BURYING BAD NEWS

If the Welsh Labour Government in Cymru / Wales was looking for a good day to bury bad news for the people of Newport then perhaps Wednesday 28th August was probably a good day. 

I mention this because back in April 2017, a list of 12 potential new and revived railway station sites was made public which would go a long way towards adding connectively to various parts of our country’s poor railway network and potentially reducing road congestion. 

On the 28th August 2019, it was revealed that the original list of 12 has now become  4  - when another list of 4 was published. Now this is not a definitive list, and there are no guarantees that  these 4 prospective railway stations will eventually be built or re-opened as they have to go on for yet further assessment in Westminster. 

The lucky 4 prospective railway stations are: 

• Ely Mill/Victoria Park in Cardiff
• St Clears in Carmarthenshire
• Deeside Industrial Park/Northern Gateway
• Carno in Powys

The railway stations which did not made it through the assessment are:

• Llanwern
• Newport Road/Rover Way
• St Mellons
• Cockett
• Landore
• North Wrexham
• South Wrexham
• Llangefni

It is important to remember that control of our railway infrastructure investment is not devolved to Cymru / Wales - a decision largely made by the then Labour Government in Westminster.  it still remains with the UK Westminster Government, all the Welsh Labour Government does is draw up a short list of suggestions.

All potential stations go through three stages of assessment.

• The first looks at Welsh Transport Appraisal Guidance criteria and consideration of the Wellbeing and Future Generations Act.
• The second looks at the strength of the financial and economic case for a new station and advice from Network Rail on deliverability.
  
  
• The third is "development and assessment of the highest priorities".

To help narrow the list down, station demand forecasts were drawn up which are designed to give a likely viability of proposed stations. This may actually sound a more scientific and rational process than it is. It is worth remembering that the anticipated number of passengers who were expected to travel on the reopened Ebbw Vale line to Cardiff in 12 months travelled on the new service in the first 4 months. 

A word of warning - please don’t hold your breath in anticipation of any regular train service from Ebbw Vale to Newport - we may yet have along wait. The 7,000 + householders who will end up living on the Llanwern site will have no option but to use their cars or the bus service to get to and from work. Not pushing for a railway station at Llanwern will directly impact on the congestion in an around Newport, on the SDR and the existing M4. 

Any proposal will only be successful with "a sound business case" and the assessment "increases the ability of station proposals to be in a position to benefit from funding calls" - and that decision will be made in Westminster rather than here in Cymru / Wales. A Welsh Government spokesman said: "The stations that scored the highest in the assessment will now be taken forward. The proposals for the remaining stations will be considered when additional resources become available."

It is also worth noting that the process is ongoing and there is no date for any potential reopening of any station. Considering that for the last 3 years Westminster has been tearing itself apart over BREXIT it would be a safe bet that it may be a while before any Westminster government focuses on Cymru / Wales and our national interests. Decisions about railway infrastructure development need to be made here in Cymru / Wales, not in Westminster.

THE BACKSTOP TO BREXIT?

It's that man again!

One of the key lines being continually pushed by the Brexiters is that the backstop (draft emergency provisions to ensure no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland) is fundamentally undemocratic and it has to go. Oddly enough it's not perceived as undemocratic in Northern Ireland - where pretty much every elected politician is in favour of it. Political opposition from within Northern Ireland to the Brexiters position may be one of the reasons why successive Conservative governments have dragged their feet when it comes to helping to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland that and their parties on-going cash induced relationship with the DUP - who themselves have their own reasons for avoiding local democratic scrutiny.

If nothing else this position in relation to the Irish backstop has exposed a few hard truths. It's very clear if not obvious that Brexiters (many of whom hail from a particularly narrow and actually quite unrepresentative narrow elite) have never had any meaningful or realistic understanding of Ireland - North or South or other matters. Not that long ago I can recall overhearing conversations (in another place for want of a better phrase) openly and genuinely bemoaning the fact that Ireland had left the UK and that Hong Kong had to be (sadly) returned to China, etc. This sort of thing, if nothing else displays a lack of understanding of recent and not so recent history, and is perhaps this is the backstop too Brexit. 

