Election Fall-Out

John Osmond assesses the impact of the May 2003 National Assembly election on the fortunes of the political parties.

The headline story of the May 2003 Welsh Assembly elections was of Labour recovering its heartland Valley seats of Rhondda, Islwyn and Llanelli from Plaid Cymru and placing itself firmly back in its traditional saddle of dominance, if not complete control, of Welsh politics.

However, a glance at the statistics summarised in Tables 1 and 2 reveals a rather more complex picture. Certainly Labour fought a shrewd campaign and reaped dividends on election night. However, the figures suggest that overall Plaid Cymru lost the campaign as much as Labour won it. This judgement should also be set against the eight per cent decline in turnout, from 46 per cent in 1999 to 38 per cent. This was a situation which had previously been thought to help Plaid Cymru, the party that traditionally had been the most successful in mobilising its core vote.

Table 1: Constituency Vote

Table 2: Regional List Vote

There was a good deal of comment during the campaign that it lacked the feel of a general election with national themes running across the country. Rather, the impression was one of a series of localised contests, typified by John Marek’s falling out with the Labour Party in Wrexham, as a result of which he deprived his former party of an overall majority in the Assembly.

Plaid Cymru’s underlying failure in the election was that as a nationalist party it did not manage to capture any clear or distinctive national themes. Apart from the Welsh language, which did not play a significant part in the campaign, Plaid Cymru is of course, most clearly identified with its constitutional aspiration of greater self governance for Wales. However, in this election it very deliberately put this to one side, saying that the constitution could be considered at a later date, if necessary by a convention of all the parties. Instead it chose to concentrate on bread and butter health and education issues and service delivery in a way that failed to distinguish itself from the Labour Party.

For its part Welsh Labour, under Rhodri Morgan’s leadership, spoke very clearly to its core supporters in the Valleys with a rhetoric built around free prescription charges for all, free breakfasts for all primary schoolchildren, continuing free bus travel for people over 60, no top up fees at Welsh Universities, and scrapping home care charges for disabled people.

Plaid Cymru (along with the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives) failed to question any of this despite the fact that, for example, free prescriptions already extend to 88 per cent of the population. Extending the entitlement to the remaining 12 per cent who can well afford to pay will take £30 million away from the Assembly’s overall budget, and probably more since free entitlement for all will undoubtedly expand demand for prescriptions.

For Labour, however, the commitment played perfectly to its traditional supporters in the key target seats of Rhondda, Llanelli and Islwyn. Not only that, the commitment was firmly attached to an intellectual rationale repeatedly articulated by Rhodri Morgan in the months leading up to the campaign. The clearest expression came in his much quoted ‘Clear Red Water’ speech made in Swansea in November 2002. There he stated that free entitlements such as prescription charges stressed the individual’s position as a citizen rather than consumer. He said it underlined Welsh Labour’s objective of achieving equality and holding together “a complex modern society such as ours … by a powerful glue of social solidarity.”

The force of this position was acknowledged by the most thoughtful of Plaid Cymru’s emerging younger leadership, Carmarthen MP Adam Price. As he put it, “Rhodri Morgan’s speech ditching New Labour and declaring henceforth that there would be ‘clear red water’ between Cardiff Bay and Downing Street is massively significant. Not just for Welsh politics, but for all of us who believe in restoring democratic socialism as the animating principle of the Left.”

It was noteworthy that while Labour did badly in the local elections in England, and also faltered to an extent in Scotland, it emerged as the clear victor in Wales. More than anything else this must surely be due to Rhodri Morgan’s success in carving out a distinctive position against New Labour for his Welsh Labour Party, freshly-minted in its new identity in the wake of the Alun Michael débacle four years ago. Labour’s new and distinctive Welsh profile must surely have acted as a firewall between it and such influences as fall-out from the Iraq conflict.

To be fair to Plaid, its breakthrough across the Valleys four years ago owed a lot to Labour disillusionment with the way Rhodri Morgan had been treated in successive leadership elections and the perception that Alun Michael had been imposed on Wales as a compliant Blair supporter. These circumstances made it easy for Plaid Cymru, the self-proclaimed ‘party of Wales’, to present itself as the patriotic party. But they were circumstances that could not be repeated. Welsh Labour, ably led in this respect by Rhodri Morgan who quickly established himself as the most high profile and likeable figure within the Assembly, took the lesson to heart.

It should also be noted that Labour now holds many constituencies, in particular Conwy, Llanelli, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, Clwyd West, Cardiff North, and Preseli on very narrow majorities, ones that will be highly vulnerable next time round. Unlike its Westminster seats, Labour’s majorities in Cardiff Bay have to counted not weighed.

Nevertheless, in May 2003 Plaid sorely felt the loss of their former leader Dafydd Wigley, who through dint of tireless campaigning over three decades, had made himself known and appreciated across the party divides in Wales. His absence may have lost his party as much as half the 10 per cent of the vote it slipped between 1999 and 2003.

Despite this Plaid could have defined itself far more distinctively against Labour. There were policies in its manifesto that could have helped it achieve this but they were simply not exploited. One was its commitment to spreading wealth and economic activity across the regions of Wales, for example through insisting on regional growth targets, instead of seemingly resigning itself like Labour to the perceived inevitability of continued development along the M4 and A55 corridors. An aggressive campaign on this issue would also have blended well with an insistence that the Objective 1 programme must be made to work more effectively in west Wales and the Valleys, Plaid Cymru’s sphere of influence and potential growth. Such a strategic approach failed to be emphasised, however, and that points to an underlying issue of leadership for Plaid Cymru. As ever, it faces the challenge of blending much more effectively the different character and interests of rural Wales with the Valleys, a challenge that it avoided in May 2003.

The other parties had varying fortunes. Among the longer-term impacts of the result will be the relatively good showing of the Welsh Conservative Party. With its eleven seats and 20 per cent of the vote it is now firmly established as a party of pro-devolution party in the Assembly and a potential future coalition partner. It was noteworthy that in the constituency vote it was the only party to increase its votes despite the drop in turnout. Its future participation in government will be strengthened if it emphasises the social democratic side of its personality, rather that its harder edged, more anglicised dimension.

With Labour in the ascendant the Liberal Democrats did well to hold on to their position, performing especially well in places such as Cardiff Central and Ceredigion. However, they will miss the gloss that coalition government gave them in the first term when, as now seems inevitable, Labour forms the next Assembly Government alone. In these circumstances the Welsh Liberal Democrats will struggle to carve out a distinctive role.

As for Welsh Labour, they now have to deliver their ‘ten pledges’ and trust that the inevitable slings and arrows of fortune continue to treat them kindly. This will be in a political environment that can hardly continue to be so benign as in the first term, when the Assembly Government was held afloat on the British Treasury’s ever rising tide of public expenditure.


John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

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