Saturday 8 August 2015

Vote Welsh Labour, Vote Mushy Peas?

Our beloved First Minister has bee writing in the New Statesman and managed tell us nothing on where he stands on the Leadership Contest  is
"Too much of our leadership election has been "a gift to our opponents"
He writes
The Labour Party has always been broad church, reflecting the fact that we are part of a wider movement. We win when we bury our differences and pull in the same direction. No-one ever pretended that Ministers in the Attlee or Blair governments were all cut from the same political cloth, but they succeeded by using the talents of all and through recognising that the real enemy was the Tory Party.
Well yes for the Attlee government and he could have made a case for Wilson's leadership . But Blair 's government saw  the Tories as the enemy in that they were their opposition not their polices 
 This isn’t some sort of back-to-the-future paean, just a simple reminder about what we can do together. It would be hugely damaging to the UK, and to Wales, to wait for another generation in the wilderness, to shake ourselves from this increasingly self-destructive slumber. Wales cannot afford to have a Labour Party in Westminster that is not pulling together and offering the country a genuine alternative.

So how does Carwyn  think Labour can retain power by copying him apparent;y
One of the questions I’ve been asked most often in political interviews over the last 12 months, is how Welsh Labour has managed to avoid the sort of wipe-out we’ve recently seen in Scotland. There are very many reasons, lots of them social and demographic beyond the control of any politician – but, where we have managed to succeed is setting out a confident, authentic Welsh Labour brand.
We could simply point out that the Nationalist Party here Plaid Cymru is no where as strong as the SNP and did not have a referendum that awakened Scotland 
But can Carwyn really explain about what is an authentic Weslsh brand

A health service in crisis?
Welsh Education failures?
Proposing to build a M4 relief road in the wrong place?
Local government reorganisation  which looked like it was drawn up on the back of a fag paper?
Carwyn expands on the theme (sort of)

 We’ve not been afraid to go our own way on policies, and we’ve not been afraid to express ourselves in terms that make more sense to a Welsh electorate. To use one of Rhodri Morgan’s famous phrases, we’ve managed to blend the guacamole of New Labour, with the mushy peas of our traditional values. In the coming months and years we will want more freedom to develop our own Welsh Labour identity, and I look forward to hearing more from the leadership candidates about how they can support us in this. We want to remain a proud part of UK Labour. So many of the big questions we face in the future don’t stop or start at the border, but we need the right structures to grow the party in an increasingly federal UK. 

 and yet he makes no call for parity with Scotland not even for control over Policing and Criminal Justice.

Carwyn resembles Sam Booth the genial, ineffectual mayor of Cabot Cove in Murder She Wrote whose main campaign promise is that he will do nothing.

Except that when his Cabinet member Edwina Hart  and Leighton Andrews are allowed to do something they screw it up picking the wrong option.

Welsh Labour  has survived because like Mushy Peas people still have fond memories of and maybe would like to try again but its only part of the meal you wouldn't really want to eat them solely everyday .

At the end of the day you may want a change for something more substantial.


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