Progressive Patriotism - Lessons from Wales?

uh good afternoon everybody welcome to this webinar being organized by the center for english identity and politicscalled progressive patriotism lessons from wales if you're wondering why the center for english identity and politicsis having a seminar on progressive patriotism in wales it's partly because the centre is interested more generallyin the links between national identity and and politics and obviously over thelast 20 years national identity has become significantly more important inscotland in wales and even in england where it's often said it doesn't play a role in politics in 2019 70 percent ofthe people who said there were more english than british virgin conservative and jeremy corbyn's labour partyactually won amongst the people who are more british than english so these things are live everywhereand second reason of course for raising this is that 20 years agothere was a labor majority in each nation on the island of britainnow wales is the only place where labour is in government so understanding howwhy that has happened is obviously of interest yes to the labour party and the rest of britain but also to otherparties rivals and opponents as well we've got a great panel to uhlead the discussion uh today leighton andrews is a professor ofpractice in public service leadership and innovation at cardiff business school layton was elected to the nationalassembly as it then was in 2003 for ronda and he served there till 2016and had periods as a deputy minister minister for education skills and minister for public servicesmikhantaniev has been the welsh labor and co-op member for the senate in ponte pre since since 2011 he served ascouncil general for wales from 2016 to 17 and took that post up again this yearand he's the author of we the people the case for radical federalism and ourfinal speaker will be laura mcallister who is currently professor of public policy and governance of wales at thewelsh governance centre at cardiff university and a very widely respected observer of welsh politics andconstitutional issues just before we start to say the there isa chat function that you can use but there's also a question and answer function if you'd like uh to put aquestion which i would put on your behalf please use the q a button because that's the one that i'mgoing to be monitoring um most uh closely and you are able there to indicate if you support somebody else'squestion being a priority so to get us underway i'll go first touh layton andrews who i think is going to give us a longer term it'll be his judgment how long term but a longer termperspective on the evolution of welsh labour leighton uh thank you john and i'm going to tryand cover in my contribution politics policy and culture and i'm going to leave constitutional issues to mick andto laura let me take you back to 1999 in the first elections for thenational assembly the labour party in wales went into those elections with no real welshpolicies with a party that was actually quite divided because it had had a there'dbeen a bruising leadership battle between alan michael and rodri morganand labour underperformed what people had expected it to do in those first assembly elections it won 28 seats 27constituency seats one list seat implied cumrey had its best uh everresult and not not excelled since the next year rodery morgan takes overas uh leader of the labor assembly group and as what wasthen called first secretary and during that period of 200 200 2003um welsh labor really develops it develops policies it develops brandingas welsh labor rod reform rodery terms the welsh executive the welsh assembly governmenta coalition is formed with liberal democrats roderi develops aa an approach to labor in wales welsh labor which in a sense if you like is definednot only against other parties but also to a degree against new labor in londontypified by a phrase he never partic never actually used in a speech but was written into the text clear redwater and part of that welsh labour identity let me say the welsh language alsostarted to become more important 2003 elections welsh labour wins 30 outof the 60 seats in the assembly regaining heartland seats previously lost to plycomre and it had a range ofwales-based policies including for example free bus travel for pensioners free and free prescriptionsin 2007 you know just before gordon brownlee takes over from tony blairwelsh labor has a poor election result down to 26 seatsfaced with the threat of an all-party rainbow coalition in government labor nevertheless carries on ingovernment this i think demonstrates the importance to rodri morgan and othersof maintaining the reins of government roderi understood the importance of power and that attempted a rainbowcoalition breaks down wales welsh labor then forms the onewales coalition with plied comrade this if you like is a historic compromise ahistoric compromise endorsed by the welsh labour conference and interestingly of course most welshlabour mps were against this coalition most welsh labor assembly members werein favor it so power clearly shifts within the labour party in wales within welsh laborfrom westminster to cardiff bay wales if you like rejects labour'straditional westminster-ism welsh labor is also able to renew ingovernment in 2009 following a leadership contest carowindjones is elected as as leader and then we have the ukconlib coalition from may 2010 uh in that periodthere's a referendum on the powers of the assembly which endorses the role of the assemblywelsh labor campaigns under the slogan standing up for wales very much building that notionof the party and its identification with the welsh people into its messaging andin may 2011 welsh labour again wins 30 out of the 60 seatsin that period of course of the conled coalition we see what becameknown as the war on wales david cameron taking aim at the welsh health servicemichael gove taking aim at the welsh education service and that helped in a sense reinforcethat sense that that that notion of welsh labor standing up for walesagainst westminster um i'm going to skip now quickly to 2021where we've seen welsh labor again win 30 out of the 60 seats on the back of i thinkwhat it was been a significant competence boost demonstrated through the handling of the covert 19 pandemicbut that has also raised significantly the consciousness of devolution both in wales and the uk from that period in may2020 as welsh labour under mark drakeford took a different approach fromthe uk government mark's profile probably has been the highest of any labor first ministersince devolution i'm not going to run through in detail policies that have been specific towales but welsh labor has been able to developpolicies that have been different for example in reaction to austerity creating uh the proin reaction to sorry the great financial crack crash creating the proact wage subsidy schemeit's maintained its policies despite austerity free bus travel free prescriptions free breakfast simple thepoorest schools while students avoided the 9 000 pound fees in the 2012-2016 period and subsequent to thatthere's been a new grant scheme employer support grants saved what employee workers jobs educationmaintenance allowance was retained trade unions in wales public servicetrade unions wales legislated to take them out of the provisions of the2016 trade union act new child care policies introduced the well-being of future generations act theviolence against women act etc so else labor has been able to mount an effective policy program in oppositionto the uk government reinforcing that sense of standing up for wales and waleshad foundational economy policies before we had the concept of the foundationaleconomy finally i want to say is about culture there are many forms of welshness justas there are many forms of englishness but wales is a small country and that is part ofits identity well welshness reflects that and you can see that in some of thethings what morgan says is in his own autobiography you can see it in some of the things mark drakeford has said quite recentlyreferring to our special country on saturday the day that uh gareth bale won his hundred capswelshness lends itself because of that small country status to narratives ofanti-colonialism and indeed to narratives of class resistance welshnessis very much an oppositional philosophy it's not clear that englishness isnecessarily though there is some evidence in the research by elsa henderson and richard wynne jonesto suggest that perhaps it has become a form of resistance and of course there has within englishand it's been a long historical narrative of throwing off the norman yoke but you'd have to go back a fewcenturies to look into that but it's been a deeply cultural response and you see itin the bbc wales advert for the six nations tournament stereophonics