The Labour in Wales Welsh Government’s plan to develop Wales’ economy pretty much effectively aims to turn our country into ‘Western England’. Plaid Cymru have warned that the National Development Framework will ‘split Wales’ and is simply about ‘securing crumbs from the UK Government’s table’.
The regional development plan put forward by the Welsh Government, which covers the next 20 years or so, seeks to identify where nationally significant developments should take place, national and regional growth areas, what infrastructure and services are needed and how Wales can contribute to the fight against climate change.
In Cymru / Wales, until we run our own affairs, we are facing some interesting if somewhat stark choices, we can choose the Alun Cairns model of Tory-inspired Western England or Labour in Wales’s new flawered vision of our future. Labour in Wales’s regional map would “drives a wedge” into Wales, and ignore the “pressing” issue of lack of north-south connectivity, and neglects some of those parts of Wales needing regeneration and development.
The Welsh Government simply replaces the four-region model with a different approach focused on distributing wealth, power and investment equitably across the whole of Wales by targeting intervention and growth to the areas in most need.
What’s depressing is that Labour’s proposal might as well be a carbon copy of the Tory-inspired model of entrenched economic dependency. The four-region approach is modelled on the UK Government’s Growth Deal areas. Future Wales is more about the future of the Northern Powerhouse, the Bristol Western Gateway and the Midlands Engine than it is about Cymru / Wales.
This simply offers an economic plan based on securing crumbs from somebody else’s table, rather than building up Wales’ economy in its own right. Instead of offering a vision that brings Wales together, Labour is carving Wales up to serve Boris Johnson’s agenda (and Cymru / Wales) on a plate without even the asking.
The new / old lack of vision pushes the north and the south of our country even further apart and neglect’s the pressing need for improved north-south connectivity. As if that wasn’t enough it also neglects some of those parts of Wales most in need of regeneration and development, namely the western seaboard and the valleys of the south.
This approach will not change the UK and Welsh Governments failure to distribute wealth and growth equally across Wales. It is still not too late for this Labour-in-Wales Welsh Government to replace the four-region model proposed in Future Wales 2040 with an approach that focuses on making Wales a connected, sustainable, prosperous and self-sufficient nation in every sense. We can live in hope…
Now sadly, none of this is new - the other unionist / centralist party in Cymru / Wales, the Conservatives in Cymru / Wales, with a few honourable exceptions have never been happy with idea of devolution actually delivering anything beyond simple inadequate administration, deep down they would probably like to get rid of it (along with the very idea of Cymru / Wales).
Here in Cymru / Wales we have all seen and experienced over the years the Westminster wobble ( by Red, Blue /Orange and Blue governments ) in relation to the commitment to complete the electrification of the Great Western line to Swansea, the failure to develop the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, and the threat to cancel promised public borrowing powers after the proposed M4 Relief road was dropped.
Boris' mutterings about intervening to overrule the Labour in Wales Government's decision not to build the M4 relief road, or the lead Financial Times article (Monday 13.07.2020) about Westminster’s plans to retain control of state aid at the expense of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, should not surprise anyone.
It is interesting that Boris and his ilk, in what's probably the most narrow elitist English governments (if not one that appears to be increasingly out of touch with English thinking on the Union) anytime since the 1700’s, have serious barely concealed disdain for the concept of devolution and barely concealed contempt for Cymru / Wales itself.
Labour in Wales’s lack of vision firmly routed in a belief in the union and what is an incredibly faint if not mistaken hope that the Labour cavalry in Westminster will eventually come riding to the rescue. They didn’t do much between 1997 and 2010, and with Labour in Westminster representative (in Wales) voting against or abstaining on the transfer or strengthening of devolved powers to Cymru / Wales it does not suggest that they will in future.
Honestly it should be enough to make people wonder just exactly who’s interests we are being governed in? For our SE our future, if left to other people’s choices is as part of the Western Gateway (a revamped version of the old Severnside Agenda, or Greater Bristol by any other name). What we are looking at is not so much a case of for Wales see England, more like for Wales, literally see Western England.
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