside the Angel of the North, Sydney Opera House, or the Guggenheim in Bilbao. More seriously perhaps, people in Wales were felt not to be sufficiently on-message when they went about the world and did not have the information, or were not innately predisposed anyway, to represent Wales in the positive way the marketers would like.

Fair points perhaps, but building a brand where you are dealing with a single organisation trying to reach a particular group of consumers with identifiable products is much easier than creating the image desired for a whole country and particularly one as complicated and disparate as Wales. The panellists – Neil Burchell of Rachel’s Organics, Professor Adrian Palmer of Swansea University, Dan Langford of Acorn, and James Horsham of Brand68.com – were keen to point this out.

So what were their suggestions?  Dan Langford bravely put it to the audience in Swansea that Wales should be less ambivalent about embracing Cardiff as the lead entity that could carry the image of Wales to the world. Other parts of Wales were too ready to criticise any investment made in the capital, he felt, even though the benefits could spread out across Wales. Capital cities were very often a proxy for their countries, the starting point for discovering other delights.

More generally, there was the need for a long term strategy – extending over 20-50 years, according to James Horsham – to build a ‘place’ brand, and some form of consensus had to be secured on what was being sought.

We should  find out what people wanted from their interaction with Wales – whether it was unspoiled countryside, organic products or something else - and see whether it can be delivered. “We have to establish where we want to target and find out what that market is lacking at the moment and what we can bring to it,” Neil Burchell believed.

The message had to be relevant to the receiver, Dan Langford argued, but he also felt perhaps there ought to be some “chilling out” generally in Wales. “If we are known for rugby, the arts or food, that is good. There are lots of positive associations there and let’s build on these. Let’s not beat ourselves up for not being known for other things. Perhaps we cannot be a high tech nation, then so be it.”

However, any campaign to promote Wales had to be managed coherently both internally and externally so that the message was consistent. If people in Wales had a better idea what Wales was meant to be about, they could represent it more accurately – and more proudly - abroad.

Of course, an underlying problem, briefly alluded to during the presentations, is Wales’s dismal record in producing companies that carry an image or brand of the country around the world. It is now a cliché to say Wales does not have a Guinness brand like Ireland, or Scotland’s whiskey trade. In fact, it has an extremely small number of businesses that immediately say ‘Welsh’ and ‘quality’. As a result, Wales is over-dependent on sport and the arts for its international projection.

At the same time perhaps we should be more willing to recognise just how much progress has been made in recognising Wales over recent years, and stop going around telling everyone that the world still thinks of us as part of England, as this is manifestly no longer true. US newspapers, for example, now routinely refer to Wales without substantial further explanatory reference, as do papers in many other parts of the world. Cardiff has jumped into the top ten most visited British cities among overseas visitors to Britain, ahead of Brighton, the longest-established UK tourist resort. Cruise ships call into Welsh ports, and most importantly the associations generated by Wales among those polled by the Anholt organisation were mercifully free of the old stereotypes, mentioning countryside, difference from the rest of the UK, and other positive images.

People in Wales may be the last around the world still to think that our prevailing image is coal, steel, choirs, tall hats and Sunday closing.

·      Rhys David is a former Financial Times journalist and a Trustee of the IWA.

In Wales it is much more difficult. All the National Assembly’s powers are conferred in a specific and detailed way, in the Transfer of Functions Order appended to the 1998 Wales Act, and with the 2006 Wales Act adding more complexity. As the Convention report puts it:

“Uncertainty arises in terms of law-making powers, where devolved Matters butt up against or overlap with non-devolved Matters, and a judgement has to be made as to whether a proposed law is really about a devolved Matter or about the non-devolved Exception. It is for lawyers and other specialists to consider and advise on these more difficult aspects” (para. 3.10.43).

This difference between the way powers have been devolved to Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland is the source of what Convention Chair Sir Emyr Jones-Parry described as “the fog of understanding” that envelops Welsh devolution. So why was Wales treated differently.  The answer, in short, is two-fold:

1. During the 1990s Labour policy-makers saw the Welsh Assembly as a creature of local government rather than a legislative national parliament.
2. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own legal jurisdictions, making the separation of laws and legal administration between them and England a straightforward matter. Wales, however, is still bound with England in a single ‘England and Wales’ jurisdiction.

These issues are alluded to in the Convention report, which refers on a number of occasions to the advantages of ‘the Scottish model’. However, Sir Emyr Jones Parry took the view early on that his terms of reference prevented him from exploring how these advantages might be sought ahead of a referendum. He concluded that the 2006 Wales Act put them off limits.  The Convention report states, “We did not set out to consult specifically on the advantages and disadvantages of the Scottish model”. Without exploring what the ‘disadvantages’ might be the report continues:

“However, it was raised by a number of people at our public events, on the online forms submitted through our website, and in the qualitative research we carried in focus groups. As such, we have to acknowledge that is a significant issue for many in Wales, who ask why the model of devolution is different here” (para. 3.10.41).

A great number of the exceptions to the National Assembly’s current powers, many that would still apply following a successful referendum, are contained in Schedule 7 to the 2006 Wales Act. The Convention’s concluding chapter makes specific reference to this in terms that betray a good deal of the behind-the-scenes debate that must have gone on amongst its membership:

 “A referendum would offer Part 4 and its contents. That is the choice on the table. We have concluded that this offers substantial advantage. We examined the content and clarity of Schedule 7, and recognised that Schedule 7 could be amended, before or after any referendum. We noted the technical difficulties of making its contents clearer, and we doubt that an effort to clarify it further would have any tangible effect on voting intentions” (para. 6.2.15).

It is indisputable that Sir Emyr and his colleagues are right on this last judgement. However, if they had had the courage to grapple with the issue they might well have prevented trouble being stored up ahead. For sooner or later we are going to have to move to the Scottish model and a Welsh jurisdiction in order to have a stable devolution settlement. As things now stand, we may have to contemplate a further referendum to get there. This is acknowledged by the Convention in the concluding paragraph that immediately follows the one quoted above. Indeed it hints that the legitimacy conferred by a successful referendum on Part 4 might remove the need for a referendum:

 “We recommend that, if Part 4 were to be implemented following an affirmative vote in a referendum, any change to the contents of Schedule 7, including the exceptions provided within it, should reflect the legitimacy which the National Assembly for Wales would have been given in that referendum.” (para. 6.2.15).

If there is doubt about whether the Convention was worried that a further referendum might be needed to deliver a Scottish-style devolution of powers, then look at para. 3.10.47:

 “Bearing in mind our terms of reference, and the provisions of the GOWA 2006, the choice on the table is whether to proceed to a referendum where an affirmative vote would result in  the implementation of Part 4 as is.  Some have argued to us that this outcome would be clearer, if prior to any referendum, the content of Part 4 had been amended through an Order in Council the content of which would have been agreed by the National Assembly for Wales and both Houses of Parliament. If Part 4 were in operation, its content could still be amended under the same procedure, if this turned out to be desirable. If, however, there were a wish at any stage to move to the Scottish model, then  Parliament would have to legislate through a new UK Act. It would then be for Parliament to decide whether a referendum was relevant.”

Amongst those who made the argument to Sir Emyr was the Institute of Welsh Affairs. If only he had been a bit bolder and given us the conclusion that a successful referendum on Part 4 should also be taken as a green light to move on to the Scottish model life would be simpler. He would have prevented many needless and fruitless arguments that are likely to lie ahead. Of course, he would have had to overcome his instinctive mandarin style of being above the hurly burly of the debate. But he would have listened to the evidence.