song as long as we beat the english we're allright you see it in gareth bale's baiting of the english football team in 2016 and ofcourse in wales the red wall means something completely different from england because the red wall is theofficial supporters club for the football association of wales so welsh labor has had a clear identificationof itself and its politics as labour standing up for wales it's developed distinct policies and it has significantcultural resonance and the one thing i will say on the constitution of course is that welshlabour has not been afraid to open up questions of the uk stateand which welch labor has taken significantly different positions from both uk labor and scottish laborthank you very much indeed that that's a brilliant way of getting us underway and your threepoints about identification policy and cultural resonance i'm sure we'll come back to and say to people on the call ifyou've got questions do you start putting them into the q a function i made a mistake you can't actually upvotethem uh it seems it's only the hosts and the panelists who can see the questions but do put them in there and i will drawon those when we get to the discussion but to follow on from leighton can we go straight to mick pleasewell thank you very much and thank you for inviting me to this and it's one of a number of debates taking placeall around the uk actually on this issue of constitution i've had people say to me well the constitution isn't importantno one's raised it on the doorstep well i find that difficult to believe bearing in mind the number of years we've justhad on brexit and the debates we're having now uh which are clearly all aboutconstitution perhaps it's the way people actually see it though on the way these things impact on their liveslike late and i was involved in the early referendum on uh devolution in 1979 the failed uh referendum the onethat is rarely mentioned these days but it is worth mentioning because it shows over the 40 yearshow significantly uh mood and opinion has shifted within wales in 1979 labourlost uh hands down the referendum admittedly on the back the tail end of auh increasingly unpopular labor government but nevertheless the fact that devolution was rejectedoverwhelmingly english-speaking well-speaking areas across wales uh byand large so those shifts constitution have been significant so 1999 when the senate when the whenthe national assembly of wales was established even from them to the present day so thelast 20 years the mood and the opinion and the dynamic of politics i think hasshifted still further the assembly when it was set up was effectively a form of administrativecouncil it then moved through legislation through the 2006 government of wales actto obtain legislative powers it then moved still further to becomeeffectively a full parliament a senator as it is now called but a a parliamentwith legislative powers why is that significant one significant one because it is very different to howit was uh when it was established and certainly very different to what was talked about back in 1979 whereas whenwhere labour as late and rightly identifies was incredibly divided and in fact inpredominantly antagonistic uh towards concept of devolutionand the reason these things are important i think is because there is an id a dynamic that haschanged and it has changed around identity as well and it has changed the framework ofthe whole basis of the uk and westminster sovereignty and i think the issue of sovereignty and sharedsovereignty is now a fundamental point in terms of understanding the um isuppose the conflicts the dysfunctions that exist constitutionally but also the way in which they can actually beresolved and i take the view that when uh when you just had the one parliament inwestminster the one legislature it was clear where sovereignty laid but the moment you created the momentparliaments were established with legislative powers in wales and scotland and the exact and in northern ireland aswell i think that sovereignty changed because if we truly believe that sovereignty lies with the people the moment youcreate an elected parliament with legislative powers that sovereignty begins to be coming that is shared andpart of the constitutional conflict we have now uh which also feeds into identity as wellis over really what the role of westminster is what is the role of the uk parliamentand until that is actually resolved i think this function will continue later and also referred the course tothe clear red water issue now i think that is actually quite important because what it shows is these distinction thatwas developing uh in terms of uh the creation of specific welsh policies a specific welshidentity uh within politics and within the uk political structure and the fact that ithink within wales that has been done has been something that has uh i think carried people with it is part of thereason for the success of welsh labor over the past couple of decadesi think the idea from those who are critical of that who support perhaps the more centralizedpan-uk labour politics i think the answer is that the moment thatdevolution was established uh the moment that it moved towards uh creators ofbecoming parliaments rather than assemblies wales was never going to continuepolitically as an appendage to a sort of broader uk centralized politics anyonewho thought that i think was always a misunderstanding of the way in which devolution and the decentralization ofpower works and i think the other factor that's occurring across the uk now which issignificant and i think with welsh labor has managed to consolidate is the politics of identity of communitypolitics and i think there are two big factors one is globalization in which people want to be seen to have morecontrol over their uh their affairs or feel that they have the decisions taken which they have no control over and thatof course exacerbated by de-industrialization which has broken down what were and i'm a verysignificant pan uh pan uk uh structures whether it be mining whether it be steelwhether it be heavy industry and so on and the the loss of those i think has had been significantso where are we now where we had the senate elections as there's already been mentioneduh earlier this year uh labor had certainly a result that was boosted by isuppose the competence point that has been made in respect of covert but i think there is somethingclear i think there was a very distinct and a very clear uh position uh that was taken by welshlabor based on welsh values based on uh welsh polity policies welsh competencethe benefit i suppose of being in government for a number of years putting all those togetherand what was it able to show was that there has been divergence that there isconstitutional uh issues that are important to democracy and the delivery of public servicesuh and then the policy agenda which also includes things that are are not onlyvery welsh but very socialist and traditionalist within the labor tradition which i think is very much uhtuned and accorded with wells people and welsh thinking you know if you look at the issue of the fact that the airportbeing taken into public ownership the railways now being in public ownership the support for cooperative and mutualuh initiatives uh the fact that there is a social partnership uh bill underway toconsolidate and create for the first time in the uk a statutory body thatpulls together government business uh and uh trade unions uhwithin a set within a framework that has socio-economic objectives uh i thinkthose things are very very significant and i think they feed in and they've managed to establish i think an idea that um uh there'snothing wrong with difference there's nothing wrong with divergence uh i do not take that there is any sort of greatgrowth of uh antagonism to other nations the uk in fact what i actually what i actually thefeeling i get is really that the the ability to work as a coalition within wales in all governments in wales of oneway or another been a coalition since devolution has been one that has enableduh i i think i think not only the creation of our identity but the creation of a set of policiesand they and i i think a certain degree of pride in putting wales first andputting the people of wales first in an environment where people feel increasingly uh non-represented ordisempowered and i think those are the those are the key factors i think that haveled i think to those election results in may but also to the fact the consolidation now of welsh labor as anentity in itself within the labour party and i don't think that should be underestimated and that accords verymuch with what i think we begin to see in the regions of england whether it be manchester liverpool the success labor'shad within mayoral elections where community identity has been much more significant