What's certainly true is that Ireland never appeared on this elites radar before or during or initially after the referendum campaign - one of the possible  consequences of a return to a hard border is the undermining of the peace process. Then late and very deeply missed Steffan Lewis flagged this up some years ago. Looking dispassionately at the Conservative and Unionist Party's often tortuous relationship with the Irish political dimension in these islands - it's clear that they have been happy from time to time to play the unionist card - with scant of little thought toward the short, medium or longer term consequences - particularly for Northern Ireland or the rest of us.

It should be clear to most people by now that if Boris Johnston had a clear Conservative majority in Westminster and was not dependent upon the support of the DUP then he would have been pushing even harder for a No deal - regardless of the consequences for Northern Ireland and the rest of us. None of this bodes well for the future of devolution in these islands, if the Conservatives don't understand Northern Ireland, are surprisingly indifferent to Scotland and genuinely don't even perceive Cymru / Wales, then they are very different in outlook to their pre 1979 conservative predecessors who could be said to have spoken for the Union as a whole.  

The Brexiter Conservatives are perhaps for the first time in the modern era (or at least since the early 17th century) quite openly focused on England (and its a particularly unrepresentative narrow view of England at that) or perhaps a Greater England. The problem is we are no longer living in the 17th century - the world and these islands have changed. At a very basic level the failure to understand the complexities of situation in Ireland is quite revealing. Unfortunately it masks (barely) what I believe to be a complete failure to accept or understand devolution (or a deliberate choice) in its varied formats across these islands. It gives a focus perhaps to the quietly as yet unarticulated politics and vision of the UK post Brexit - a unitary centralised non devolved state - which is not good for the rest of us on these islands. 

REWRITING HISTORY

Plaid Cymru’s Leader in Westminster, Liz Saville Roberts MP, confronted the Prime Minister in the House of Commons today over her claims of respecting the result of the 1997 referendum on Welsh devolution.

Ms Saville Roberts questioned the Prime Minister during a Statement in the House of Commons on the latest Brexit developments.

Following the Prime Minister’s speech in Stoke-on-Trent this morning where she compared the Leave campaign’s narrow win in the 2016 Brexit referendum devolution, Wales, Westminster,  to the result of the 1997 referendum when the people of Wales voted for the National Assembly for Wales.

During the statement, Liz Saville Roberts said:

“The Prime Minister commands us to honour the result of the referendum.

“Yet, in 1997 she voted against legislation to establish the National Assembly for Wales and in 2005 stood on a manifesto calling for another referendum with the option to overturn the result.

“How does the Prime Minister square her track record on referendums with such command?”

The Prime Minister responded by saying:

“We respect and made clear at the time we respected it, and anybody who sees the Welsh Assembly today and what it has been doing in recent years will recognise that was the right decision.”

Following the exchange, Ms Saville Roberts  raised a Point of Order – a question to the Speaker regarding procedure in Parliament – in the House of Commons, asking for clarification. In the Point of Order, Ms Saville Roberts said:

“The PM responded to my question by saying: ‘we accept the result of the referendum in Wales. We respected and made clear at the time that we respected the result of the referendum in Wales.’

“Her actions and the actions of her party at the time, and later, contradict this assertion.

“I fear the PM has mislead the house and would ask how she might correct the record.”

The Prime Minister left the chamber before listening to the Point of Order and so did not respond.

ENDS

BLUE ON BLUE

You have to hand it to the Tories, regardless of the circumstances or current political crisis, they do fratricidal blue on blue spectacularly well. It redefines self interest and idiotic in a single breath or single bound.  The fundamental split over Europe that has festered since the days of John Major, partially smothered during the wilderness years, under Michael Howard and IDS and barely papered over during the shambolic Cameron years, is back with a vengeance. Much like is was under John Major, the needs of the peoples of these islands, can go hang. Tory needs, obsessions and minutiae must come first regardless of the cost. Whatever else this self indulgent fiasco might be magnificent, but it is certainly not really meaningful politics, beyond the confines of the gothic monstrosity on the Thames. Just at the time when some real leadership would be useful, we end up here -what a mess! 

