contribution by Marcus Warner

The last few days have been rather normal for those of us who operate under devolved systems. Negotiations, drama, rumours and compromise are all part of Welsh Assembly elections, with it taking weeks to come to a Government being formed.

The One Wales Government, despite being from parties of the centre left, was seen as a marriage of mortal enemies.

Regardless of the political hue of the Government, it has been resolutely strong and focused, with minimal bust ups.

However, this week has seen a change in the Senedd. Why? Because the two opposition parties in the Senedd are the two parties of Government in Westminster. It was always like to be different once we had a different colour government in Westminster to Cardiff Bay, but the ConDem coalition presents an interesting dynamic.

One of the bad things about the pre-election Senedd was that all debates were populated by sickly attempts by Labour AMs to serve up pitches labelled ‘Aren’t the tories shits?’ for the First Minister to bat out of the ground. We had the odd scenario of the Labour group seemingly keen to blame the Leader of the Opposition, in another place, as the reason for Wales’ ills.

For those of us bored to tears with our AMs wasting our money asking crap questions about David Cameron and John Redwood, we can expect far more of this now Cameron is in power.

To be fair to Labour, the disaster was averted in Welsh seats, albeit with some pretty bad results. While it was probably the most teeth numbingly boring, brassed necked and hyprocritical message put forward in the campaign; Peter Hain’s ‘Tory Bogeyman’ argument managed to shake its hips once more. Given the historical and rather fair worry about the Tories running Wales from London, perhaps we should have all known better than to dismiss Hain’s tactics out of hand.

Back to the Senedd. The Lib Dems are very much a minor party, indeed the smallest, in Cardiff Bay. Stuck on 6 AMs for years, the Welsh Lib Dem Leader Kirsty Williams attracted eye watering laughter when she said that her ambition was to gain a 31 seat majority. In Wales the Lib Dems did not get an MEP, it lost MPs this time.

The daliance with the Tories is unlikely to be the vote winner that alters their Senedd performance for the better. In fact, I can see the Lib Dems having a wipe out in 2011. In Wales, Plaid and Labour are clearly both able to hoover up Lib Dem votes, with Plaid having the edge of not being part of the recent Brown Government.

But this piece was to highlight how devolution has changed politics in the whole of the UK forever. We will have a situation in Wales whereby the opposition in the Senedd will be together in the Assembly. The Lib Dems in Wales are not the orange bookers, the Tory’s in Wales are not to the right of Cameron. They will have a massive challenge both opposing the One Wales Government and supporting the ConDem Government.

If you think Westminster has changed forever, you should see the Senedd tango that is about to kick off here.

——
Marcus blogs here.

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