and the constitutionalcommission that uh is being set up is one which is about actually looking at how we enhance democracy within waleshow we look at the options for what our future relationship might be but as the first minister says first minister hassaid the irresponsibility of not being aware of events that are taking place inthe rest of the uk whether that be in england or whether it be in scotland or indeed in northern ireland no thanksgreat thank you very much indeed mick and that complements what leighton had to say perfectly can i say to theaudience the moment the chat function the q a functions now being changed so you can actually see the questions thathave been posed uh upvote ones you like and and add your own so please do uh usethat we're already getting some questions coming in so to to have a reflection or a responseon both those contributions um from an academic point of view can i turn nowto laura laura please uh john thank you very much yes i mean i think i'm here just to give you a sortof academic context to some of the remarks that my good colleagues leighton and mick have raised and by the way iagree with a lot of what's been said but i'll push back at a little bit of it i mean i appreciate this isn't a seminaron labour's electoral success although it is relevant of course becauseyou know next year will mark the centenary of labor labor's domination of welsh politics youknow 100 years of winning every national election and that's quite some achievement you know and i'm surethere'll be great parties in welsh labor around that but i do think harsher and more difficult challengeslie ahead for for welsh labour than the one ones they face certainly in may this year and there's a couple of reasons whyi think labour did so well in the may elections um mark drakeford is a big bigfactor in that layton mentioned his visibility his awareness and indeed his popularity you know i think if youcontrast that with previous first ministers i think carolyn jones was still not known by a large chunk of thepopulation despite being in power for a decade whereas mark drakeford was actually uh better known than kiestamain some of our polling before the senate elections and those that did know him uhby and large gave pretty high approval ratings and of course kovid had a significant umuh role in elevating mark's profile but it was more about what welsh labour did to capture the success that they gainedat the ballot box in may and if i could just start with something that we do know from the welsh election serverwhich i think is really critical to all of this is that labor probably always but more so than everhas done very well amongst people who feel more welsh than british but it's gained support from acrossacross the spectrum unlike the other two uh parties so whereas labour has gainedsupport mainly from people or predominantly from people who feel welsh and i think that was played extremelywell by the way tactically in the senate elections it also didn't uh hemorrhagesupport from those voters who feel predominantly british or fit somewhere in between that spectrum and i think weall know that's a very hard and delicate balancing act for a political party to manage during an election um context itsopponents and and again you know different to scotland i'll come on to that in a moment different to scotlandlabour was was facing two very different opponents in terms of the wash conservatives on plague country and bothof those parties if you look at where they gained their greatest degrees of support were not surprisingly in theconservatives case from those who felt more british but then a steep steep decline for the conservatives amongstthose who felt more welsh the other way round you know turn that on his head for played camry and you can see why there'sa ceiling for the support that both of those parties could get i think that's a really important uh precursor to anyconversation about where labour's identity fits with voters at the momentthe other point i'd make really and i think both mick and leighton alluded to this is that for welsh labor in thiselection it was a case of bringing people back into voting labor ratherthan breaking new ground and i think that's really really important in terms of profile and um and success of that imean hesitate to use the language of kind of coming back home because you know it sounds terriblypatronizing um and and i think that's probably a mistake in terms of voters minds but what lit welsh labor didn'thave to do was entice back with new offers this was about elevating what i think mickreferred to as typical wash values or typical values that are important to thevast majority of welsh people therefore presenting them as labor values therefore attracting them backinto the labor fo fold and that whole kind of slogan of if you value it vote for it really appealedi think to the psyche of wales in may after 18 months of uh you know obviouslya global um pandemic um that takes me on tothe juxtapositioning of labor and its identity with plaid camry reallyimportant because i think the mistake a lot of people make when they look at this whole question of patriotismidentity uh in politics is they immediately compare wales with scotland and that can be a useful comparison butit's not the only one you know we've got to look at comparisons between wales and england as well really different i think in terms ofrelationships with clyde camry i think the best way of putting it is that labor is effectively muted appliedum you know you can put this in a a whole host of ways whether it's kind of labor moving its tank on to playedcountry loans or you know being a soft nationalist party i mean actually i think if anything welsh labor has beenprobably harder on um issues of constitution and identity than umthan just being a soft nationalist party so i think you know it it's very different clearly it hasn't had to gohead-to-head with play-camry in the same way that um scottish labor has had to dowith the snp um indeed the conversations that are ongoing between welsh labor and playcompany now tell you something about shared ideological ground particularly around constitutional mattersum and i think that's a really a really significant factor umleadership comes into play too i think mark drakeford's identity as awelsh-speaking west wailian again neutered some of the territory that plaguery would have been happiermoving into and of course that space has been squeezed out by um mark's predecessors as well in in the form ofroger morgan and um and carolyn jones um the other academic point to make iguess if we're looking at voting patterns in the election and how this has some resonance on the debate thatwe're having is that originally in the 1999 elections leighton talked a bitabout this um plague country did extremely well in persuading people whowould normally vote labor at uk elections to vote applied at cenedelections or assembly elections as was um it did that best in 1999 but it's it'sdone it pretty much uh sorry applied has done that pretty much throughout the history of devolution with differentdegrees of success i think what we can say about the 2021 election was that labour staunched that flowso it was capturing ground from people um who would normally have voted pride in a senate election and labor in a ukelection and i think a lot of that comes down to identity um and the kind of language that was being used by markdrakeford and and welsh labour during that campaign and finally john if i made just a word on independence because umas nick alluded to um i'm i'm co-chairing a commission that mick uh has established um which will look atall options for wales's constitutional future and and i have to say i think that shows a degree of bravery from aparty in government a party that i don't know if it's fair to call labor a unionist party but a party that is atleast technically committed to reforming the union of the nations of the ukhowever that looks in the future so i think it's a brave move to set up a commission that has a remit to look atevery potential option but bear in mind where labor is amongst people who support independence at the moment andthis is significantly different to scotland you know the research that we've got shows that labor in the lastelection gained between 40 and 50 percent of independence supportersso cli played in a sense couldn't muscle in even on its single constitutional um aimof independence because more people who supported independence voted for labor than they did um for for applied on itsown split in other parties as well so different to scotland where the snp owns the issue of independence here thequestion of support for independence can actually take place within the context of welsh labour and within uh thecontext of plague country that's significant i think for the future um um particularly