On the 24th April the Welsh Government came to an agreement with the UK Government’s amendments to Clause 11. Alongside this, the “Intergovernmental Agreement on the Bill and the establishment of a common frameworks” document was published, which set out additional commitments on how the amendments to Clause 11 would work practically. The amendments themselves invert Clause 11 so that now the devolved institutions are able to legislate freely within their powers as opposed to being restricted. However, UK ministers have the power to make regulations imposing restrictions in devolved areas which can last for up to 5 years, and the powers can be used to place restrictions for up to 2 years after exit day.
In effect, since exit day has been marked for the 29th March 2019, the Assembly could be restricted until 2026. UK ministers will be able to place those restrictions without the assembly’s consent. Though the Intergovernmental Agreement states that the UK Parliament will “not normally” be asked to approve Clause 11 restrictions without the Assembly’s consent. Mark Drakeford AM hailed the Agreement as a “major advance on the original”.
Depending on how you view this agreement, it is, a case of one step forwards two steps back. Indeed, it is a positive that the Assembly can now legislate freely within their powers, but this is offset by the fact that the UK government can still place restrictions on the Assembly without the Assembly’s consent, which was the whole issue with the Withdrawal Bill from the start. This is made even worse by the fact that the restrictions can last until 2026.
What this proves, to the people of Wales is that you cannot trust a party to govern in your best interests, when that party has stakes in more than one nation! Labour, though having branded itself Welsh Labour, is only a branch of national Labour. Don’t be fooled by it’s overused slogan ‘standing up for Wales’. In this case, it should be ‘capitulating for Wales’!
This also touches on further, Welsh Labour’s leadership strategy for dealing with the UK government. The strategy of the ‘good unionist’.
By trusting in this strategy, the Welsh Government believes that by being loyal to the UK state, Wales will be rewarded. A* for effort on that front, when have we ever rocked the boat? Granted, there was a fair amount of rocking with the passing of the continuity bill. But by the end the Welsh government proved it to be more of a jokey rocking. The sort of rocking you would do if your friend stood up in the boat and you wanted to scare him. Not enough to make him fall overboard.
Unfortunately, when dealing with the British state, loyalty is not rewarded. Point and case, Scotland. There are clearly huge differences between the two major devolved institutions in the UK, a difference in attitude. Scotland, it would seem, have the attitude of ‘it’s all or nothing’ which has played out well for them. Whilst Wales, goes in with the attitude of ‘we will get what we can and work with it’, compromise. How’s that working for us?
It would be agreeable that a degree of compromising is needed. But only on issues of policy, not nation building. You cannot expect a nation to run properly when all you give that nation is a patchwork of powers in a variety of fields. It’s all or nothing! Imagine needing to fix a leaky pipe, and you are told you can do it, you need a spanner, but you’re given a hammer instead. Madness…
But that’s what you get though, for having a party in power that is afraid to rock the boat, in case it loses favour with its mothership and English voters. In the same way as Scotland, if Wales had Plaid Cymru in government, we would never have seen such a capitulation take place. We can say with confidence that a Plaid Cymru government would have stood their ground for the good of Wales, something that Welsh Labour are failing at, more so recently than ever.