RUNNING SCARED

Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader, Liz Saville Roberts MP said:

“The Prime Minister is running scared. She can only delay the inevitable loss. She made promises that she cannot deliver and now she is coming up against reality.

“The only single person who can stop a No Deal Brexit is the Prime Minister. By delaying this vote she is personally making a No Deal Brexit more likely.

“The Prime Minister wants to deny the public a say in a People’s Vote and now she is trying to deny MPs a vote too. She is denying democracy on all fronts.

“People deserve better than the chaos in Westminster.  

“Now we know the truth about Brexit, people must be given the right to decide whether the reality of leaving the European Union is what they want.”

TAKING BACK CONTROL

Plaid Cymru has responded to a report from the IPPR, which shows that Wales and the north east of England will be hit hardest by Brexit, as a result of price rises exposure to EU export market. Responding to the report, Plaid Cymru’s Brexit spokesperson in Westminster, Hywel Williams MP said:

“The real impact of the  Westminster parties’ needlessly hard Brexit is beginning to reveal itself across the UK and as this report shows – more so in Wales than the other UK countries.

“Families are already £900 a year poorer than they would have been had the referendum result gone the other way, and if we follow the policies of both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn and leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we will fall further significantly further behind as the cost of living soars.

“Just over a week ago one of Wales’s most important employers warned they would have to consider leaving Wales as a result of Tory and Labour Brexit policies, and since then the Tory Westminster Government has broken its promise to invest in the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon. They are refusing to create jobs and boost wages in Wales while at the same time threatening the jobs that already exist.

“The key lesson for Wales is that we cannot continue to allow Westminster to make all our decisions on our behalf. We have to take control over our own future or families will continue to get poorer, and more and more businesses will need to look elsewhere.

“It’s time we took control over our own country.”

The full report, ‘An equal exit? The distributional consequences of leaving the EU’ is online  at: https://www.ippr.org/research/publications/an-equal-exit

MAKING A CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE

It can be argued that at one level Westminster’s consistent disregard for our nation, our people, our democracy and our national interests is day by day, blow by blow, making the case for independence. Not for nothing did a Plaid Cymru MP recently describe the 18 minutes allocated to debate matters relating to Wales, Scotland and northern Ireland during the recent debate about the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. 

When the Conservatives and the Labour Party openly and actively working to silence our nation’s voice, and simply treating our country as an irrelevance, an afterthought and an inconvenience it does not bode well for our future in a post BREXIT world.

The debate on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill as it relates to the devolved countries was cut short to just 18 minutes last week, following a restrictive programme motion, proposed by the Conservatives and following the insistence of the Labour Party to push 11 amendments to a vote, and thus eating into the time allocated for the debate on the devolved countries, so much for looking after our interests.

Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader, Liz Saville Roberts MP said:

“Westminster’s disregard for Welsh democracy is endemic. The people of Wales would be forgiven for thinking the Labour opposition and the Tory government are colluding to deny Wales a voice.

“Not only did the Conservative Government succeed last week in placing a restrictive programme motion on the debate, the Labour Party also ensured the debate would be as short as possible by needlessly pressing ahead with 11 consecutive votes, knowing full well that they would lose – all the while eating into time for the debate on the devolved countries.

“When Plaid Cymru argued in favour of staying in the EU, we did so because we believed that small nations like Wales were better served sitting alongside the other successful small nations of Europe, as equals. We argued that the inbuilt inequality of the UK would make Wales expendable political collateral to the over-riding interests of England. And we were right.

“Brexit will be a landmark in the journey Wales takes to our own conclusion that only our own, radical solutions will prove the answer to our needs. Westminster and its parties will always treat Wales like an adjunct, an afterthought, an inconvenience. All this does is make the case for Welsh political independence.”