and the final point i makeabout independence is that you know clearly far more people oppose independence in wales and support it butthe interesting bit about independence is always those people who are what we've all called indie curious thepeople who want to have conversations about independence they're not necessarily people who would um stillconvert to be an independent supporters but the fact those conversations are happening within and out with thepolitical parties is a significant one and at the moment it looks like labour'sprogressive patriotism or however you want to term it in its identity is allowing it to move in safely into thatterritory as well and i think that will be significant electorally as well as constitutionally in the futurethank you very much indeed laura and that again was excellent and that the the picturethat you're presenting there uh which if i've got the strong people can challenge me on when i come to the answers butessentially they're not being the same no-go areas for the labor votes either amongst thesort of british and english uh or the independent supporters that thereare perhaps in scotland with the the no-go areas amongst those people who wholly reject the union or there seem tobe at the moment for labor uh in england amongst many people who emphasize theirenglish identity uh rather than than others so i hope we can continue to explore that theme i'm going to takesome questions now from just to remind people from the q a function if i cani'll pick up ones from the chat too but i'll take them to q a and i'm going to bundle some of these togetheruh in themes which is i think the best way of doing it and i want to start really with this question about brexitwhich has been touched on and what has happened here in lucas asked why did vale wells vote for it and how shouldwelsh labor now approach the issue of brexit joe lindsey says it you know it seems that in waleslabor managed to hang on to or win back people who voted brexit whereas in the get brexit done election of 2019 thatwas almost the polarizing issue in the english election of 2019and um hugh jones asked a more general question aboutis there a contradiction between um well's apparent progressive politics and the support there was in the welshelection election for for brexit but can we can we have a look at this brexit what do wedraw from brexit both wales voting for it and then labor apparently winning those voters back and what does that saythat welsh labour should be saying about brexit in the future um leightonokay i i want to uh link the brexit question i think to a couple of points that mick made in hisuh in his contribution just now where he talked about globalization andindeed de-industrialization because the experience umof a lot of people in wales had been that globalization didn't work for them um you know i think about the burberryworkers in my former constituency of the ronda who saw their factory clothes in2007 with a lot of the work being offshored uh particularly to chinaand the campaign that was run by the trades unions and which we were very much involved there was very much aboutthe the notion of keeping burberry british and i think i was never in anyparticular doubt that wales was probably going to vote for brexit back in 2016just on the experience and the comments i was getting on the doorstep i'd never before heard the word sovereignty comeup on the doorstep as it did in in in that period as we were campaigning in 2016 for theassembly elections but i do think um that de-industrialization was one of thekey factors um that had an impact many of the factors whywales voted brexit were the same as white people voted brexit in england in terms of where people go now you knowi may be one of the last people to ask this i was a fervent second referendumand i was on every people's vote march that there was but i thought that though it's not my position thephrase that kiyostama came out with a few weeks ago that it was no longer about getting brexit done it was aboutmaking brexit work it's probably given that this issue is now i suspectsadly uh resolved for a generation the uk has left the european union i thought thatphrase making brexit work gave quite a lot of opportunities forwelsh labor and uk labor in fact in the sense of identifying what that might mean youknow closer working with european partners rather than always in their face you know all of those things itseems to me matter and finally i want to say because it bears on a question that i saw in theq a from peter hayne i think one of the the messages that weought to be thinking about is deindustrialization is not patrioticwhen in a pandemic you have to ship in ppe uh from overseaswhen in a pa and and what you know mick can talk about what the welsh labour government has done in fact in respect to some of thiswhen in a uh when post-pandemic you find you can't get glass vials for blood teststhen that starts to open up it seems to me a whole new conversation about deindustrialization aboutstrategic industries and about what is patrioticthank you very much i'll go to you next make and perhaps you can you oryour laura could shed some light on the apparent success of winning back brexit votersit almost feels in england as though once somebody had voted brexit they weren't likely to vote labor again thatdoesn't seem to be in your experience it'd be interesting to know if i'm right about that and was there a particularappeal to those voters or was it the things we've already been talking about that appeared to work mickwell i think you have to start you start from the point which is where i think layton was going is that one of the realunderlying factors in the brexit vote was disempowerment and inequality ithink those things emanate we see this all around the world and in terms of the election and brexit imean it's very clear a lot of people that voted brexit came back to like they might have beentraditional labor voters in the past why did they do that i think they did that one because the language from welshlabor began to focus again on policies and services that relate to their liveswhich are important and that was accompanied by i think a reputation for competence that hademerged out of covid i mean i'd walk down the street with the first with mark drakefordand it was like being with a film star people coming up to take photographs yes people knew him but the number ofpeople particularly over 50s who came out to say thank you for what you've done so that that combination of thatthat confidence i think was really significant now what has also happened though isthat well now that you sort of moved away from the sort of core battle over brexitwhat you're coming back to is of course is now a struggle with uk government which is a centralizing government whichbelieves in fact taking back control meant taking back control to londonto westminster so there are two areas i think where to some extent the narrative that was builtbegins to work the other way so i was able to say in the senate the other way the the other week that to some extentwhat we're doing in terms of constitutional reform is looking at taking back controland how is it how can it be possible for people who oppo who supported brexitnot to actually go down that line saying well why shouldn't wells have more control and then it also leads you to the otherthing of leveling up which is leveling up the constitution that what brexit has resulted in a increased dysfunction inin the relationship in terms of standards the umbrella of the eu is gone and that means that you've actually gotto reappraise the relationship between the nations and i think that is something that is also emerging and ithink that also began to tie in a little bit with the respect for the fact of welsh labor that the once labor identityuh came across very strongly the moment you took the welsh off it it began to be seen to me differently soi i i think i just think the dynamic of policies the dialectics of politicshas changed and it has shifted uh laura is absolutely right thoughthere's no easy ride ahead for labor the the politics and the cohesiveness is as fragile as it ever was i suppose thedifference between wells and scotland is that whilst labor is embracing that change uh on the basis of values and soon and that is i think that is a very very distinctive difference as wellthank you very much i like the the suggestion of subverting the language uh in the way that you're talking aboutthere laura brexit voters yes just just a couple of points from me i mean i wasgoing to start with the language point i mean i think the best compliment you can play pay to your opponents is obviouslyto try and use the language that was successful for a more progressive causei mean i say that with some hesitation because i think we've got to be careful about assuming that brexit isn't