• John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

However, I think it is time the rest of Britain understood Wales, and understood devolution. The point of devolution is not to do things differently for the sake of difference, but to do things differently where it makes sense and where we can deliver better and more appropriate services.

Wales is not Scotland-lite, some kind of diluted diet version of an authentically devolved nation. The Welsh relationship to the British state is far more complex than that. Welshness and Britishness are closely interwoven. British Labour movement heroes like Aneurin Bevan took the co-operative traditions of Welsh community socialism and used their models to build the British National Health Service.

Our trading routes historically have run west-east in both south and north Wales. Welsh coal fuelled the latter stages of the British empire and a much earlier wave of industrial globalisation. Today global corporations rooted in Wales like Corus and Airbus – and in a different way the Dr Who and Torchwood-producing BBC Wales – are critical to our economy. Modern Wales stands for modern manufacturing, modern engineering and modern media.

I came into politics when I saw what the Thatcher government was doing to mining communities all around me. I burn still with an anger about those times, and if elected leader in two weeks' time I will fight to stop a Tory government. I reject the defeatist talk now abroad in parts of our movement. It is right to recognise our own challenge in Wales, where the Tories narrowly exceeded Labour's vote in the European elections. But the Glasgow byelection result showed Labour across the UK that we can fight back to win.

I am not naive or sentimental about Wales. We need to be on our guard against the BNP, now active in white working class communities in Wales. Our Welsh patriotism must resist the language of the kind of narrow ethnic nationalism that is hostile to outsiders. I stand in the socialist and internationalist tradition of Welsh Labour, not the inward-looking restrictive worldview of nationalism. Our government in Wales has demonstrated our commitment to international development and fair trade. I want to expand our Wales in Africa programme to enable more public servants to offer their skills in tackling global poverty.

My politics are Labour politics. I want to see a modern Wales in a modern Britain. I am proud to be Welsh, proud to be British – and of course, proud to be Labour. Let all in our party say they are proud to be Labour – and commit themselves to stopping a Tory government that would slash and burn in Wales as well as elsewhere.

·      Bridgend AM Carwyn Jones is Counsel General in the Welsh Government and a contender for the Labour leadership. This post appeared originally on the Comment is Free Guardian website.

As the Convention points out, confusion between the Welsh legislature and the Welsh executive is perpetuated by the term Welsh Assembly Government. The Convention members would like to see that middle word ‘Assembly’ dropped. Civil society in Wales could make that happen simply by altering its own usage. The IWA will make a start on that.

But the issue is far from being cosmetic. Piecemeal change, double scrutiny of LCOs in Cardiff and Westminster by politicians with separate mandates, transfers of power in UK bills that are subject to hardly any scrutiny at all, the lack of a single authoritative source of information on Welsh law, all contribute to muddle and confusion for politicians and public and for all those organisations that try to mediate between the two. Politicians may be able to take this in their stride, but it wastes time and money and energy for civil society as a whole.

But, to state the obvious, it is no use winning the intellectual argument, unless one can also win the referendum that is needed to facilitate further change. The Convention’s statement that “a yes vote is obtainable, but is not a certain outcome” hardly has a ring of confidence about it. Its research showed 47 per cent willing to vote yes, and 37 per cent intending to vote no. Yesterday’s YouGov poll for ITV Wales made it 51 per cent yes, and 30 per cent for no, a rather more encouraging majority (fuller details of the poll – the question asked and breakdown by party responses are given below).

However, the Convention is right to say that a victory should not be taken for granted. Poll majorities can easily vanish in the heat of battle. Wales knows that in constitutional debate, the devil has some catchy tunes. But that is no reason to shy away from referendum. This is not to counsel recklessness, merely to point out that waiting for favourable circumstances to turn up is to hand the initiative to the begrudgers, and to deny the benefits of change to the Welsh public for an indefinite time. Our politicians are going to have to make their own weather on this issue, and make it quickly.

The Convention has made plain that a referendum is not going to be won on the arcane ground of whether Part 4 of the Government and Wales Act 2006 is a better bet than Part 3. The public would glaze over. More powerful are the arguments about equity and effectiveness.

On equity, comparisons with Scotland and Northern Ireland will have a more powerful effect. Are we a lesser people than the Scots, less capable of ordering our domestic affairs? Are three million Welsh people, with much lauded democratic instincts, less capable of handling full law-making powers than 1.5 million people in Northern Ireland, with all its community tensions and an area no larger than industrial south Wales? Recent polls have shown that nearly two-thirds of Welsh people see no reason why we should not have the same powers as the Scots.

The Scottish example also speaks to the argument about effectiveness. In IWA research that was commissioned by the Convention we were able to demonstrate that comprehensive powers across a wide range of policy areas, enables government to think strategically and holistically and to legislate in that way. This is infinitely preferable to the search for policy nuggets that can be encapsulated in an LCO.

In our report Putting Wales in the Driving Seat, pubpished in March this year, we were able to contrast narrow LCO bids in, say mental health, with much more comprehensive Scottish legislation passed in less time than it took to consider the Welsh LCO itself. We pointed out that under the Scottish system Government can respond more quickly to public need, there are fewer boundary disputes and misunderstandings with Whitehall departments, and the focus is on outcomes not process.

The Convention accepted this argument and cited a further good example on climate change. Where Scotland would have no problem preparing and passing wide cross-cutting legislation, a rational policy from the Welsh Government would ‘require drawing down powers from at least six fields, through six different LCOs in order to be able to table a draft Measure’. Even then, the Convention observed, during the passage of that legislation a Welsh Government could easily be tripped up if it was found that a particular power was not sufficiently widely drawn.

Campaigners for a yes vote will also have to be convincing in creating a sense of what wider law-making powers can achieve. There was no shortage of ideas in evidence presented to the Convention: wider legislation on mental health reform, integrated transport, public health, education reform and landscape management were just a few of them.

This is something on which the Welsh Government could build quickly if it were to establish a series of independent policy commissions charged with drawing up policy proposals unconstrained by the Assembly’s current powers. This could create an attractive agenda for radical policy reform that could be crucial in persuading the public of the value of further constitutional development.

The time and effort would not be wasted even if a referendum were lost, as, in that sad circumstance, it would still provide a valuable way of prioritising further LCOs and other limited transfers. It would fill the dangerous empty space up to the day when the referendum starting gun is fired, and might also be a spur to the radicalism that we will need in order to get Wales out of the deep economic hole in which it finds itself.

·      Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA

ITV 1 Wales YouGov Poll, published 18 November 2009

If there were to be a referendum tomorrow on giving the National Assembly for Wales increased law-making powers, how would you vote?

I would vote Yes ( that is, in favour of giving the National Assembly increased law-making powers) ……  51 %

I would vote No (that is, against giving the National Asembly increased law-making powers) ...... 30%

I wouldn’t vote ……  6%

I don’t know …...  14%

Voting Intention by party affiliation

 When should a referendum be held?

The same day or before the Westminster general election …………………….. 26%

The same day or before the National Assembly election, May 2011 ………    22%

At some point but not until after the NationalAssembly election …………    19%

Opposed to holding a referendum ……………………………………………………     18%

§       The report confirms the findings of other research that support for devolution has grown significantly since the 1997 referendum. The convention’s own polling found that 72 per cent favoured some form of devolution. Support for either independence (8 per cent) or no devolution at all (14 per cent) has continued to fall since 1997.

§       The positive benefits of devolution are not fully appreciated, and knowledge of individual tailored policies was largely lacking. The report says ‘a deficit of effective communications across Wales exacerbated the difficulty in understanding devolution’.

