South Wales Evening Post - 26 May 2007
Editors Opinion
The result of the Welsh Assembly election three weeks ago threw up a big challenge to our political leaders. They could not meet it, and they failed Wales.
As the weeks have passed, and the parties have cosied up, squabbled and fallen out like a bunch of teenage girls, every leader has been stressing that he was committed to doing what was "best for Wales". It turned out they all meant what was best for them and their parties.
And so we have ended up with what we had before, only weaker, and a First Minister who is on record as wanting to retire within a couple of years.
This process has been described as a roller coaster. It's actually been much more like a merry-go-round. The riders have climbed on their hobby horses, gone around in circles, and got off in the same place as they got on.
Smaller people generally ride on merry-go-rounds rather than roller coasters, and our AMs have shown that they lack the calibre for the sort of sophisticated politics created by proportional representation at the ballot box. For all their talk about a new Welsh way of doing things, they are entrenched in old-style party politics.
Rhodri "Lazarus" Morgan insists that it would have been a "denial of democracy" to exclude Labour, as the party with the largest number of seats, from government. Well, it happened in Swansea and other Welsh councils. Odd that local politicians could achieve what national ones couldn't.
And then Lembit Opik, the leader of the Welsh Lib Dems, pops up to call for full legislative powers for the Assembly. Sorry Lembit, but you must have been spending too much time with your Cheeky Girl to notice what has been going on here.
More powers for this lot? Not until, to coin a phrase, they prove they are fit for purpose.