part of a progressiveagenda many of us sure feel it isn't but for some voters and some voters on the left there is aanother argument that brexit can be entwined with a progressive agenda so let's not let's be careful not to playout the same kind of failure of the yes campaign back in 2016by assuming that we you know are always speaking the language of people around us i think that's very very important umbut i think the taking back control leighton mentioned sovereignty and governance i thinktranslating really fundamental issues of sovereignty and governance into understandable meaningful language likeget getting more autonomy um assuming that we can control our own affairs will actually play out very differently nowin the constitutional debate that we're about to have um in wales um i think some some people in the quest in thequestionnances were asking why did wales vote brexit if you know progressive politics and labor voting is so uhnormalized well i think there's a whole host of reasons for that which i won't go into but let's remind ourselves thatwe've always had a very tightly constrained welsh public sphere and uhhugely limited by um a pretty immature media but more generally there's been very very few opportunities to havedistinctive debates in wales that involve more than a tiny proportion of the population and unfortunately brexitplayed that out writ large um i think just a point about elections and and kind of a word of warning um weknow that in many respects welsh voters are not as polarized purely by yes and no in brexitreferendums as they might be in other parts of the uk and we also know that the welsh identity featurewelsh identity factor featured as much amongst no voters as it did amongst yes voters so you know when you mix all thatup into the kind of marble cake of identities you can see why it wasn't ever going to be impossible for welshlabor to capture that vote back but remember it is completely contingent onelectoral context too because labor did lose voters who were brexit supportersin the 2019 and 2017 general elections they didn't lose them and in fact theycaptured them back in 2021 senate election but that wasn't a brexit election we know that in terms ofstalin's brexit featured much much more um more low in the list of priorities so contextplays fundamentally in that as well thank you and i think that's an important point it's often forgottenbecause labour party has its own rights about the corbyn legacy but that in 2017jeremy corbyn did much much better against it amongst english identifying election voters in an election where brexit wasapparently not on the agenda than he did in 2019 where it was became the centralissue so that question of context is obviously important outside of wales as wellum could we just pursue a bit longer the question of de-industrialization whichlayton has all ready raised but there are two questions one from my old friend and colleaguepeter hayne and another one from um uh guarant powellreally suggesting that asking about the effect of de-industrialization and particularly onpolitics outside the big cities and whether actually the big there's something of an english trendfor labour's strength to be in the big cities and whether labour's patriotic agenda is going to besufficient to hold power in the future in those de-industrialized and smallercommunities where clearly labor has done badly uh in in england um mick do youhave a view about the strategy for those areas is this right as growing says that there's a bigcity phenomenon developing in wales um well i think the difficulty with thequestion is we don't really have a big city society within wales most people in wales don't live in big cities you knowwe really have i suppose four four major cities uh and a number of smaller smaller smaller towns so the majority ofyou know the working class communities within wales i mean if you look at the big block of labor seats that red blockof small compact seats which which delivers so many legacies none of them are in the big cities i mean it is anirony of course that uh wells labour has done very well within the big cities as well actually winning most most of theseats amongst what are even more sort of perhaps a a slightly more prosperous and more middle-class uh communities i thinkthe point about the the outside the cities forlabor in in wales is of course that you have a decliningum tradition community of people who have that experience of living through theindustrial you know the former miners the former steel workers factory workers manufacturers and so on and you have anew generation of people that are that are coming through who've never seen it never seen a lump of coal etc um and ithink the key is is the actual uh raison d'etre for what labor stands for it's the values so the things i see beginningto come through increasingly are things like the environment they are the focus on public services and on the deliverythey are on health and of course most labor's in quite a strong position there not because there aren't majorchallenges on health there are across the uk in the world but in terms of umthe the nature of the population the age of the population but the fact also that we haven't developed the internal marketand all that sort of stuff with it within health so we have different narratives around ours but i think for the bigcities for labour i think in england i think the issue is very different to the one that it is withinwales thank you anything to add to that laura just just very quickly i think it's backto my point that um where where welsh labour is different is it straddles manydifferent demographics in terms of its appeal in wales which which it doesn't in england at the moment and itcertainly doesn't in scotland so it can capture the leave remain umvoters it can capture people in urban areas and there's some potential for growth by the way outside urban areas aswell um it's that's different not only to its opponents in wales but it's probably different to labor in englandand i think that's quite significant yeah layton do you have anything you've touched on this earlier anything to addor should i move on to another two two quick points i think i'm first i'm glad mike made the point that by and largepeople in wells don't live in big cities and the valleys valley constituencies are easily misunderstood it seems to mesome of the most beautiful landscape in the country uh some of the same problems that many rural areas have closurefacilities particularly after austerity for example and i think also there's astrong sense of loss very often which is related to that whole issue not only of communityfacilities have been shut because of austerity but also to de-industrialization and a strongsense that those communities that have built uh the industrial baseum of the uk have not been treated fairly and that comes out in i think ina a strong sense of a desire for a fairer society that welsh labour has been able to build onyeah can i ask on that though why why has labour not sufferedfrom the incumbency factor in those communities and it may be down to the policies ofthe assembly in the senate but looking at many of the reports that have been produced on the red wall seats inengland one factor in the conservative insurgency has been the fact that people have been voting for labour council forthe last 100 years and these things have apparently disappeared under under labourwelsh labor doesn't seem to have suffered though it may have had setbacks in in 2019 and and 2017 in the generalelection doesn't seem to have suffered from the blame of incumbency uh inintellectual politics in the way that's happened elsewhere and also happened in scotland is is there a reason formanaged to overcome the blame for these changes and actually putting the blame probably where they will fairly lie withthe industrialization and globalization layton umwell i mean i think there have been setbacks i mean i think that you know i lost my seat to the leader ofapplied country in 2016 and part of the reason for that was a reaction toeducational reorganization in the borough by the labor councilso you know i i i i don't think welsh labor has been able to cut itself adrift from that there have been a number ofexamples uh in elections where labour local authorities lost significant powerwhere labour's lost significant power in local authorities across wales certainly in the early 2000s for exampleso labor's had to readjust to that it's had to be new and it's had tolearn the lessons of that and i think it's had to learn those lessonsfrom probably the first assembly elections in 1999 which of course alsocoincided with uh local authority elections which for example in rome the quran and taf resulted in plaguerywinning that borough as well as winning the ronda constituency seat okayi'm sorry i'll show you sorry jamaica yeah just