§       Complexity is an impediment to understanding. “The distinction between the roles of the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government was frequently misunderstood, partly because of the use of the adjective ‘Assembly’ before Government”.

§       On the LCO process, the report cites highly critical evidence from many bodies, and says this dominated the evidence received. In particular, it says the ‘third sector’ criticised what they saw as “the cumbersome, somewhat opaque, sometimes lengthy, inaccessible nature of the process”. But it also notes that the Welsh Assembly Government is now more engaged with Whitehall, that more effort have been made to address the disadvantages of the system and that ‘scrutiny in Westminster and the National Assembly has sharpened up legislative intentions.

§       It urges “proportionate scrutiny which recognises both the importance of Government of Wales Act 2006 and separate electoral mandates. It is also necessary, it says, “for Whitehall to be better informed and more positive and accepting of the provisions of the Act”.

§       More powers have been granted by way of Acts of parliament – framework bills – than by Legislative Competence Orders (LCOs). It says “this is undesirable”. The report notes that when powers are transferred by Acts of Parliament the National Assembly has no scrutiny role, and that these powers are often transferred direct to Ministers rather than to the Assembly itself. “There is, therefore, a lack of consistency in the amount of scrutiny given to proposals for Measure-making powers, and in the case of framework provisions in UK Bills there is no recognition of the democratic mandate of the National Assembly for Wales”.

§       The report says that “because it is strikingly difficult to access accurately the detailed law which applies in Wales, we recommend the creation of a single  accessible record of all law applicable in Wales, which would provide authoritative and comprehensive detail”.

New powers

§       The Convention is convinced that wider powers for the Assembly, as set out in Part 4 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, “offers substantial advantage over the present arrangements in Part 3”.

§       Part 4 powers, it says, would “offer greater efficiency, permit a strategic approach to the drafting of the legislation, provide greater clarity, be more consistent with the rule of law and democratic tradition, and reflect the emerging maturity of the National Assembly for Wales”.

§       The report puts forward two main arguments for moving to Part 4 powers. First, “good law should be above all clear and accessible, and adopted by a comprehensible process, with the division of powers understood and known”. Second, “today’s policy-making needs to be holistic and strategic. Legislation needs to cover complex and diverse issues to be effective”.

§       The reports says “we make no apology for emphasising the rule of law. This requires that the process of adopting laws should be transparent, comprehensible, acceptable, implementable and accessible to all concerned”.

§       For the civil service, it says that the extra adaptation necessary to implement Part 4 should be manageable, and that the overall impact of the change would be “financially neutral”.

Referendum

§       The Convention’s social research found that 47 per cent said they would vote yes in a referendum on further powers for the Assembly, while 37 per cent said they would vote no. Positive support was highest among 16-34 year olds, people in lower social groups, and people who identified themselves as Welsh. The Convention concluded that “a yes vote is obtainable, but is not a certain outcome”.

§       If a referendum is to be held “in good time before the Assembly elections in 2011, then a decision should be taken by June 2010”.

§       Despite what the Convention perceives as the advantages of moving to Part 4 powers, it acknowledges that “it is not easy to assess how these arguments would resonate with the public. The evidence leads us to believe that there would be more support for a ‘yes’ vote when the extent of Welsh devolution is compared unfavourably to that in Scotland, and when attention is drawn to the need to repeatedly seek Westminster’s permission, before powers can be drawn down”.

§        “Cost, revenue from the UK government, apprehension at sudden change, and the alleged calibre of AMs were important factors for those indicating that they would vote ‘no’ in a referendum. On the other hand, comparison with Scotland, cap in hand to London, and the maturity of the National Assembly for Wales were strong factors which lead people towards a likely ‘yes’ vote”.

It is for the local press to make their own defence against an argument, which, while it may seem extreme, undoubtedly does have some truth in it. By and large most local newspapers, including sadly some of their rather bigger colleagues, are now bland, written by skeleton staffs, relying on safe stories all too often culled from press releases and printed largely unaltered. Old disciplines such as including statements from those who might take an alternative view have largely been abandoned.

Monbiot’s real target, however, is neither the local council nor the press but the supermarket giant Tesco, with its 30 per cent plus share of the UK grocery market. In the case of Machynlleth, supporters of the proposal can point to a number of benefits – the jobs that will be created, the wider choice of foodstuffs that will be available to consumers, the non-food products that will be on sale without the need to travel to a bigger district centre such as Aberystwyth, Shrewsbury or Chester.

Against this, however, there is the negative impact, to the usual list of which a new downside has just been highlighted. Conventionally, the case against Tesco in a small town like Machynlleth is that its sales of probably hundreds of thousand pounds a year can hardly be new money to the area. Though some people will no longer travel long distances to shop, much of Tesco’s revenue has to be at the expense of the local butcher, baker, convenience store and coffee shop. Supermarkets also now often incorporate a range of other services, such as dry cleaning, and Tesco itself is planning to open Tesco Bank branches in stores, having decided it would not take its new banking subsidiary to the dying High Street.

The new downside is revealed in a publication by Earthscan and the New Economics Foundation, and should worry all those who believe civic society in Wales (and Britain) has already lost too much of its vigour and is seeing it continue to drain away. A study in the US of links between WalMart (the world’s biggest supermarket group and owner of Asda, Britain’s number two behind Tesco) and social capital has apparently demonstrated that turn-out at elections declines when there is a nearby superstore. The study also showed that communities where Walmart had settled ended up with fewer local charities and local associations such as churches, campaign and business groups per capita than those that did not.

The reasons why this happens can only be guessed at. Presumably, however, if local businesses close there are fewer business owners to support local causes, sponsor local clubs and sports teams and take on community leadership roles. The money being circulated in the local area also drops as the profits which would previously have been spent locally are spirited away to corporate headquarters, and only partially replaced by whatever ‘community engagement projects’ the interloping company sets up.

There are probably other less tangible explanations. The conversations someone might have with the person behind or in front of them in the butcher’s – or with the butcher himself - will not be replicated while watching the supermarket check-out person bleeping goods over the barcoder and while frantically trying to pull apart the store plastic bag for packing one’s goods. Nor does one seem as likely to stop for a chat with acquaintances in the supermarket aisle as in the High Street. Yet these opportunities for exchanging information – which still exist in large parts of the Continent and particularly in rural areas like Machynlleth - do form a kind of community adhesive that has largely disappeared in Britain.

It is impossible to put this particular genie back in the bottle. Tesco towns have sprung up all over Wales in the last few years and Powys council for one does not want to take a stand in Machynlleth. However, the authority that did might find its medium and long term gains far more than outweigh the immediate prospects of extra ‘jobs’.

· A former Financial Times journalist, Rhys David is a trustee of the IWA.

Whatever caveats people may wish to enter about the First Minister’s catalogue – my personal one would be that we have not yet struck the right balance between sport and the power of the performing arts in carrying the flag for Wales – there is more than enough here to support the contention that devolution has been a liberating force in Wales’s relationship with the rest of the world.

Dealing first with Europe, he explained why in the early years of the Assembly it had been a struggle to gain official representation in the EU. Aspirations had fallen foul of the legal limitations of the Assembly’s constitution as a body corporate. It was this, he claimed, that prevented Wales, unlike Scotland, from having a Welsh equivalent of UKREP, the United Kingdom’s Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels or, to use Rhodri’s inimitable phraseology, a TaffREP to join JockREP.

That was later rectified with the establishment of Tŷ Cymru in Brussels, representing the Welsh Government, the National Assembly, the Welsh Local Government Association and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.

