Friday 18 August 2017

A Plaid-Tory coalition will change nothing.

After the BBC give space to a the Beeb  given space to a ridiculous call that Plaid Cymru should "come together" with UKIP to "take Wales forward"  comes a much more serious argument  on Nation Cymru  that

"A Plaid Cymru and Conservative coalition would help Wales move on from the 80s".

In it  Benjiman L. Angwin  rightly points out the Welsh democracy will not fully mature until the Labour party’s dominant position in our country faces serious opposition

He writes 
The solution to this problem is for Wales to move on politically from what happened in the 70s and 80s under Thatcher.
I understand that this will be difficult. It will require a certain amount of communal forgiveness. It will require effort.
Having Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives work together would allow that healing process to begin to take place.
It would show that working with Conservatives at the Senedd would not cause the sky to fall in.
Especially if that coalition could take real, practical steps to help people in the former industrial communities scarred by the 80s.
Wales could put aside prejudices and hatreds which have been built up over the last 94 years of Labour rule, and forgive those portrayed as enemies by those in power.
As Martin Luther King said, ‘Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?’

Labour is not Wales and Wales is not Labour. It is not healthy to have a party in power for one hundred years which only represents a fraction of the country.
Welshness cannot be expressed by one small part of the political spectrum; Cymru is more than that.
I hope Plaid and the Tories will consider abandoning prejudices and differences in economic ideologies and working together to make this happen.
It would take a lot of political bravery, and some forgiveness.
But it would be the break with the past that would allow Welsh democracy to mature and move on from the battles of the 80s, to a new post-devolution era.

The problem is that such an argument   seems to me starts at the very beginning Thatcherism has returned in the Tory party and we have a government in Westminster that has attacked  the most deprived people in our Society  under the guise of austerity but is really the same ideology of Thatcherism.

Yes it is possible a Plaid-Tory or Tory-Plaid (The order is important) could run the Welsh Government  more effectively than the current one but that's not saying much.

Would Plaid be prepared to scrap Prescription charges which the Tories would want to,for instance,

Would the Tories accept that in order to make the changes Benjiman L. Angwin  argues then Wales needs parity with Scotland in devolved powers.

Indeed the problem with any Assembly coalition is that its largely about how we spend our pocket money from Westminster  and not how we can change Wales from both a right or left perceptive.

To my mind Plaid should concentrate  on making the case for Parity with Scotland and following the SNP in becoming a government hat can at least make a change to what comes out of Westminster either from the Tories,  Red Tories or a Red Labour which is centrist its views on where power lies.

The electoral system for the Assembly makes this difficult , but arguing that a Plaid-Tory or Tory-Plaid coalition can rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic is not the solution at all.

4 comments:

Leigh Richards said...

Because of pressures of time this morning i'll repost the comment i left on ben's piece yesterday (suffice to say i think it is among the most ludicrous proposals ive ever come across - and which thankfully will never happen).

“I understand that this will be difficult” er impossible more like Ben! Plaid Cymru is committed to securing independence for wales while the tories are – as theresa may so recently reminded everyone when agreeing the DUP deal – the conservative and ‘unionist party’. This is not a mere ‘difference’ it is a fundamental and irreconcilable difference. Then there’s the little matter of the tories being a right of center party which among other things wants to undermine the rights of working people and erode the welfare state and plaid cymru is a left of center party that among other things seeks to protect workers rights and defend our welfare state. Ben also omits to mentions those scars inflicted on welsh communities in the 1980s he says he wants to ‘heal’ were caused by the brutal policies of a right wing conservative uk prime minister – the very party he thinks plaid should go into coalition with.

Sorry but taking all of this into consideration it really is hard to take benjiman’s post seriously – indeed i feel compelled to ask is this a wind up?"

Anonymous said...

Summer - news is slow so we have the silly season and it has started . We have had Plaid & UKIP. Yesterday it was Plaid & Tories, next we will have Tories and UKIP. We may even have Labour and Liberals before the Summer is out. Sorry the last one has happened and the Tories & UKIP is a slow burning fused

Anonymous said...

Plaid needs to continue to focus on realisable gains such as the train franchise and devolution of policing so that at the end of this assembly session real gains can be seen.

Leigh Richards said...

On a wider point im growing concerned that the cymru nation comments sections appear to be being hijacked by neo fascists - some of the comments on this threat are absolutely shocking,and im amazed the editor has allowed them to be published on the site https://nation.cymru/2017/dear-welsh-politics-political-point-scoring-after-a-terrorist-attack-isnt-a-good-look/#comments