We need reform and renewal before we need another election – or referendum.

This evening Members of the UK Parliament will be asked to vote for a general election to take place on December 12th or if we are to accept the pure opportunism and self-interest of the SNP and Libs Dems maybe a few days earlier on the 9th.

But the sheer pointlessness of this evening’s tomfoolery reveals more than a ruthless gaming of the constitution. It reveals a fundamental weaknesses of a constitution when a Prime Minister and a group of different parties can come together to overturn the statutory parliamentary term to force an election on an unwilling population. And to do so at a time when our politics are broken and our national discourse poisoned by dark money, aggression and threat of violence is nothing short of criminal.

The background to today’s vote is not simply the failure of the UK Government to deliver on its Brexit policy but last week’s shocking, but not unsurprising, poll from Cardiff University which demonstrated that the threat of political violence is now an accepted part of our national life.

I hope that the majority of MPs will vote against Johnson. But I hope that they will also do more than walk around in a particular circle or whatever else counts as voting in the Palace. I hope that they will begin the work of reforming our democracy before we head to the polls either for a final say referendum on our membership of the EU or a general election to end the agony of this parliament.

So let’s start in the beginning. 

There are two reforms needed before we vote. The first is to reform the rules around the conduct of public debate and then secondly, reform to address the weakness of the UK parliament. We need a UK Parliament Reform Act. And in different ways both these issues crystallise the constitutional crisis that is unfolding in front of a deeply frustrated population.

The House of Commons’ Culture and Media Select Committee has done some sterling work over the last two years to uncover and explore the attack on our democratic structures and our democratic culture which is taking place in front of our eyes. So let’s make use of this work. I would like to see the Conservative Chair of that Committee, Damian Collins, be given the time and space and resources to put in place some legislation, with the same all party support he has enjoyed in the committee, to stop the use of social media and dark money from subverting our political discourse. And to do so immediately. Such legislation would need a sunset clause of about two or three years to provide us with the safeguards and the space to consider, and to put in place, a more enduring statutory framework.

The hard truth is that the UK is not a safe place for democracy and democratic debate today.  

And for anyone who does not believe last week’s Cardiff University poll?

Then take a look at this….

This shocking image was posted on the Facebook page of the Brexit Party candidate in Blaenau Gwent five weeks ago in response to some low level abuse aimed at me. But it is not an attack on my words or actions. It is a direct personal threat towards me as an individual.

And over a month later, it’s still there. 

The image is shocking enough but the words “Karma is coming” constitutes a direct threat. The Police have taken no action and the Brexit Party appear to think that it is has a place in our public discourse. 

I do not. 

I’m happy to take part in robust political debate. But in my view this is not simply the acceptance of political violence but the active encourage of political violence and is the same threatening behaviour which is undermining our democracy.

And this is something which should play no part in our politics.  For me it is clear that the Brexit Party and the hard right wing who are responsible for this image are also responsible for the same sort of imagery which attacks ethnic minorities and the thuggish images we all see disfiguring social media which are designed to incite or encourage a violent reaction. Fundamentally my view is that Brexit needs to be sorted before we hold another UK General Election. But I do not believe that we can do that at present. In fact until we address the violence and brutality in our political and public discourse I would not support either a referendum or an election taking place.

And then the second issue is that of a constitution which has collapsed. We witness the spectacle of a government unable and unwilling to govern and a legislature unable to force the government to act. This is a lesson in the frailties of the UK constitution which have been ruthlessly exposed and exploited by the current Prime Minister. 

So whatever comes out of this mess I hope that a UK Parliament Reform Act is one of them. All too often we believe that parliamentary reform starts and ends with the Lords. But the Commons is not fit for purpose either. And this reform needs to be led from outside the institution. All too often reform process are led by MPs for whom the current structure is too comfortable and too easy.

The Palace by the Thames is fond of lecturing the world on its own virtues. But it has become a laughing stock and a model of a dysfunctional parliament. Imagine what those MPs – who happily and breathlessly run out to College Green to explain to a bored nation the ludicrous nature of their decision-making – would be saying if the Welsh Parliament acted in this way? Imagine what those commentators who are happy to enthral themselves in the detail of Westminster gossip would say if in Cardiff, our government, ministers and members behaved in such a way?

All too often over past months Westminster has been exposed not as a sovereign legislature but as a puppy parliament. Compelled to do the government’s bidding. Obeying its masters voice. 

Without the intervention of the Supreme Court and some courageous parliamentarians who put our democracy ahead of their personal interests and their party’s interests we would have already seen the birth of an elective dictatorship.

A strong and effective legislature has space and time for a government to govern and rules which allow a government to get its business done. But that legislature must also have rules which provide for proper scrutiny and for that legislature to determine its own business, when it will sit and how it is able to control its own order papers. Virtually none of the chaos of the past few months would have been allowed in modern parliaments such as those in Cardiff and Edinburgh.

But parliamentary reform must follow political and democratic reform and renewal.

In Government civil servants always advised me never to waste a good crisis. And there is as deep a crisis facing us today as we have experienced in our lifetimes. So I hope that in this crisis lies an opportunity. An opportunity for change and an opportunity for reform. An opportunity to renew our politics and to cleanse our public discourse. 

But I will finish with a warning. Unless that change happens then someone else will be hurt and that will not be either an accident or an unforeseeable tragedy. It will be the direct consequence of inaction. 

They’ll be coming for us next….

This is an article I wrote last week for the Institute of Welsh Affairs. In a week with lots happening and us trying again to get our constitution fit for the future. Again. I’m arguing that essentially too many people think that the struggle and campaign for Welsh democracy is won. My view is that whilst there are real opportunities over the coming years to achieve the sort of constitutional settlement that will allow us to move forward after over a quarter of a century of argument, there are also significant and serious threats facing us. 