He pointed to his government’s involvement with the organisation representing ‘Regions with Legislative Powers’. Despite the Assembly’s limited legislative powers, Wales took on the presidency of the organisation in 2006. “They were more than happy to have Wales”, said Rhodri, “it was the French regions they wanted to keep out”.

He also claimed that increased recognition of regions in the Lisbon treaty was very largely a Welsh contribution to the process. It was, he said, Welsh officials who drafted that part of the treaty that will deliver ‘double subsidiarity’ – to state Parliaments and then to regions – because Britain’s Foreign Office did not have sufficient knowledge to do so. He said that this ‘traffic light system’ will allow regional legislatures to put a brake on EU Commission proposals if they see fit. The system comes into effect on 1^st December 2009.

He was adamant that Wales was ‘an exemplar’ in the use of EU funds, though there have been plenty of critics of the use of Objective 1 and convergence funds, during their existence. Fearing that, after 2013, convergence funds would be switched to fund climate change measures, he thought that it was important for Wales to secure ‘tapering funds’ post 2014. 

On language issues the Welsh Government had taken a lead from the Catalans to achieve ‘co-official’ language status for Welsh in Europe. Meanwhile, on the environment the Welsh Government had been a founder member of the ‘Network of Regional Government for Sustainable Development’ because, he argued, about 50 per cent of the duties on sustainable development will fall to regional governments.

Beyond Europe he clearly takes particular pride in the Wales for Africa network that has given practical assistance on pre- and post-natal care in Chad and Sierra Leone. He thought that the £200,000 that the Welsh Government had spent on these programmes had been the best value for money initiative taken in the whole decade of the Assembly’s existence, because it had saved the lives of countless mothers. He also claimed that Wales could boast one fifth of all the registered fair trade schools in the UK.

He thought this had been achieved through the Assembly’s capacity to release the energies of voluntary organisations. In a characteristically ebullient phrase, he said that all the Assembly had done was “take the cork out of the champagne bottle of civil society”.

Wales had also planted a flag in China, through the relationship created with city region of Chung-ching (population 31m), a relationship that he thought would be important for Welsh universities as the cohort of 18-19-year-olds in the UK declined by 25 per cent over the coming years.

He finished by emphasising that Wales’s future would rest on its base of skills, its infrastructure, quality of life, creativity and sense of identity. He thought that sport and culture would be key factors, citing the building of the Millennium Stadium and the Wales Millennium Centre, next year’s Ryder Cup, the attraction of Wales for national paralympic teams coming to the UK in 2012, and Wales’s presence at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in Washington last summer.

Not unnaturally, Rhodri Morgan concentrated on the work of the Welsh Government in this field – often, decisions and funding that do facilitate international action by other organisations. However, the focus of the address implicitly underlined the need for a wider audit of Wales’s international engagement, and the impacts that can be achieved. It is very important that that engagement is not restricted to government initiatives but embraces every part of society.

There has been much scrutiny recently of the effectiveness of International Business Wales, and but there are other areas where we could do with a wider evaluation. Examples include the effectiveness of the international engagement of our higher education institutions, or our use, or lack of use, of our strong cultural sector in putting Wales on the map. The Welsh presence at the Smithsonian was very valuable, but it was a rare one-off initiative.

In drawing up its major events strategy there is more than a suspicion that the Welsh Government and its agencies have been mesmerised by the potential of sport at the expense of our cultural potential. Many would argue that Visit Wales shows few signs of really understanding the potential of cultural tourism.

There is no doubting the power of events such as the Ryder Cup. Much more questionable is the £2.2m spent on the Wales GB Rally – a huge investment in an event of limited duration and interest. A similar investment, say, in Wales Arts International,  or in the development of a major international festival of the arts might produced a more prolonged, deeper and more valuable impact on Wales’s international profile.

That said, a debate about our place in the wider world is a sign of a maturing society and hugely welcome.

·      Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA.

It’s clear that the political preferences of Welsh voters are some way away from those in England, wanting more social-democratic policies and solutions than English voters do. ‘Progressive universalism’ is a phrase with powerful appeal in Wales, no matter who is First Minister or which parties are in government, and even if its meaning is unclear. Devolution means that politically it’s very hard for them to impose their will on Wales in the way that John Redwood or even Nicholas Edwards did as Secretaries of State. If they try, they forfeit democratic legitimacy in a way that would be especially damaging now that Wales is a happy hunting ground for Tory seats for both Westminster and Cardiff Bay.

Institutionally, the present situation means that policy for England and Wales is entangled so that what’s done in England has an effect on Wales. Take a bill on something like health care reform; even a decision to exclude framework powers for Wales from a bill like that making policy in England requires a set of political decisions which, thanks to Parliamentary processes, will become highly public. Party-political differences will magnify that.

What’s at present a largely private process of bargaining will become much more public, and much more the subject of contention and dispute. How LCOs might work if each one was seriously disputed is pretty clear in a constitutional sense (they wouldn’t get passed), but has unclear and very grave political implications.  Would it boost the standing of Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour (assuming they’re still in government)? What would Conservative MPs do, and how would their party colleagues in the Assembly respond? What about Welsh Labour MPs? It’s hard to see how anyone would gain. The only certainty in that is that this immobility would further damage the standing of politicians and politics in general.

Implementing Part 4 of the 2006 Act offers a way around these problems, by decoupling policy in England and Wales and creating a degree of political insulation for a Conservative UK Government.  It lets Wales be social-democratic, rather than making the Tories seek to micro-manage the policies of a distinct elected legislature. And it also minimises the scope for embarrassment to flow back across Offa’s Dyke, as Welsh choices are clearly both Welsh and democratic. In such circumstances, a Conservative UK Government can show how tolerant of pluralism and diversity it is. (As an aside, what a devolved government and legislature can do with that autonomy is pretty limited even with the powers Part 4 offers, particularly if the Assembly remains financed by a block grant from Westminster. If expectations of a very tough public spending regime do materialise, that provides a very effective way of getting Wales to make cuts that London wouldn’t dare impose otherwise.)

None of this will be news in Conservative Central Office. It clearly underlies David Cameron’s recent decision to support a request for a referendum if the National Assembly makes one, even if the way that’s been presented to the public is slightly different.

An added advantage for Tories is that it helps to clear the way to reducing Wales’s over-representation at Westminster.  Conservative ambitions to reduce the size of Westminster by at least 10 per cent (which is 65 MPs, making a house of 581, though there’s been talk of an even small House of Commons) are clear.  Reducing Welsh over-representation to parity with England, which has already happened for Scotland, is much easier if Wales possesses an extensive degree of autonomy.  (There is a knock-on problem for the size of the National Assembly, though.)

For Labour, the advantage is that it offers a way to protect a particular sort of social democracy that its Welsh voters clearly prize – and think they already have. If it turns out that the legacy of 12 or 13 years of Labour rule is to weaken that sort of policy, which it was thought to have been strengthened, it won’t do Labour any good either.

Political insulation is not the only attraction of primary legislative powers, however. Devolution in the UK is deeply asymmetric, meaning different things in different parts of the UK. Managing the implications of that asymmetry is hugely difficult within the government machine in Whitehall. While there are plenty of instances of good practice and getting things right, there are also a large number of examples of getting it wrong; the picture is at best inconsistent and patchy.

