Thursday 20 January 2011

Why True Wales Won't Play.

News that True Wales Gwent the group calling for a No vote in the March referendum on further powers for the Welsh Assembly , has said it does not want official status as a lead campaign comes as no surprise..

This will probably mean that the  Electoral commission , the watchdog overlooking the referendum must decide whether it can appoint lead campaigners for the "No" side by 2 February. If not it may well decline funding to the Official  Yes for Wales campaign.

So what are True Wales Gwent realy up to?
  • They may be generally opposed to the spending of money £70,000 which they would receive in order to campaign, plus free mailshots to every home in Wales. But if this so I presume they will also be opposed to Political parties receiving Free mailshots  at election time.
  • They may hope that it will result in fewer people taking an interest in the referendum anf#d this would result in a lower turn out. But as iI suspect the Yes campaign are more likely to vote .Wouldn't this mean theYes campaign  would have a larger majority? So have rue Wales Gwent accepted they will lose the referndun and hope that a low turn out will lead to the Westminster Government question its validity. 
  • The wish to portray themselves as honest ordinary people up against a well financed political elite.Miserable Old Fart has answered most of this on his Blog here. But it seems to me that True Wales Gwent resemble the Tea Party in America who lacking any real argument or intellectual clout, (some might argue that I am guilty of this)  try and pretend that ignorance is a virtue. But it is ridiculous to call the Welsh Assembly an elite and thus inferring  that their preference, being governed by the Con-Lib government at Westminster is not a grater elite. Some of these people in True Wales Gwent   are supposed to be Socialists for God-sake.
  • They do not wish to register because this would mean that they finances are open to scrutiny and far from being backed by the "pennies of the ordinary peopleas they would like to claim"  they have or will receive financial backing from some embarrassing sources.

There may be other reason,  but it is a sad day for democracy when one side of a campaign cannot put forward its case because the other side knowing that it has no real argument (only the abuse that resembles the far right of American politics) declines to take fully part in the process.
 

True Wales Gwent have form. They have earlier claimed that they couldn't get any Welsh speaking supporters to represent them because these were afraid of intimidation but most of us suspect they just don't have enough Welsh speakers able to debate the issues rationally.

There is a glimmer of hope Miserable Old Fart under his name of David Alwyn ap Huw Humphreys.Has asked the Electoral Commission that he could lead a No campaign on the grounds that the proposal  dodn't go far enough. If he is successful I would suspect there would be much recrimination and blood letting amongst those Non-Elites of True Wales Gwent .

Like a little boy who knows that despite his boasts,knows that he will not be very good in the actual game and  tries to take the ball away. But it's not his ball its ours and we want to see him try and show us that he is as good as he claims.

1 comment:

EagleDragon said...

This is just a ploy by True Wales to get the lowest turnout possible so that the legitimacy of the Yes vote can be put into question. If we get a narrow Yes vote on low turnout than the No camp would have no right to complain!!