It never quite goes away, at a recent Westminster event, the Western Gateway popped up again to be endorsed by Labour in Wales local representatives. Back in November 2020, the Labour in Wales Welsh Government’s revealed the top down plan to develop Wales’ economy pretty much effectively aims to turn our country into ‘Western England’.
Plaid Cymru 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 which was put forward by the Welsh Government, covered the next 20 years or so, and sought 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 Wales, until we really run our own affairs, we face some interesting if somewhat stark choices, we can choose the then Alun Cairns model of Tory-inspired Western England or the Labour in Wales’s deeply flawed 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 replaced 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 was particularly depressing was that Labour’s proposal might as well have been a carbon copy of the then Tory-inspired model of entrenched economic dependency. The four-region approach was modelled on the UK Westminster Government’s Growth Deal areas. Future Wales was more about the future of the Northern Powerhouse, the Bristol Western Gateway and the Midlands Engine than it was the future of Wales.
The plan simply offered an economic plan that was largely based upon 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 in Wales basically agreed to serve Boris Johnson’s agenda (and Wales) on a plate without even the asking.
The new / old lack of vision pushed the north and the south of our country even further apart and neglected the real and pressing need for improved north-south connectivity. As if that wasn’t enough it also neglected some of those parts of Wales that were (and are) most in need of regeneration and development, namely the western seaboard and the valleys of the south.
This flawed approach would not change the UK and Welsh Governments failure to distribute wealth and growth equally across Wales. That said even now it is still not too late for a Labour-in-Wales Welsh Government to replace the four-region model that was proposed in Future Wales 2040 with amore rational approach that actually focuses on making Wales a connected, sustainable, prosperous and self-sufficient nation in every sense. We can all 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 the simple 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 Wales).
Here in Wales we have all seen and experienced over the years what can perhaps be best described as 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’s (the then PM) 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, were simply attempts to gain short term electoral advantage.
Despite their electoral success in December 2019, Boris and his ilk, were part of what was probably the most narrow elitist English of Westminster governments anytime since the 1700’s, the then Westminster Conservative had a serious barely concealed disdain for the concept of devolution and barely concealed contempt for Wales itself, and that’s was before you got onto their hostility towards Scotland and their complete ignorance about Ireland
Labour in Wales’s lack of vision in relation to economic development in Wales firmly routed in a belief in the union combined with a famous and and mistaken hope that the Labour cavalry in Westminster will eventually come riding to the rescue.
we all know that they didn’t do much between 1997 and 2010, and with Labour in Westminster representative (in Wales) consistently voting against or abstaining on the transfer or strengthening of devolved powers to Wales - which certainly suggests that nothing much is going to change in the future after Labour in Westminster's electoral success in July 2024.
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 our SE, literally see Western England. It's time to say no to the Western Gateway and time for a change in Wales - roll of 2026.