This creates particular problems for Wales, which is the ‘outlier’ in the sense that it’s the form of devolution least like what happens in the other devolved territories. Even those broadly supportive of the status quo have had to acknowledge this, and the wider political and constitutional nature of what are often administrative mistakes.  Examples abound in the reports that have come from the Commons Welsh Affairs Committee’s large inquiry into Cross-Border Public Services for Wales.  These problems are acquiring increasing political salience, but fixing them without constitutional change is going to be very hard indeed – it requires the sort of thorough-going change that Whitehall has deliberately avoided over the last decade, despite a generally supportive environment for such changes.

Part 4 does not offer ‘Scottish-type’ powers, but it’s closer to them. It reduces the need for constant liaison with Whitehall, and so the danger of Whitehall misunderstanding how Wales and Welsh devolution work. It means that the UK moves closer to having a single template for devolved government, which is adjusted to reflect particular circumstances in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.  That will make devolved government easier not just for the general public to understand, but also politicians and civil servants. From a Whitehall point of view, constitutional change is probably easier to handle than a cumbersome set of managerial changes (which will come when Whitehall faces a set of hugely difficult challenges in other fields). Part 4 fixes a lot of problems for the centre, whatever its impact in Wales.

·      Alan Trench works with the Europa Institute, Edinburgh University and the Constitution Unit, UCL. He will be speaking at the conference, Life Under the Tories, organised by the IWA and the Welsh Governance Centre at Cardiff University on Friday 4 December (see this website for further information – click on ‘Events’). This post is taken from his Blog Devolution Matters. 

Gill Morgan confirmed my suspicion that these appointments had been made to give the Welsh Government greater clout in Whitehall. The creation of Directors General was a deliberate way of engaging more effectively with civil service departments there. Compared with Whitehall departments the Welsh Government, made up of 6,000 civil servants, is relatively small. In the politics of the Whitehall bureaucracy Permanent Secretaries only tend to talk to Permanent Secretaries and Deputy Permanent Secretaries to Deputy Permanent Secretaries in other departments. So the Welsh Government was been fighting with one hand behind its back with only one Deputy Permanent Secretary. Now we have seven.

As Gill Morgan told me, “The civil service is notoriously hierarchical and it is very difficult to achieve an effective dialogue between civil servants of different grades. It’s easy for people in England to stereotype us as the weaker partner. I want to stop England seeing us as the weaker partner. I want to stop England seeing us as the younger sister or brother.”

Gill Morgan does not pull her punches. When I asked her what was her main reflection following her first year in post with the Welsh Government she answered, “What I have been struck by is a lack of genuine commitment to devolution and a culture of arrogance in some Whitehall departments. In many respects Wales is off the radar in London. I believe the restructuring of our management structure, with the creation of more Directors General will go some way to tackle that.”

·      John Osmond is Director of the IWA. Read the full account of his interview with the Welsh Government’s Permanent Secretary, Dame Gillian Morgan, in Agenda, available from the IWA at £5 and sent free to IWA members.

The Labour-SNP conflict was fought with a complete obliviousness to the big issues voters face both locally and nationally.  Glasgow North East has the highest unemployment claimant count in Scotland, the second highest incapacity levels and is rated the second unhealthiest place in the UK. Neither party touched on these issues in the campaign.

Instead they choose to characterise their campaigns by parochial and petty issues such as Labour charging that the SNP candidate David Kerr wasn’t as local as he claimed, while he choose as the defining moment of his campaign to throw a £2 coin at the Labour candidate Willie Bain in a TV debate to illustrate the lack of extra spending by the local Labour council.

Two former Big Brother contestants, two former BBC journalists, three independent socialist candidates, the first of an ‘out’ Tory candidate, and the anointed local hero who foiled the Glasgow Airport terrorist attack did not excite the electorate, who responded with a 33% turnout, the lowest ever in a Scottish parliamentary by-election.

The BNP’s fourth place is significant in Scottish politics in a place where they have history having won 3.2% in 2005 (in one of only two seats they stood in across Scotland) and 4.3% in the Euro elections. This is one of the poorest parts of Glasgow which has experienced hard times even through the good times pre-crash, and which has had anxieties and tensions over asylum seekers and refugees who have been here for nearly a decade.

This is a neglected part of Scotland where none of the four main Scottish political parties have spoken with a voice with much relevance or connection. None really succeeded in doing so in this campaign.

None of the parties, including the long dominant Labour Party have much local presence in terms of activists or organisation. Labour for years were represented pre-his role as Speaker by Michael Martin, hardly the most energetic of local campaigners. This then was a seat ripe for an anti-local establishment challenge which makes the SNP’s failure all the more galling for them.

This is a revealing result for the appeal of the Cameron Conservatives. Yes, the Tories will claim this is the most unfertile territory possible and brandish their third place (finishing 63 votes ahead of the BNP). However, there have now been four Scottish Westminster elections since David Cameron became Tory leader. In the first three the Tory vote has fallen and in none has there been any sign of a Tory revival.

All by-elections are special and yet they can provide pointers. Labour are still the biggest tribe in the West of Scotland which is still resistant to the charms of a relatively popular Alex Salmond Government. The SNP are despite the one-off victory of Glasgow East – a party that has never won two successive by-elections and won a mere six out of 75 since its first ever victory in Motherwell in 1945.

Scotland has also shown that in one way it is very different and one way it is not from the rest of the UK. It is the one part of Britain which has so far shown itself to be immune to the appeal of the New Conservatives, and this will have big consequences next year if the Tories are returned to power at a UK level with one or two seats north of the border. Groundhog Day will revisit Scotland as we enter a new version of ‘the democratic deficit’: Scotland not voting Tory, while getting a Tory Government.

In another respect, Scotland isn’t that different in relation to the BNP and how the Scots see themselves. For long the dominant wisdom has been that this is a welcoming, egalitarian nation less racist and xenophobia than England; so this line goes the BNP is an ‘English disease’, too virulent and too British to make much headroom here. Well that complacency now needs to end. A small, micro-slice of Scottish opinion is just as prone to vote for what was once seen as a pariah party as parts of England.

There were also local factors at play. Willie Bain, the successful Labour candidate was both popular and had local roots and recognition. The SNP candidate David Kerr was inept and failed to develop a convincing campaign line against Labour’s 74 year incumbency and the absentee landlordism of leaving the seat for months without representation.

What is also evident is that the old cycle of Parliaments and Governments the Westminster classes know and love is now much less clear cut in parts of the UK. There are now two Parliaments, two political cycles and cultures in Scotland. This implies the need for two very different styles of politics. Labour for now has learned how to play at being both government and opposition in by-elections north of the border. This is a balancing act which will not be open to Gordon Brown and Labour next year or in the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections.

 ·      Gerry Hassan is a Scottish writer and commentator. This article is taken from his blog www.gerryhassan.com

The Health and Social Services budget is by some measure the largest and has consistently risen over the past decade at rates well above inflation. In the same period education spending has consistently fallen in relative terms. The time has come to alter this balance. It is a tough call, but it is time for rigorous controls of health spending to allow education to catch up. In any event much of spending in the acute hospital sector is merely dealing with the consequences of unhealthy lifestyles resulting from obesity, smoking, lack of exercise and much more. Spending on education is the best option for dealing with these underlying causes of Wales’s poor health.

At the same time the next First Minister should champion the case for replacing the Barnett Formula that calculates changes in the Welsh block grant, with one based on need rather than population. Three authoritative reports have made this case in recent months – from the House of Lords Select Committee, the Calman Commission in Scotland and our own Holtham Commission. Estimates vary but unless a change to a needs-based formula for calculating our block grant takes place, Wales is set to lose out by at least £300m in the coming year and more thereafter.

