A year and more on...

Has the sky fallen in? Has Wales lurched into some Mordor morass of doom? I suspect not... yet to have heard some people the idea of a Plaid/Labour coalition was totally unconscionable, the two parties having so little in common that the coalition would fall apart in weeks. Its here a little over a year later, and apart from the loss of one minister going strong. What of the One Wales Agreement? Slow steady implementation by all accounts. Plaid ministers, though untried seem to have performed well, remarkably few public disagreements within the Assembly.

Contrast this with the noises off. Clearly the group most dissatisfied with the current Assembly Government are the Labour MPs from Wales. It looks like they have not come to terms with either the consequences of Devolution MKII or the new coalition. Witness the petulant outburst from my MP, Alun Michael – in response to the quite measured (given the circumstance) comments of the Presiding Officer, he lays into the Assembly for overwhelming the Welsh Affairs Committee with requests to give the Assembly legislative power in a number of narrow areas. Well given that this was the situation created by his party in rejecting the main recommendations of the Richard Commission, I am tempted to say if you can't cope this is your fault.

Peter Black sums it up rather neatly. I can't help but wonder if Alun Michael hasn't some unresolved issues with his rejection as First Secretary of the Assembly. He constantly steps into the limelight to take pot shots at the Assembly – its Presiding Officer - and the Welsh Government in general. Sour grapes me thinks....
The main obstacle that I can see to the Coalition working, as far as I can see, is the limited vision of Welsh Labour, who seem more keen on keeping the power in Westminster than letting the Welsh Government flourish.

Well we will see how things go. Expect matters to get more frayed when the general election come upon us...

A New Day a New Wales

What a difference a few weeks make. After the election to the National Assembly it seemed that what ever happened Labour would be in power, secure in the knowledge that the Liberal Democrats would come to their aid. However, as we all know this was not to be... Then we had the promise of the Rainbow Coalition, a progressive non-Labour alliance of parties on governing on a radical program. And now it looks like Labour are doing the incredible, supporting a coalition between themselves and their arch rival Plaid Cymru.... Who would have thought it?

Now the question is how much mischief can the party rebels make from Westminster? Potentially quiet a lot, which of course is the weakness of the current devolution settlement.

All we need now is for Plaid to put the icing on the cake an see who gets what in the new settlement.

We live in interesting times.