There’s a common assumption amongst many commentators that Brexit is breaking up Britain. And that may be true. The potential of a border poll ending the Northern Irish state would be quite a way of marking its centenary. At the same time the Scots may also be driven by a combination of an English nationalist government and a careless London-centric culture to believe that they can do better themselves. And as things currently stand who can blame them?

The received wisdom is that this will naturally drive the ever-cautious and more-conservative-than-we’d-ever-want-people-to-know Welsh to follow a similar route. Many people, including myself, have been clear that a United Kingdom of Englandandwales is no union at all. Of course, the major flaw with the inevitability theory of the future is that it has a terrible tendency to keep letting down those people who happily believe that it will somehow change the future for them whilst they enjoy a cup of tea.

But this assumption fails to understand the volatility and power of the right wing populism that is driving not only the debate over Brexit but has captured the Conservative Party and is driving a new more aggressive and narrow sense of Britishness and using the machinery of the UK Government to help it do so. Rather than the end of Britain as a political construct I fear that we may be witnessing the emergence of a new authoritarian Britishness that recognises the plurality of political power across the countries of Britain in theory but which in reality works to undermine and to dismantle devolved political power, building a new centralised British state in its place. 

It is this ruthless and relentless Brexit populism with its intolerance of dissent that is actively creating, driving and reinforcing the divisions that have characterised and disfigured our public discourse in the last three years. And if it is prepared to describe our independent judiciary as “enemies of the people” and to challenge the democratic legitimacy and authority of the UK Parliament then just imagine the attitude towards a National Assembly which actively seeks to oppose, challenge and question its new hegemony. We can’t say that we haven’t been warned. 

And here lies the hard reality and the challenge facing those of us who have spent a lifetime fighting for Welsh democracy.  By a small margin Wales voted to leave the European Union. And it was a vote that was certainly driven in part by this new assertive British nationalism. But it was more driven by this populism. A populism rooted the failures of our current democratic institutions and political parties to respond effectively to austerity and the economic reality of life for too many people. And we shouldn’t be surprised. It is the same populism that has driven the electoral successes of right wing parties across almost every one of our Western liberal democracies. 

The unchallenged messianic appeal of Farage and his little coterie of angry shouty privately-educated millionaires means that these rich and powerful individuals can now label comprehensive schools as the incubators of entrenched privilege and the occupants of castles dismiss the sons and daughters of council estates as an elite that needs to be defeated in the name of the will of the people. And which allows them to get away with such hypocritical and sanctimonious cant. 

And it probably goes further and deeper than this. Welsh politics is completely out-of-step with this outraged and enraged right wing demagoguery. Traditionally our political debates have been marked by an acceptance of many left-of-centre and liberal ideas and assumptions. Whilst it is always a good thing to challenge the status quo and lazy assumptions, without an indigenous press and media we cannot easily hold a conversation with ourselves. Our news media and our public discourse are dominated by a London-centric view of the world, all too often our own debate is drowned out in the noise emanating from London. And for many people that’s just fine. But it means that we have far fewer tools at our disposal to challenge this new right wing. 

And I see it at first hand. I represent Blaenau Gwent. It is the place which recorded the highest leave vote in Wales. I am repeatedly told that this proves the people I represent are determined to leave the EU under any or all circumstances and that they want a return to a British Imperial Government – union jacks and blue passports. And it is true that there are a proportion of people who do want this – as there are in many places – those same people who cannot believe that the threat of a British gunboat doesn’t bring Johnny Foreigner to heel. 

But overwhelmingly my real experience is different to that. And this is another reality. 

Many, and possibly most, people in Blaenau Gwent feel that politics (and politicians) have let them down. Canvassing in the referendum campaign I spent less time discussing the rights or wrongs of the EU and more time discussing the failures of the local council and the failure of those of us on the centre-left to respond adequately to the impact of the 2008 financial crash. Austerity may have originated in SW1 but its impact is not felt in the restaurants and bars of the Palace by the Thames. The hard human impact of austerity is the daily reality of life for many of the people that I represent. And many voted to leave the EU because they couldn’t see any benefit from a status quo that had failed them. And the same right wing Brexiteers who champion the abolition of inheritance tax – which affects almost nobody in Blaenau Gwent – also tell us that the EU funding which has paid for apprenticeships and investment in our local infrastructure is simply a gravy train for a Cardiff Bay elite. 

And here is the danger for our own democratic institutions in Wales. Our National Assembly and our emerging democratic institutions mean nothing to the new right. The intense and angry intolerance of dissent that I see on social media is shaping a different sort of national debate. For these populists democracy stopped when polls closed in June 2016 and if we stand in their way then our institutions – which do not have the advantage of a centuries of cultural acceptance – will also be a target for abolition or emasculation “in the name of the people”.

Ironically this is a very un-British approach to politics. The fundamental tenets which unite most parts of our different British political traditions is a tolerance, a belief in freedom of expression, political pluralism, a respect for political opponents and for our shared institutions. The authoritarianism of this New Right is foreign to us and our history and it has no respect and no place for either those institutions and cultural norms which have been the bedrocks of British democracy over the centuries. A campaign which was founded on the belief that we need to restore our sovereignty and our democracy has now turned its sights on that sovereignty and that democracy. Again our parliaments and any democratically-elected representative who questions the will of the people is angrily dismissed. Only the Queen appears to have escaped their wrath.

So I believe that we need to make the case again for a Welsh politics and re-make the case for Welsh democratic institutions and governance. And also make the case for a politics which is tolerant and generous. A politics which is rooted in a democracy in Wales and across the UK with checks and balances and underpinned by an intelligent and open debate and a democratic culture. And of course it is this openness and this tolerance that the new right wing Brexiteer populists hate and fear most of all.