The Welsh Government’s levers on the economy are restricted. In the current recession it has shown some fleetness of foot in developing the £48m ProAct scheme in which companies on short time working can receive up to £4,000 per employee to keep them in employment. Elsewhere, however, the Government has tended to be more aspirational rather than effective in developing the ‘knowledge economy’ in key sectors such as the bio-sciences, renewable energy and the creative industries. Much of this points to a need for more spending in higher education, yet this has been falling in relative terms in recent years. Again there tough decisions are needed to recalibrate the economic and education budgets.

Finally, there is the constitution. The next First Minister should make the case for more powers for the National Assembly in terms of the arguments listed above. We need more effective governing institutions to give us the tools for improving our education and economy, and tackling our unacceptably high levels of morbidity. We need a Parliament for Wales, endorsed by a referendum, to give us the clout to make the case for a fairer share of resources from London.

· Agenda is distributed to members of the IWA. To join click on the button on this website’s Home Page.

His views are no doubt shaped in part by the financial pressures he and his Welsh Government colleagues are now facing. If public expenditure is to take the hit that is now widely expected, they will have little option but to find ways of bringing private capital into play. The mutual model may be a way of doing so that is politically more palatable to the left of centre coalitions that are likely to govern Wales for the foreseeable future.

At the IWA conference, Peter Griffiths, Chief Executive of the Principality Building Society, and Duncan Forbes of the Bron Afon Housing Association in Torfaen, both extolled the mutual nature of their own organisations. The Principality has weathered the financial storm rather better than those building societies that de-mutualised in recent decades.

Chris Jones, Finance Director of  Glas Cymru, owners of the not-for-profit Welsh Water which is a mutual in ethos if not strictly in form, pointed to the substantial bond finance on which the Glas Cymru was launched in 2001, a notion that has now spawned the concept of a ‘Welsh housing bond’ now being worked on by Welsh government officials. Policy makers are also examining its relevance for rail development in south east Wales.

What has this got to do with the Institute of Advanced Broadcasting? A few days after the IWA’s conference on mutualism, the IAB held a conference on ‘micro-broadcasting’ (4.11.09) which drew a big audience from the IT/broadband sector, rather than the traditional broadcasters. The IAB is in harness with the Wesley Clover Corporation and Move Networks to conduct an experiment in Blaenau Gwent to see how a more advanced technology can reduce the number of broadband refuseniks in the area, currently more than half the population.

By installing the Inuk technology, that delivers high definition pictures to computers, in the homes of 5 per cent of the population, they not only hope to explore the behaviour of the public and the potential for small community media, but also to develop new business models. 

Asked by the organisers to give a view on the future I ventured to suggest that if mutual models have a natural role, it is surely in the field of communications – micro-broadcasting, community radio, local television, even the independently financed news consortia by which a news service for ITV in Wales are likely to be delivered in future. Ownership structures that lie somewhere between the market and the state, not dominated by either, are surely a better way to deliver a long term public service than the unsustainable slash and burn management that often results from the pressure to sustain a particular share price. We need to explore how to incentivise these models. 

The possible tendering of a news service for ITV Wales would be an ideal place to innovate – something that prospective bidders, Ofcom and the DCMS might take into account. How can you draw in private capital, yet shield the service from the endless cost-cutting pressures that have been a feature of recent years.

We do seem to be experiencing a paradoxical disjunction: systems of regulation, whether in energy or telecoms or broadcasting, that are increasingly market driven, at the very point when market models of ownership, as deliverers of long term public ends, are most in question: whether its Northern Rock, HBOS, Trinity Mirror, ITV, or Qinetic.

In recent times broadcasters and arts organisations have been enjoined to seek new business models - usually a euphemism for reducing public funding. Very often it is a vain search for the holy grail. In digital media it has been a quest for monetisation of an activity. Until now ownership has received much less attention.

As we were reminded at the IWA conference, new business models may be a re-working of older models. Since the beginnings of the industrial revolution, Wales has made a rich contribution to concepts of free association and the public good: Robert Owen of Newtown, one of the founders of the cooperative movement; the record of Welsh miners and their communities in establishing mutual organisations for social, educational and cultural purposes; the Tower Colliery cooperative and, dare I say, the fact that Wales has the only not-for-profit water company in England and Wales.

In England, too, you have the 19^th Century tradition of municipal enterprise, delivering public goods, along side robust capitalism. It is no surprise, either, that the Scott Trust – the trust that owns the Guardian and the Observer - had its roots in Manchester. Today the partnership offerings made by the BBC to other broadcasters mirror the helpful asset transfers that are increasingly sought by community groups from local authorities – the donation of a disused building or plot of land.

As the IAB and its partners seek new business models they may need to look to our history, to distinguish clearly between private and public purposes and to choose their models  accordingly.

 ·      Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA.

On the other hand Carwyn Jones reaffirms his belief that “Welsh Labour is stronger as part of the Labour Party in the whole of Britain”. On the day that Carwyn revealed his aim to increase education spending by 1 per cent above the block grant, Huw Lewis was in Port Talbot to emphasise his commitment to manufacturing industry in Wales.

However, it's in examining what we might term their 'body language' that we get a clearer sense of what each candidate stands for.

Edwina Hart's vision for her leadership is one of continuity with Rhodri Morgan's approach. In majoring on her past achievements across ten years as a Minister in the Assembly, her tone comes across as both positive and personal. Her manifesto focuses on the issues that would exercise her in power, but it is clear that she cannot – and nor does she try to – be disassociated from her, and her Party's, past record.

Whilst steering clear of full-blown personality politics, this is a manifesto that makes it clear that a vote for Edwina would be, well, a vote for Edwina. She is a woman with a political record about which we already know a great deal. In fact, so closely is she tied to her past actions that a vote for Edwina might also be interpreted as a confidence vote in the work of Welsh Labour to date.

By contrast, Huw Lewis projects a rather more confrontational image. He wants us to know that he stands for traditional Welsh Labour values of change-making, challenging the status quo and providing a voice for the disenfranchised. He has watched the Party “let slip our grip on this heritage” and is, he claims, ready to reintroduce “radicalism” and “courage” to Labour politics. Thus whilst there is continuity with Labour values in the deepest sense, his is a message of change.

It sits rather oddly, then, that this apparently radical contender is to be found asking readers to “tell us what you think” about each and every issue discussed in his manifesto. Where Huw's pledges to “attack” the economic downturn and “battle” against climate change promise a bold new leadership, there is a sense of insecurity in this repeated request. This mixed message is ultimately compounded by Huw's rallying call to “let Labour be Labour” – not, perhaps, the most resounding call to arms.

And then there is Carwyn Jones. The relatively late publication of his manifesto, not to mention its slick style and the tagline “Time to Lead”, speaks of a contender confident in his ability to lead the Party and the nation. Everything points to this confidence, right down to the manifesto cover image of the man himself striding resolutely towards the camera.

Then, as one might expect of a former barrister, Carwyn comes across as someone with an eye for detail. Of all the manifestos, his contains the most specific commitments on future policy. Although both Edwina and Carwyn highlight past successes, the latter relies less heavily on these than on his future commitments. Given Welsh Labour's recent poor polling, this is perhaps a shrewd move.

So we have Edwina, who stands for continuity and whose plans for Wales' future will seemingly be deeply rooted in its past; Huw, who believes his radical vision will appeal to the grassroots, yet who also seeks the reassurance of consensus; and Carwyn, who portrays himself as rigorous, charismatic and, above all, a leader. Three very different personalities, three weeks to go...

• Stevie Upton is Research Officer at the IWA.