just to bounce off something that layton has quiterightly alluded to there and then take it a stage further i think we've got to be careful about this um idea thatincumbency um you know hasn't bitten labor i mean i think it came very closeto doing so in the uk general elections but labor hang on in there in some ofthe so-called red wall seats in northeast where's and you know lost some of them so it was a kind of mixed bag itdidn't hit it didn't hit welsh labour as badly as it hit the labour party in england admittedly but i think thesenate elections were all together different because in some re in some regards incumbency became an asset thenbecause of covid and the fact that being the government in power and demonstrating competence and authorityin the handling of covid gave incumbency a positive slant which obviouslybenefited mark drakeford um and and welsh labor i think the otherfactor to bring into account is the opposition parties i mean you know you there's a whole host of things youcould say about welsh conservatives and pike country but i think the best thing to say about both of them is they'vethey had neither party has had a strategy for success um and neither party really hasunderstood how to target its resources in the best way to win an election andwinning an election in wales is complicated of course by our weird and wonderful electoral system which islooking increasingly dysfunctional by the way as days as days progress but ofcourse it's quite easy or relatively easy to get a majority um of seats with35 to 40 percent of the vote with the electoral system we have despite it being a hybrid pr system and i'm not thethe two opposition parties have been pretty appalling at working out how they might actually penetrate the labor votebecause the only way they could ever become a large party and dominate a future government is by winningconstituency seats off welsh labour and quite frankly i mean leighton's alluded to his um his defeat in ronda but apart fromthat really you can count on you know both hands really how successful either of the opposition parties have been inwinning constituency seats off welsh labour okay mick thank you laura mick itis certainly the case that voting has become far more volatile across allparties and across all parts of wales the fact that uh labour almost in the 2017 general election took the mostwell-speaking constituency in the whole of wales you know by margin of sort of ayou know several uh tens of several tens of votes and i think that shows that thediversity the hardcore traditional industrial labor voter that will votelabor come what may you know the red rosetta the donkey type narrative that's always given uh that doesn't exist idon't think it ever existed actually but it doesn't exist now not not at the scale that it used to andwhat you have is a larger portion of the population is what you might call the soft labour vote or sometimes the softclyde vote where there is a lot of uh commonality i i think of of of politicsand i think just as just as uh was labor has moved far more in terms of the national identitylanguage and so on uh equally so um as plague come he moved far more trying tobeat more labor than labour at times particularly doing new york so that sort of crossover we have one ofthose sort of circular venn diagram things where they cross over there is an enormous area of commonality etc whichmeans that you have to politics you have to vote and fight that much harder to actually one get people to vote andthat's a big issue in itself now so getting people to actually turn out to vote but actually then winning thatvote and i think that is where wellesley has been most secure because it has managed to across the whole of wales interms of language in terms of identity in terms of competence in terms of economy and in terms of traditionuh has been able to pull those together into a identity which i think the opposition parties haven't been able todo thank you very much indeed i want to ask you a question now a couple of questions about resources andfinance um one um i think i should put the question from tom jackson who suggests that welshlabour support is underpinned by a generous settlement from the barnet formula i suspect somebody will want torespond to to the idea that barnett's particularly generous for walesbut ian lucas another colleague former colleague of mine asks about theresponse now to an issue that's already been raised which is the attempt of the ukgovernment with its muscular unionism to reassert uh control or influence over things thathave previously been devolved for example um bringing the shared prosperity fundedleveling up funding back into whitehall to deal directly with with welsh localities so firstlywhere does well sit financially and secondly what is the political response to a much more assertive unionist uniongovernment than we've seen previously uh mick i'll come to you first on that if i may look the start the starting point isis that despite everything that's been said recently about how much money is being poured into wales by the end ofthe three year financial program financial termwe will still be in real terms three billion pounds worse off than we were in 2010 so austerity hasn't actually goneaway and that when the leveling up fund which has now become a bit of a has become as it was always intended to be a politicaltool that the promise that we would wales wouldn't lose a penny is quite clearly recognized now to have been uhan untruth let's put it put it that way but what you have seen now is the politics of leveling up funding uh theuk government is spending 120 million pounds in wales as part of the leveling up fund isn't that wonderful of coursein actual fact if we if we'd still been in the eu we'd have probably had 375 million so it is actually a 255 millionpound cut so we have the politics of sort of the way words and language are used that i think is going to become abit of a battleground uh but unless you're right barnet but i think the mistake when people talk about barnet isthat somehow it's this gift to wales it's the generosity of london and the englishbarnet benefits london it benefits the northeast and northwest and it benefits scotland it was about always trying tocreate a certain amount of redistribution of wealth and equality around the whole of the ukuh the fact is it could operate much better it could be could have a needs-based which would be aa lot fairer but it is one of the on detroit it is one of the reasons for being part of the union and that is thatthe issue of equality and redistribution of wealth is absolutely fundamental uh so but when it is presented as thoughthat is the only reason why wales should remain part of a union then i think thatis a fundamental weakness there's got to be more to it than that uh it isn't areason i think why people why people vote for uh wealth labor uh i don't think it's even a reason why people votefor a unionist party or otherwise i think most people aren't actually really aware of how that funding works but itis directly relevant because it enables uh services to be provided in poorer areasacross the uk but it is certainly not something that is a sort of gift to the welsh it is something that rises out ofan entitlement to a relationship and the more those commonalities are uh reducedin impact the greater the likelihood and the fragmentation of the fragmentation of the ukyeah uh latin i i don't really have a lot to add to what bricks just said but i mean twoquick points one is of course that the barnet formula has been found by research over manyyears to be particularly beneficial to scotland given theuk government's perennial concerns about scotland i suspect that they will not do anything toaddress that but i do think it is important to acknowledge what is really happening at the moment that there is adeliberate political strategy to undermine the devolved institutions andnot only through the shared prosperity fund the leveling up fund but alsoof course through the operation of the internal market act and the way in which uh other funds suchas the city regions program are used to build new kinds of alliances that thatseek to for the uk government that seek to undermine the devolved administrationsthank you laura any thoughts yeah just just a couple of quick thingsi mean i i think that's a very valid point about lump in wales in with scotland when we talk about barnet youknow i just give you um hs2 as an example you know class is an england and wales projectlondon olympics you know where clearly wales's return has been pretty shocking so let's you know we've got a there'sgot to be a greater awareness of the differences and the lack of uh umthe lack of use of a formula that's based on need that impacts directly on wales compared to uh its impact inscotland and secondly the point about muscular unionism