The IWA Podcast panel react to the referendum result
It was meant to be ‘too close to call’ but in the event the ‘Better Together’ campaign had a convincing majority. Where did it all go wrong got the Yes campaign? And what does it now mean for the future of the Union, and the political parties?
IWA Director Lee Waters gathered together polling analyst Prof Roger Scully, Plaid Cymru Chair Dafydd Trystan Davies and public affair consultant Cathy Owens for the latest IWA podcast to discuss the fallout from Scotland, and the legacy of Alex Salmond.
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The ‘stakes’ in Wales are too low. If politics is poker then the current players are on the kiddies table playing with matchsticks. The biggest pot on this kiddies table appears to be the (in)famous £300 million shortfall from the (disowned) Barnett formula. Duh? This is a small fraction of the billions in the NHS annual budget. No wonder there is little or no interest from the Westminster players in gambling at such a piss poor table.
You have to admire Mr.Salmond’s chutzpah, who, with a relatively weak hand, raised the ante sufficiently to force the Westminster gang to sweeten the pot. OK, so they lost but at least they will have played for a while at the big boy’s table and may be invited to do so again (‘cos he’s good company). So what do the Cardiff Bay amateurs do to get in the game? How will they get a seat at the big game in old London town?
Well they have to raise the ante. Sacrifice is needed. They need to play with their own money, not ours. They need to put their own cosy careers, jobs, reputations on the line. They need to make cause, get religion, stir passion, take risk, show commitment like the dragonfire breathing preachers of old.
I’ll raise you three matchsticks. Gasp!
Are we any more deserving of “influence” than greater Manchester conurbation or Birmingham or Yorkshire?
I know we have a nationality but really, should that carry any weight? I once heard this £300 million described as “the sort of loose change that falls down the back of the sofa….you don’t really bother with it”. When you look at unique spending in Wales that is surplus to real necessity then we could cancel out £300 million without much trouble.
The £300 million is a miserable 2 per cent of the Welsh government’s budget. It is also the estimate made by the Holtham Commission in 2010. It is five years old and no-one has updated the number despite all the changes in public spending in recent years. No-one knows, or seems to want to know, whether there is still a shortfall and how big it is. Our second-rate politicians would rather just go on whinging. Please forget it. I’m getting embarrassed for Wales.
Agree with J Jones. Why Wales and not Birmingham? It is now time to drop our nationality. It just gets in the way, and softens our Britishness.
The ‘alleged’ missing £300 Million has been for years a ‘stick to beat the English taxpayers’ by welsh nationalists of the a)greater,or, b)lesser politician/commentator’s. I wonder if the Holtham Commission in 2010 had found that we were receiving £300 Million over our needs and whether CJ’s would have wanted to send the money back.Within a couple of years I don’t think our political masters/think tanks wont be going on about minor shortfalls,but rather major further cuts to get our funding more into line with English expenditure. Its about time the BBC at UK level cut back ‘subsidies’ to BBC Wales/CYMRU/S4C which would force those in charge to concentrate on programmes rather than political mischief making.
Gerry Holtham actually posted on this site some months ago that the financial shortfall between a “Needs based” funding formula and the Barnett formula funding had been reducing (I think since 2009) and with reductions to public spending we are heading for convergence. However he didn’t know where we were on that trajectory.