Quite apart from that, why on earth should Merkel and Sarkozy (who will necessarily be the key actors) dream of appointing a politician of the centre-left to this post, when the centre-right they lead has just won a crushing victory in Germany, and is in unchallenged power in France and Italy as well? That too would be an affront – not to the whole of mainland Europe, this time, but to its dominant political force.

In saying this I will be accused of lacking patriotism. That charge leaves my withers unwrung. Samuel Johnson said that patriotism was ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel’ and, goodness knows, he was right. However, I am in fact proud of being British. But the Britain I’m proud of is the Britain that stood alone against Nazi Germany for twelve long months; that offered France a total merger with Britain, which would have joined the French and British states in one indissoluble union in 1940; that welcomed asylum seekers from the Hugenots to Jews fleeing pogroms in the Russian pale, to Karl Marx, to the parents of Isaiah Berlin; that prided itself on an unarmed police and a long tradition of free speech and peaceful protest; and boasted that an Englishman’s home was his castle.

Tragically, that Britain no longer exists. We are the most spied-upon nation in Europe, and one of the most spied-upon in the world; our Government has almost certainly been complicit in torture; our right to live our lives as we like is threatened by the remorseless advance of the data-base state; and instead of rejoicing in the protections to our liberties given us by the European Convention on Human Rights we have an Opposition party that constantly denigrates it, and media barons who lose no opportunity of whipping up illiterate contempt for the rest of the continent to which we belong.

But I’m now getting more and more favourable to a referendum – not on the Lisbon Treaty, which is a side issue, but on the one question that really matters: in or out? I’m pretty sure that the Europhobes would lose, just as they did in 1975, but even if they won there would be a silver lining. British secession from the EU would be a disaster for Britain, but it would be a good thing for Europe. Its progress towards federalism would still be slow and halting, but at least the UK would no longer be there, throwing spanners in the works at every opportunity.

And – a bigger bonus – the UK would probably break up. Scotland and (probably) Wales would not want to leave their continent, even if England did. I’ve always been against the break-up of Britain, championed so brilliantly by Tom Nairn, but I’m increasingly coming to feel that it offers Wales, where I was born, and Scotland, where both my grandmothers were born, their best hope of escape from the deadly UK mixture of authoritarian illiberalism, gross inequality and small-minded insularity.

·      Professor David Marquand is a former Labour MP and adviser to the European Commission. His latest book is Britain Since 1918 – the Strange Career of Britsh Democracy. This post also appears on th www.opendemocracy.net  OurKingdom blog

The movement was successful within Plaid Cymru to the extent that the ideology ‘community socialism’ was adopted a constitutional aim at the party’s 1981 conference. However, at the same conference Dafydd Elis-Thomas lost to the more traditional nationalist Dafydd Wigley in the election to succeed Gwynfor Evans as President. One result was the emergence of the National Left as a cross party organisation with Dafydd Elis Thomas at its head. As he put it yesterday, “The National Left was despised by the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru at an official level. We had an open membership. We looked at the politics of Wales from a post-Marxist international socialist perspective”.

In 1984 Dafydd Elis-Thomas became President of Plaid when Dafydd Wigley stood down for family reasons, and immediately led the party into strong and active support for the Welsh Miners in their year-long strike. While it may have paid long-term dividends, this effort blurred the party’s image and did it little immediate good at the polls. Plaid fell to 7.3 per cent, its lowest ebb, in the 1987 general election.

However, quick on his feet as ever Dafydd Elis-Thomas sought sustenance in Europe. He became a Welsh European and reversed the National Left’s antipathy to European integration. He stood as a candidate in the 1984 elections for the European Parliament in which Plaid scored 12.2 per cent. Writing in 1988 he declared:

 “It seems clear to me that the only road towards greater self-government for Wales is through relating what happens in Wales towards what happens in Europe. If we succeeding replacing the British dimension with a European dimension in our thinking then we will have become the Welsh European internationalists we always were in our hearts”.

It is interesting that in his leadership Manifesto Carwyn Jones has stolen ‘community socialism’ from Plaid – “We are proud in Wales of our community socialist values …” as he puts it. Can we expect Edwina Hart to come out as a ‘Welsh European internationalist’ before too long?

Certainly, yesterday the Presiding Officer was unstinting in his advocacy. He said that along with himself she was mainly responsible for construction of the Senedd building within which Llafur was holding its conference. “There were two individuals who collaborated to produce this building, myself and Edwina. Please vote for her,” he said.

• John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

This was opposed by the Group precisely because it would inevitably place them in a position of being in bitter opposition to their own Conservative Government in London. If such a clause were put in the Manifesto and if a Conservative Government was elected next Spring, then there would certainly be a two-thirds majority in the Assembly that would call for a referendum.  Indeed, it would be probably be greater than that since most if not all of the Conservative AMs would also support it.

The matter was not easily settled. At one point the Assembly Conservative Leader Nick Bourne came up with a compromise that the Manifesto might contain a commitment that a referendum would be blocked for only the first two years of the next Westminster term. However, that was also voted down by the Conservative Group in the Assembly.

The reality that Westminster Conservatives have had to face was underlined in the National Assembly plenary debate on 7 July from which the Melding quotation is taken. It went entirely unreported at the time, perhaps because it began with an innocuous motion from the Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones who moved that the “the National Assembly for Wales notes the development of devolution over the past ten years and looks forward to its further strengthening in future.”

However, this was subjected to a cunning amendment by the Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams, which looked forward “to a referendum on moving to the powers in Part 4 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 before the Assembly elections in 2011.”

This was merely reiterating the commitment in the One Wales coalition agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru. However, the highly significant outcome of the debate was that the Assembly, including all the Conservatives, voted unanimously for the amendment. This signals that not only will there be a two-thirds majority for a referendum following the appearance of Sir Emyr Jones-Parry’s Convention report on 18 November, but a unanimous vote at that.

Given the moment, when he was locked in an internal party dispute, Nick Bourne’s contribution to the debate was remarkably robust. “We believe that there should be a campaign for full powers for the Assembly … I have no doubt that full powers will be forthcoming before long, whether under a Conservative Government – and they would be delivered under a Conservative Government, if needs be, as every step forward is – or any other.”

With the benefit of hindsight, it looks as though Bourne was using a public platform to influence the internal debate underway inside his party. Just a shame it wasn’t reported at the time, though I’ve no doubt that the Assembly’s Record of proceedings for 7 July were passed under Cheryl Gillan’s nose, and probably that of David Cameron as well. 

·      John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

It seems the AMs were most concerned by what they had encountered from constituents about their difficulties with alleged intransigence of National Parks when dealing with planning applications.  This is despite the fact that only 10 per cent of applications are called in, and more than 90 per cent of those are dealt with satisfactorily.

The politicians at the meeting, hosted by Presiding Officer Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas, were Joyce Watson, Labour AM for Mid and West Wales; Rhodri Glyn Thomas, Plaid AM for Carmarthen East; Mick Bates, Liberal Democrat AM for Montgomery; and Andrew R. Davies, Conservative AM for South Wales Central.

At the National Parks Association conference in Cardiff today Christine Gwyther, a member of the Pembrokeshire National Park Authority and former Labour AM for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, pointed out that the meeting had been with backbench AMs and not representatives of the Welsh Government who, she was sure would have been more up-to-speed with the issues. However, she added, “We’ve all been used to working with a rural/urban divide – having to prove ourselves to urban politicians. Now we are realising that we are going to have to prove ourselves to rural politicians as well.”