i mean i think this is a really important one because you knowis it newton's law you know for every action there is an opposite reaction and i think i think actually the kind ofsimplistic muscular unionism that the uk government is following you know the kind ofbrandishing union jack and you know we came close to having a gigantic union jacked in me outside um the mainentrance to cardiff uh central station that kind of unionism is seems to me tobe completely anachronistic and and it's it's almost as if you you know when you missed the boat you still tried to swimout to the boat you know and i think that's not really where things are in the debate about um the union i meanwe've had uh the first minister in wales talking about the fact that the union cannot survivein its current form and that reform is inevitable and it's about shaping that reform i think that's a much betterstarting point for a conversation about what relationships we want to be in placebetween the nations of the uk and that actually takes in everything from devolution as it stands to independencebecause even if scotland were to be independent or all whales or both would be independent there would still be a relationship between the nations on uhon these islands so you know that seems to me to be a much better one and i think the kind of the kind of ideas thatthe uk government have about enforcing uhan understanding of the union are likely to be hugely counter productive they're likely to be ones that damage the unionmore than embed it in the public's consciousness and depending on your position whether you think that's a goodor a bad thing um that i think is inevitable because it's being conducted with let's say a less than granularunderstanding of how people think in wales never mind how they vote and i think that will comeback to bite certain people in difficult places thank you very much can i i'd like tomove on now just to pick up a comment that was made by mark sanford actually in the chatbut he basically makes the point that to have the discussion that you mick wantto have about shared sovereignty uh that means persuading people who are currently sitting in the westminsterparliament who believe it to be a the sovereign parliament that they should take part in that discussionhow on earth do you and there's no sign from the conservatives of doingthat at the moment and i don't there's a constitutional commission but there's nothing from the labour party at the moment suggesting that it is rethinkingthe sovereignty of the westminster parliament which was at the core of the devolution settlement back in 1997 1998so how do you get people into the discussion that the welsh government and you say isnecessary for the future of the union mick listen that that is really one of thevery very key questions why why are we doing honest why we have these conversations well the startingpoint is whether uk government westminster accepts it or doesn'tsovereignty is already being shared because legislation primary legislation is taking place out of their control invarious areas the reason why there is a dysfunction that the risk that threatensthe fragility of the the unity of the uk to some extent is because of a lack ofrecognition of that that westminster to some extent there is a burying your heads in the sand etc now how do weactually change that well you know what is it we do to win the arguments to convince well the very fact that we arehaving this discussion today uh from an english university uh uhabout wales and what the impact of that uh is just one example of why it's important the fact that gordon brown andthe uk labour party the majesty's opposition are having a have their own uh constitutional commissionshows that there is a debate that has taken place the fact that labour can win for example seats in manchester with 63percent of the vote and do disastrously in other areas shows the way in which the politics even withengland is is changing the view i take is this is that governments change politics is volatilepolitics doesn't remain the same forever if someone had asked me in 1979that there would be another referendum in 20 years time the labour would win and that 20 years later he would haveprimary legitimate powers in b8 parliament uh i would have probably laughed i'd just said you're you'redreaming you know perhaps in 100 years or so the reality is those things change those processes are underway uh andthere is that political dynamic and i think what you have to do what we are doing i think within wales and ithink what is beginning to happen in england as well is that those dysfunctions are recognized and debates are developingthey are at different stages because the difference in our constitutional structure but i think within wales oneof our things is to say look we can see this debate is happening there is going to be change we just don't want to bereactors to that change we actually want to actually have our own say as to what we think that changeshould be and how that should develop and i think that is the change in the nature of the debate that's taking place within walesbut this is equally relevant to i think processes that are happening in england as wellthank you uh leighton anything to add sir i'm a lot more pessimistic than mick onthis one um i've got to say in in his book on scotland back in 2014gordon brown talked about the notion of shared sovereignty which he said was underpinned if you like by the supremecourt which was able to make key decisions ultimately uh where there needed to be decisionsbetween approaches taken in in devolved parliaments and elsewhere i'm pessimistic about it for a couple ofreasons one is the obvious one that parliamentary sovereignty existsyou know at the end of the day westminster could could vote technically to abolish the welshparliament or the scottish parliament i'm not sure it's saying it's likely to but it could technically soparliamentary sovereignty does exist the second thing i would say is that i thinkthat um that shared sovereignty that was underpinned by the supreme court is itself underthreat because the tories have made menacing noises about the role of the supreme court as a constitutional courtand uh you know that role may in future be under threat and my final reasonbeing pessimistic is that ultimately i think labor is prone to what i call westminster ismat the end of the day i think labour as institutionally is committed to westminster uh as a asthe ultimate place of sovereignty regardless what uh i might think youmight think gordon brown might i think i think that's reality of labour culture on the wholethank you laura you've taken on this role you particularly think it's worthwhile do you have a sense of where the debatewill go across okay yeah well look i i certainly think it's worthwhile but but that's not withstanding some someunderstanding of everything leighton has said there a moment ago i mean i gave evidence to the lord's um uh committeeon i can't remember its title future the union or the recast in the union recently when they were in the senateand of course we talked exactly about that very point you know parliamentary sovereignty is a reality um we know theattacks on the infrastructure of uh the supreme court and we know where that might leave us but nevertheless my myresponse i think uh would be what what can we do to at least preparewales for what might lie ahead and it's back to next point really about walesfirst of all being proactive about our constitutional future and having the debate about at least the people'sunderstanding of sovereignty they may not even call it sovereignty they may they may call it power policy controlbut but kovid as we said earlier shown i think to not just the welsh people but the peopleof manchester with andy burnham's actions you know people of even uhsmaller units of local government that their politicians are exerting power andauthority and policy and discharging those in a way that they hope is best for them so you can have this debate atone level of course academically legally elite um framed or you can also have the debateabout how the people are starting to see politics and i'm not sure where that will go by the way i mean maybe postpandemic things will almost revert to type but but that's an important consideration the other importantconsideration for for our commission when we really start working um is is tobe at least evaluative in an empirical way about what constitutional options will bestsuit whales and are viable for wales and the truth of the matter is we've never really had a mature conversation aboutthat in wales if you look back to the period leading up to devolution uh the debate was pretty immature it was prettysparse it was pretty elite lead and even in in the case of the firstreferendum where with a low turnout um the the support was very marginallypassed