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| Plaid Cymru want to pick up the baton from Labour, but Wales needs a much more radical revival. |
Wales is poor, fractured and ignored. To get to the bottom of the needs of the country, it's necessary to start by accepting that. The next step is to accept that very little has been done to address the first step.
The fault for that doesn't fall only on Labour. Since the party spent thirteen years in government at Westminster, and in office as the government of Wales for the last eighteen, it is unsurprising that Tories see Wales as Labour's weak(est) spot.
But the Conservatives have little to offer now and have done little for Wales in the past - other than shut down the last primary industry upon which the country had depended, when they closed the coal mines.
Through three eras of Westminster centralisation - one Labour, two Conservative - Wales has been left with an economy painfully dependent upon public sector employment and its remaining industries are in a perilous state.
Steel in South Wales is struggling to stay afloat against the sudden flood caused by China's mass dumping of its huge stocks of steel onto markets. The scrambling efforts of Conservative ministers and Labour MPs to find a way to secure jobs bought time for Welsh steel.
This desperate scramble shouldn't be necessary. But so little attention has been paid to Wales that it has fallen into dependence: on a narrow few industries, on public funding, on EU funding - it was in fact among the larger recipients of Europe's Regional Development Funds.
Yet even these few things are at risk. The established parties just keep papering over the cracks. The reality is that Wales needs a new party.
Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru would very much like voters to see them as just that. But the trouble is, that they're not.
At the core of their manifesto is a commitment to protecting funding and increasing investment, to be issued from Cardiff rather than Westminster, within the context of defending Welsh sovereignty. It's a vaguely nationalist, but otherwise ordinary, pitch for twentieth century social democracy.
Now. Properly implemented, there is plenty that social democrats could achieve for Wales. From fresh funding, to supporting new industries, these are essential projects that only the public body capable of providing.
Investment in infrastructure, in rail and road, in telecomms and broadband, and in new homes; supporting small businesses with public contracts, reformed business rates and a Welsh Development Bank; caring for people with more compassionate welfare and better funded healthcare.
These policies are all progressive priorities and all necessary to boosting Britain's economy out of its doldrums. But they're all just focused on making the best of the status quo - even with a little more devolution.
The problem for Plaid Cymru are that they're caught between fighting their long battle to pull Wales out of Labour's grip and fending off Tory efforts to to take advantage of Labour's, seemingly, ebbing strength.
The party are also affected by being close enough to power in Wales to play it safe. Its an outcome for the party's internal historical struggle, between nationalism and conservatism on the one hand, and a Left-wing community socialism upon the other.
The outcome of the struggle was a Centre/Centre-Left party of social democrats, comfortable with public intervention - much the same as Labour, just with its policies filtered through the lens of national identity.
The party matches the progressive parties at Westminster in their commitments. But where is the rebirth that Wales sorely needs?
Rebalancing Wales
Wales is a country whose political bonds are breaking It is split geographically and economically between South and North, between just two concentrations of people with a dearth of infrastructure and wealth lying between them.
In important ways, the situation of Wales reflect that of Western Europe, Europe and the West as a whole - rural versus urban, towns versus cities, richer versus poorer, migration & concentration, the centres becoming intolerable and the fringes being abandoned.
Politics in Wales hasn't helped. How deeply Labour has embedded itself in communities is a huge impediment to progress. At the local elections, there were many independents that made life difficult for Corbyn's Labour. But beneath that simpler narrative was a more complicated one, of Labour versus unofficial Labour.
That situation is a problem, because Wales right now needs less Westminster and more grassroots. It needs an Ada Colau more than it needs a Jeremy Corbyn.
Plaid Cymru should be better positioned that any other party in Wales to offer some truly radical alternatives. Among the party's founders was DJ Davies, also a founding member of Welsh Labour, an industrialist and economist who believed in the economics of co-operation and putting control in the hands of workers.
In their current manifesto, the part that comes closest to a project for rebirth is "Putting energy into our environment". Their plans, to support a national electric car infrastructure, green energy tidal lagoons and decentralised public energy, strike a theme of industry reborn under community ownership that thrusts towards the heart of what Wales needs. But it gets too little focus.
A New Mentality
Wales needs a new mentality, based on a radical devolution to the local level - to reengage people with the power and funds to rebuild their communities. But it can't be just urban municipalism.
It needs a movement that can give towns, both urban and rural, back into the hands of their communities and reinvigorate civic life - a locally focused, municipal-agrarian movement that can be brave and rethink how we approach rural life and make it sustainable in the future.
A movement that is prepared to imagine new ways to build the bonds between communities. That builds a sense of common identity by building the bonds between communities, that builds a sense of country by building a country.
Wales needs a brave new vision. A revival. Yet nobody is truly offering one. As it stands, fresh polls suggest Corbyn's Labour may make it through it's dark Welsh night. It doesn't deserve to, but New Labour's cynical adage remains true: there still isn't really an alternative.
References
'Plaid Cymru, Defending Wales: Action Plan 2017'; from Plaid Cymru; as of 31 May 2017.
'Plaid manifesto pledge to protect Wales from 'tidal wave''; on the BBC; 16 May 2017.
Peter Walker's 'Plaid Cymru manifesto promises to protect Wales after Brexit: Leader Leanne Wood says only her party can provide bulwark against dominant Conservatives'; in The Guardian; 16 May 2017.
Ellie Mae O'Hagan's 'A political earthquake – that’s what it takes for the press to notice Wales: Labour is facing meltdown in its former heartland. It just goes to show that no party can afford to ignore its base and expect not to pay a high price'; in the Guardian; 26 April 2017.
Steven Morris' 'Almost a quarter of Welsh population live in poverty, report finds: Joseph Rowntree Foundation says crisis may grow when UK leaves EU because of funding Wales receives from Brussels'; in The Guardian; 8 November 2016.
'Low Welsh media consumption creates 'democratic deficit''; on the BBC; 7 April 2016.
Felipe Araujo's 'View from Bridgend: why a Welsh town is considering "anyone but Labour" - MPs have proved ineffective against the tides of globalisation and post-industrialisation'; in the New Statesman; May 2017.
'"You wouldn't believe what people have been telling me"'; on the BBC; 5 May 2017.
Alan Tovey's 'Tata Steel and unions agree £1bn rescue deal to save 4,000 jobs at Port Talbot'; in The Telegraph; 7 December 2016.
'DAVIES, DAVID JAMES'; in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography; from National Library of Wales; 2009.
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