Caerwyn Roberts agreed. “We have a huge responsibility to perform an ambassadorial role,” he said. Their chance will come in the New Year when the National Parks will be scrutinised by the Rural Development Sub-committee whose membership includes Mick Bates and Rhodri Glyn Thomas. That should prove an interesting session.

·      John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

He was speaking about Wales’s response to Climate Change at a conference in Cardiff on Towards a Greener Future, organised by the Countryside Council for Wales to mark the 60^th anniversary of the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act.

He was pretty blunt about what Wales could do in contributing to the global need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: not much in practice, because we’re so small. The main contribution in terms of scale is going to come from countries like China. As he put it, “The numbers around the impact on CO2 emissions due to beer consumption in China are eye popping.”

However, what Wales could do was to become an exemplar nation for adapting to the realities of climate change, he argued. “Our contribution can be to demonstrate how it is possible for a community to reverse the patterns of energy use and CO2 emissions,” he said. “We need to become a future oriented country, setting out a marker of where the rest of the world needs to be by 2050.”

In this ambitious endeavour he said we need to rethink what we mean by the over-generalised objective of sustainable development.  We need to think about in terms of well-being, and looking for ways of working and living that contribute to that rather than out-dated notions around economic growth which often work against the well-being of the population. It means, too, that we need to adjust policy thinking to a longer-term perspective that the one habitually adopted by politicians. And we must become  focused on practical outcomes.

This is a condensation of his speech, but you can see from it that it is pretty challenging stuff coming from a civil servant. But, then Clive Bates is no ordinary civil servant. A quick glance at his CV will tell you that. Following a degree in Engineering at Cambridge he joined IBM, working in marketing for seven years.

Then, in a career switch he took a Masters in Environmental technology at Imperial College, London, and went to work for Greenpeace. In 1997 he became Director of Ash, Action on Smoking and health.

In early 2003 he became a senior adviser in a civil service role in the No 10 Strategy Unit, running projects as diverse as cities, police reform, NHS modernisation, housing growth, and productivity. In 2005 he moved to the Environment Agency as head of Policy responsible for climate change, economics, planning and sustainable development.

For the year or so prior joining the Welsh Government in March he established the UN Environment programme presence in Sudan, running a programme focused on improving natural resource management to address extreme poverty and conflict. It may be he finds Wales something of a doddle compared with that arena. In his speech today he sang the praises of the Pembrokeshire, Snowdonia and Brecon Beacons National Parks where, he said, he was spending as much time as possible soaking up the well-being they exude. Let’s hope he can off-load a bit of it amongst the musty corridors in Cathays Park.

·      John Osmond is Director of the IWA. 

The House of Lords Act in 1999 removed all but 92 of the hereditary peers from the Upper House. Meanwhile, the Human Rights Act of 1998 signalled the emergence of the judiciary as the third main element of the ‘new constitution’, alongside the legislatures and executives and an emerging separation of powers within what was undeniably becoming a quasi-federal state. This was no longer a unitary state, nor indeed a union state but, as James Mitchell perceptively describes in his Devolution in the UK, “a state of unions”.

There have been many other changes of a constitutional character, including proportional representation for elections to the devolved assemblies and the European Parliament, the Freedom of Information Act (2000), the creation of the directly elected Mayor of London (1998), and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (2000). Even the granting the Bank of England independence to set interest rates, Gordon Brown’s first act when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997, could be regarded as a constitutional change.

Certainly the linking theme of all of these innovations has been the dilution of the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament. This was the essential keystone of what had been understood as the ‘old’ constitution. In it Westminster had the “right to make or unmake any law whatever”, as the great constitutional theorist A.V. Dicey put it in his 1885 classic account An Introduction to the Law of the Constitution. This was explained to me in my university ‘British Constitution’ course in 1965 as meaning Parliament could do anything “save change a man into a woman, or a woman into a man”.

Well Parliament is much diminished now, and not just by the formal constitutional changes charted in these two books. It has always been primarily an English institution, and not just because England comprises some 84 per cent of the UK’s population, but culturally as well. Rather than a democracy in which the people are sovereign, England operates as a Parliamentary nation. The focus for England’s national identity is the House of Commons with its Members comprising a kind of ‘squirearchy’. But the end of deference, underlined by popular outrage at the expenses scandal, has put paid to much of that.

In this context it is interesting that Bogdanor relies on the House of Commons to provide an answer to the Britishnesss debate. As he notes, there is good deal of agonising amongst unionists that the ties that bind Britain are loosening, typified by Gordon Brown’s attempts to associate British identity with fair play and other universal values that could apply in any Western liberal democracy. Much more straightforward, says Bogdanor, to say that Britishness simply rests in people “wishing to be represented in the United Kingdom Parliament at Westminster and voting for parties which favour such continued representation”. If this is indeed the case it is significant that the next phase of devolution in Wales, with the National Assembly acquiring full legislative powers, is likely to be accompanied by the Conservatives insisting on a reduction of Welsh MPs at Westminster from 40 to 30.

The logical endpoint of all these changes would be a written constitution for the United Kingdom. However, Bogdanor finds there is no consensus about what should be written down. There is no agreed view, for example, on how the House of Lords should be reformed. There is no settled opinion on the role of referendums, despite their having become an essential component of constitutional change. There is no consensus on the right electoral system for the House of Commons. Above all, there are ongoing arguments about the devolution process and, in particular, relationships between the devolved institutions and Westminster, especially over money.

These debates are important to us in Wales because to a large extent they will determine how our own constitutional fortunes will unfold. Bogdanor observes that while the plethora of constitutional reform has redistributed power within the UK state, it has “redistributed power between elites, not between elites and people. It has distributed power ‘downwards’ to politicians in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast and London, ‘sideways’ to the life peers in the House of Lords and ‘sideways’ to the judges interpreting the Human Rights Act.” However, the “crucial weakness” of the constitutional reform programme is that, so far it “has not shifted power from the politicians to the people”. Apart from some improbable experiments with direct democracy such as citizens juries, Bogdanor’s main constitutional recipe is to press the case for the single transferable vote form of proportional representation. He argues cogently that this would put more power in the hands of the voter to support candidates within parties as well as between them. Yet, barring the forthcoming general election resulting in a hung Parliament and the Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power, there seems little chance of any early implementation of STV however desirable that might be.

In these circumstances the next phase in the story of the United Kingdom’s ‘new’ constitution will be driven by Scotland. Here James Mitchell who predicts an “ever looser union” is a better guide. He suggests that, perhaps paradoxically, it is England and English culture that that may be the driving force. For the English mind, let alone its political class have little inclination to shift from a centralised to an internally more federalised structure or even a more formalised federal relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom. Overall, this remains the supreme irony of the whole constitutional reform agenda, that so much of it has been of such little consequence for the English. Generally speaking, and despite the profundity of many of the constitutional changes that have taken place, they have carried on regardless. For instance, all the polls suggest that the English remain totally phlegmatic about the prospects of Scottish independence.

As Mitchell concludes, “The probability of greater policy divergence, institutional diversity and differences in the party systems across the UK all suggest that over the long term diversity within this state of unions will become more pronounced, more entrenched.” Yet he also concludes that this may not necessarily lead to break-up, for even if one part of the UK were to secede, economic and social relations would still remain close. Maybe after all, as Mitchell also suggests, this debate need not be that apocalyptic. For whatever happens – and despite the increasingly siren voices of the Eurosceptics – we are all likely to remain part of the ‘ever closer’ European Union.

·      John Osmond is Director of the IWA. Vernon Bogdanor’s The New British Constitution is published by Hart Publishing at £17.95; James Mitchell’s Devolution in the UK is published by Manchester University Press at £60.