Tuesday 26 December 2017

Unionist V Independentista the future Welsh Politics?

There was an unusual admission by former Liberal Democrat Peter Black in a recent post

Entitled 

As 2017 draws to a close, where next for the Welsh Liberal Democrats?


He has a somewhat truthful analysis of the Liberal Democrats current status.

But for me one part actually stood out.


"We have few heartlands, mostly concentrated in rural mid-Wales where sheep outnumber people and community politics consists of candidates being seen at as many local funerals and church services that they can get to. Even there the traditional Liberal Democrat radical base has been eroded by incomers from outside Wales".
Interesting  that he uses language about incomers that may have got a Welsh Nationalist accused of some kind of racism.

But Peter goes on

"We have survived by ruthlessly squeezing Labour and Plaid Cymru votes to stop the Tories. In Ceredigion, we squeezed the unionist vote to stop Plaid Cymru. In both cases that squeeze unravelled disastrously earlier this year as two-party politics reasserted itself".
I think that this may be the first time that a member of a UK  wide party as referred to the Unionist vote in Wales .

In Scotland in this years General Election the Tories gained  12 seats from the SNP largely on a campaign where they sought Unionist votes from Labour and the Liberal Democrats they were helped by media that give prominence  to Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson 

In Catalonia  the anti-independence Ciutadans (Citizens) aped the Scottish Tories in the same way  did win the most seats of any party, but not enough to form a majority government.
 
The Spanish government had called an early election in the hope of quelling the separatist movement, whose push for independence triggered the country's worst political crisis in decades.
But Madrid's hopes were clearly dashed.  no single party gained an outright majority but the three  independentista. parties together took 70 seats. They needed 68 to keep their grip on the 135-seat Parliament.
To govern the pro-independence parties will need to join in a coalition. Such a scenario would push the Madrid-Barcelona relationship back to where this all began three months ago, with a provocative  independentista. government in Barcelona rattling Madrid. 
Is this the future for Politics in Nation less State  where a  movement battles a  media selected Unionist Party which argue that  independentistas. such as those inn Scotland and  are deviding the Nation that for sake of "Stability"  the former must abandon Independence and Statehood.
There is never the argument that even if they are in a minority Unionist such as Pre-1922 Ireland are the dividing  force.

I have  deliberately used the term  independentista because it time we used this this rather than Nationalist or Separatist to describe ourselves.
Wales has not yet apart for a few constituencies  seen many contests between
independentistas (largely Plaid) and a selected Unionist Party,but as Scotland and Catalonia are proving this may well be a contest  of 
independentistas (which tend to be on the Left) and Unionists (on the right).
For the former they will have to face a Unionist controlled Media and as Catalonia has shown draconian actions from the State,
But I predict that they will  and a domino effect will soon start throughout Europe, whether Scotland or Catalonia will be the first to fall is the big question.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The only reason the number of Ciutadans seats have gone up us because the number of PP seats has fallen dramatically. Shuffling of seats on a sinking ship?

Anonymous said...

Worth keeping an eye on Corsica after the recent elections to the Corsican Assembly. The nationalist list took 41 (+17 seats) of the 63 seats and 52.2% of the popular vote.

Anonymous said...

Rather a sad blog. Peter Black seems to suggest that the Liberals only way forward is to go for the protest vote and the stop the Plaid vote. Their other strategy not mentioned is,the stop the Labour vote in Cardiff and the stop the Tories in B&R. There many not be any space for a real Liberal voice in Welsh plolitics if they can only play a negative game.