if we go on to the um 2011 referendum again you know uh the vastmajority of people didn't engage in an active way with with that so we're in a very different placenow this is an opportunity for wales to at least be having serious mature sensible conversations about theconstitution the biggest problem in all of this as we all know is forget uk government is uk labor um andi and i think layton sort of alluded to that right at the end um we could do the best work in the world um in terms ofmapping out a constitutional future for wales but the root to that happening is dependent on uh kyostama and uk laborand that is quite fundamental and quite frankly over to people in the labour party on that because i'm not sure howyou change that strategy thank you for for what it is worth my own evidence to the house oflords committee on the future of the uh uk which contains something that looks very like shared sovereignty is the best wayforward so so at least some people are learning i think from uh discussions that have taken placein wales and they do make sense to at least one person in england as as wellum i'm just going to ask one more question if i may because it's a it's a good way of rounding this up it comesfrom andrew from the think think tank same skies and if the panel haven't heard of them they're a west yorkshirecitizen based think tank he's essentially saying look it actually was this all really aboutdecentralization was it the institution of the the welsh assembly the welsh senate that hasenabled labour to succeed because as somebody's already said andy burnham seems to be doing quite well inmanchester and actually some of the conservative mayors like uh in the inthe west midlands are also building support so is this really actually a phenomenonof decentralization that we're seeing in wales and can you you know should should that be what labour's trying to go forrather than engaging in what we've been this morning or this afternoon calling patriotic politics umlayton you started and if you like make this your final remarks too you started the question with the history is veryclear that the institution was integral to what has happened in walesis it just the institution or is there more to it than that um it's it's very clear to me i think thatit's it's not just about decentralization um the institution the creation ofum the assembly initially very weak now uh a very strong law-making parliamentum has been important in the way that political thinking has developed in theway that political discourse has been shaped in the way that relations within political parties such as the labourparty have been shaped and i wouldn't want in any way tounderestimate the importance of the conception that evolved under rodri morgan of welshlabor there are big questions to be asked about decentralizationwithin wales about the relationship of the welsh central government if you liketo local government and local communities that have not yet been properly addressed i suspect withinwales but i do think the patriotic question has been very central tolabour's evolution in wales over the last 20 years or so and the role of theinstitution has developed within that discussion about a wider patriotism if you like a widersense of what welshness has been about i i think that that's the historicalreality here um i think some of the issues are different within england i think uh youknow this stage i think there is a and you've been leading this john a really important debate about the nature oflabor in england labour's willingness to recognize england as a nation to thinkabout national structures within england all of those i think are important questions as labour comes to terms withum a new union for the future and that very much i hope what we'll see come out of the work that laura and rowanwilliams are doing and their commission for the welsh government thank you laura then i'll go find it tomake well i won't say much leighton said pretty much everything i was going to say about the double devolution you knowi think that's something we've got to think more about you know what actually where's has become a fairly centralizednation itself since the evolution and i think that's something that's got to change you know in terms of devolvingfurther down decentralizing further down but i don't think you can just talk about this as decentralization becauseall of the evidence that we have and all of the research on elections particularly shows that it's the worstbit of welsh labor that has made it so successful or at least given it the opportunity to be successful and clearlythere's a pretty you know whether the machine is as strong as it was is it is another question but watch labor has asuccessful electoral machine aligned with an identity that is welsh thatappeals to most of the democrat graphics in wales or at least has an opportunity to appeal to most of the demographics inwales and that that's what makes it stand out i think for me um and that then gives the platform for what we'vebeen talking about progressive uh patriotism i'm not sure exactly what that means by the way but but itnonetheless the fact that labour has an opportunity to address that is is a reflection of its welshness asmuch as it is of its other values and it certainly was the center that has been criticaland given a platform for labor to grow in that way um i don't think this can beboiled down purely to an institutional change like decentralization it's much deeper than thatand meg yeah decent i mean it is more than decentralization decentralization wasthe start of the process but the moment you move beyond that you're moving to actually the empowerment of people andcommunities and so there are real issues i think they're real issues in terms of hollywood in terms of cardiff bayand in terms of westminster in terms of their role and their centralist roles and so on the difference is of course ithink that there is a strong opportunity and i hope the constitution uh commission that uh law was involved inwill will will look at this thing about it the empowerment of people because it seems to be quite fundamental but whathas changed very much within wales from when i came to wales actually from england in 1973is that wales is now much more welsh it has a clearer identity and it is not anidentity that's dependent on language whether you speak well so whether you don't thelanguage has no longer become the divisive issue that it was when i first in many ways it is a unifying issue forpeople whether they speak worse or whether they don't the fact that my constituency 30 percent which was uhvery anglicized over several generations uh constituency very few world speakers 30 percent of pupils now learn throughthe medium of welsh most of their parents are non-welsh speakers so there is an identity and emancipationand it is similar to processes i think that are taking place in the regions of england it's just historically withwales being almost treated as an appendage of westminster appendage of england and we saw that through thechanges to the legal system uh that has changed there is a confidence of identity and i think that is what'sshaping the politics and i think what has shaped actually the success of the welsh labor uh identity but of course asleighton says i think there are very very serious challenges ahead in terms of the structure role and identity of uklabor that's for another debate for another time thank you very much indeed and can ithank um all of our panel apologies to a couple of people last question particularly a fascinating one aboutculture wars that i wasn't able to get onto that'll have to be for another for another day but i think that's been avery very rich discussion it certainly left me with a strong sense to pick up where we are at the end therethe intertwining of institutions policy culture identity and leadership allcoming together to make uh to to put welsh labor where it is today if i couldjust end briefly on a couple of notices for those who are on the call 30th of november to buy us fit from the commongood foundation we'll be talking about a new manifesto for popular environmentalism and looking at englandand people's relationship with the land with nature and sustainability and on the 15th of decemberi'll be if you like coming to the front of the panel to do a paper with john wilson from kingsin london looking at labour's statecraft and how labour should approach the governance of the union so i thinkyou'll find that some of the issues that we've talked about this afternoon will come up again at that event but we willobviously advertise that to all the people who registered for this event so again thanks to the panel thanks to tothose of you who've joined us we'll put the video on the uh on the website assoon as we can and look forward to see the next event thank you very much everyone