{"id":60,"date":"2016-09-30T17:42:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T17:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/?p=60"},"modified":"2016-10-09T10:02:44","modified_gmt":"2016-10-09T10:02:44","slug":"wec-report-1452016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/?p=60","title":{"rendered":"Welsh Executive Committee Report, 14 May 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This was the first full meeting of the Welsh Executive Committee (WEC) elected at the end of last year, which took office at Welsh Labour conference in February (there was a very brief meeting at the conference, to elect a chair and vice-chair and fill some other posts).<\/p>\n

Election report<\/p>\n

The main item of business was a report and discussion on the Assembly election campaign, the results and subsequent developments at Cardiff Bay.<\/p>\n

Carwyn Jones said that Labour\u2019s result had been better than expected and that the results in Cardiff North and the Vale, in particular, had been gratifying, but our overall vote had gone down and much of it had gone to UKIP. The latter had already split, in effect, into two groups in the Assembly. Plaid had done well in Blaenau Gwent and Cardiff West, as well as in the Rhondda, focussing mainly on local issues. There was little doubt that they had intended to take over the government when nominating Leanne for First Minister on 11 May and that Plaid AMs had approached the Tories and UKIP with this in mind. There had been strong public opposition to their manoeuvring, however.<\/p>\n

Janice Gregory also gave her perspective as campaign co-ordinator. She said the campaign team had met weekly and had had big issues to contend with, like the steel crisis, which has had to be factored into the campaign. She praised the team in Transport House, whom she felt couldn\u2019t have done more. She said that the result in the Rhondda had taken everyone by surprise.<\/p>\n

The general secretary, Dave Hagendyk said it had been a very difficult campaign, with the Labour vote squeezed by Plaid and UKIP. Labour had undertaken four direct mailings in target seats and distributed three million pieces of print altogether, as well as using Facebook targetting. Across Wales, close to 300,000 people had been spoken to \u2013 more than anywhere else in the UK, outside London. Labour\u2019s result in North Wales had been tremendous but recent elections had seen the party retreat eastward and we now needed to work hard to re-establish ourselves in the West and North-West of Wales. Welsh Labour would carry out a detailed analysis of the campaign and election results over the next couple of months and bring back a report to a future meeting.<\/p>\n

There was a lengthy and thorough discussion of the campaign, some of the main points of which included: details of the campaigning tactics employed by Plaid in the Rhondda; the desirability in future of campaign messages tailored more specifically at North Wales; and the need to analyse the reasons for the big vote for UKIP.<\/p>\n

In the context of a comment about the damaging effects of party disunity, there was some criticism (justifiably, in my view) of the circumstances of Stephen Doughty\u2019s resignation from the front bench earlier in the year. Stephen, who was present as one of the two representatives of the Welsh PLP, defended himself, saying that he had resigned in writing prior to the contentious BBC interview on the matter and \u2013 notwithstanding his criticisms of the reshuffle \u2013 had worked loyally with the party leadership throughout. His explanation was accepted by the chair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Carwyn alluded to the events surrounding Ken Livingstone\u2019s comments about Zionism and the cancellation of Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s planned visit to Wales. He criticised Ken for detracting from the positive messages of the campaign, saying that a day had been wasted, and reiterated that he had not stopped Jeremy from coming to Wales: the decision had been made by mutual agreement. While agreeing with Carwyn about the unhelpfulness of Ken\u2019s comments, I expressed concern about his call for Ken to be expelled, as I felt that any disciplinary penalty should await the outcome of the party\u2019s investigation. I also said that, notwithstanding the explanation he had given about Jeremy\u2019s visit, the comments in the Western Mail attributed to a \u201cparty source\u201d had been damaging, as they had implied that Jeremy was an electoral liability. Carwyn said that the media coverage had been \u201cunfortunate\u201d and Janice added that it was difficult to prevent people lacking any real authority from preventing themselves in the media as anonymous \u201cLabour sources\u201d. Andy Richards of Unite said that his union backed Carwyn\u2019s position on the Livingstone issue.<\/p>\n

I also commented on the Plaid campaign in Cardiff West, which had been very negative and focussed entirely on local government, rather than Assembly, issues, and I endorsed another Committee member\u2019s comment that it was a shame that the Welsh Labour manifesto had been published so late.<\/p>\n

Report from Nia Griffith, Shadow Welsh Secretary \u2013 Nia talked about the series of issues over which the UK Tory government had been forced to back down recently, including their plans to force all English schools to become Academies, as well as aspects of the draconian Trade Union Bill. The Queen\u2019s Speech was due to take place in the coming week and the proposed legislation to tackle extremism was likely to be particularly controversial, in the light of the disgraceful Islamophobic campaign against Sadiq Khan. Nia also commented on the implications of the Tories\u2019 proposed parliamentary boundary changes, which would reduce Wales\u2019 representation from 40 seats to 29. Stephen Doughty observed that the partial success of the campaign against the Trade Union Bill showed that the Tories can be defeated. Dave Hagendyk added that thanks were also due to Labour\u2019s representatives in the House of Lords, including Eluned Morgan, who had now been elected to the Assembly.<\/p>\n

European Referendum \u2013 Dave reported that printed campaign materials had now been delivered. The campaign needed to engage both with those voters who needed to be persuaded to vote \u2018yes\u2019 and with those already inclined to do so, who needed to be encouraged to turn out. Many loyal Labour voters were unconvinced of the need to remain in the EU and so much of the party\u2019s efforts would be focussed on \u2018heartland\u2019 areas, rather than election marginals. There was a discussion, covering a number of points, including: the need to get the student vote out; the varying attitudes to the EU in different economic sectors; and the need to counter UKIP\u2019s appeal to disaffected voters. Margaret Thomas of Unison said that her union had registered as a third-party campaign for the referendum, having consulted members, who\u2019d been overwhelmingly supportive of a \u2018yes\u2019 vote. I said that Labour needed to have a distinct message from the official \u2018IN\u2019 campaign, emphasising the need for reform of the EU, to avoid repeating our mistake in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, when we were seen as too close to the Tories in the \u2018Better Together\u2019 campaign.<\/p>\n

General Secretary\u2019s report \u2013 Dave said that the Welsh party\u2019s policy consultation work now needed to be refocussed on UK-wide issues, via \u2018Your Britain\u2019. He also reported that Welsh Labour would be left with just two organisers after the referendum: Michelle in North Wales and one (to be appointed) in the South.<\/p>\n

Party Reform update \u2013 The chair, Donna Hutton reported that a \u2018Party Reform\u2019 exercise was being led by the NEC, with a number of strands, including one concerning the relationship between the party centrally and its Welsh and Scottish organisations. Andy Richards had been representing Welsh Labour in discussions about areas of party activity in which responsibility could be devolved to Wales. Any proposals would be put before the party conference in September, after which the Welsh party would conduct its own, detailed review of its rules and processes, which would culminate at the 2017 Welsh conference. In response to a question from Catherine Thomas (Mid & West Wales CLPs), it was confirmed that this would include agreeing a more consistent approach to gender-balanced representation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Welsh Labour Conference 2017 \u2013 It was confirmed that this will take place in Llandudno, 22-26 March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was the first full meeting of the Welsh Executive Committee (WEC) elected at the end of last year, which took office at Welsh Labour conference in February (there was a very brief meeting at the conference, to elect a chair and vice-chair and fill some other posts). Election report The main item of business … Continue reading “Welsh Executive Committee Report, 14 May 2016”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.DarrenWilliams.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}