Twenty-five years ago Wales was, to a very large extent, an imaginary country. Instead of having a democratically elected Parliament of its own, it had a branch office of Westminster’s government in Cardiff run by MPs who didn’t necessarily even represent Welsh constituencies.
After the humiliating four-to-one referendum defeat in 1979 of plans to establish a Welsh Assembly with limited powers, it seemed that Wales was destined to remain a country in name only, enjoying sporadic victories on the rugby field and gaining name recognition on the world stage thanks to its association with entertainers like Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones.
But moods can change, and 18 years of Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major that ended the mining industry and destroyed thousands of relatively well-paid jobs persuaded just about enough people to back a new devolution proposal at a referendum held on September 18 1997.
Read more: 'Welsh Labour must not steal power from voters with a stitch up' - Martin Shipton
Even so, those who decided the timing of this second referendum shrewdly decided that victory for the Yes campaign could only be secured by piggybacking on Tony Blair’s general election landslide in May that year.
They were right. This was hardly an auspicious way to launch what was hoped to be a new era based on burgeoning Welsh self-confidence. The birth pains did, in fact, prove to be severe.
After Ron Davies was forced to step down as Welsh Labour leader following the infamous Clapham Common incident, Blair initially succeeded in imposing as First Minister - known by the title First Secretary at the time - Alun Michael, a minister loyal to him.
Within a year of the National Assembly for Wales being established in 1999, the “people’s choice” candidate Rhodri Morgan had displaced Michael following a row over the UK Government’s refusal to match fund EU regional aid money.
But claims made by the proponents of a Yes vote during the referendum campaign raised unrealistically high hopes about what an Assembly / Welsh Parliament could achieve, certainly in the short term.
Ron Davies spoke of creating an “economic powerhouse”, implying that levels of prosperity in Wales would be raised significantly. Sometimes he appeared to be referring to a new economic development agency, but on other occasions implied that the institution itself would act as such a driver.
People in the Valleys - where it’s arguable that the referendum would be won or lost - were especially encouraged to believe that setting up an Assembly would in itself be enough to reverse years of economic decline. With the need to achieve a big swing from the 1979 referendum result, it’s understandable why over-optimistic claims were made.
But for all these years since, it has saddled the institution with a unique, long-lasting burden: every time grounds for criticism of the administration crop up, a small but noisy minority uses the opportunity to call for the abolition of the Assembly / Senedd. No one, by contrast, advocates the abolition of Westminster when its government of the day becomes enmeshed in yet another scandal - and the same applies throughout the world.
But while the abolitionists are in a minority, there has to be serious concern about the fact that those who participate in Wales’ devolved elections are in a minority too. There have been six elections to the National Assembly - now the Senedd. Election turnouts were as follows: 1999 - 46.3%; 2003 - 38.2%; 2007 - 43.7%; 2011 - 42.2%; 2016 - 45.3%; 2021 - 46.6%.
Such turnouts illustrate a paradox: that while academics and politicians can point to opinion poll surveys which suggest people trust the Welsh Government more than they do the UK Government, most of them can’t be bothered to cast their votes. Any analysis of what has happened during the 25 years of devolution needs to consider why there is such a high level of disengagement.
In one way it’s good to note that last year’s turnout was the highest so far. But the fact that more than 53% of the electorate decided not to participate in the 2021 Senedd election invalidates the argument made in earlier years that more powers for Wales would translate into a voting upsurge. Why is this the case?
It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that the high hopes raised during the referendum campaign a quarter of a century ago simply haven’t been met. The Welsh economy remains full of challenges (although it was good to see that the growth in Gross Value Added - a variation on GDP - in Wales was second only to London in UK regions over the first quarter of 2022).
Yet there’s nothing to suggest that Wales would have performed better had devolution not occurred. For all the talk of “levelling up” from the current UK Government, the policy has produced little tangible evidence of advance and the state’s economy remains skewed towards London and the south east of England. Meanwhile within Wales, Cardiff remains economically dominant.
In its early years, the Welsh Government had a target to end child poverty by the year 2000. It was nowhere near being met and today nearly one third of children are classified as living in poverty - the highest proportion of any region in the UK.
For whatever reason - whether austerity policies of the Conservative government at Westminster or the lack of economic levers available to the Welsh Government - the hoped-for improvements simply haven’t happened.
It’s also regrettably the case that neither health nor education - the most important policy areas which are wholly devolved - have delivered the better performances that many assumed would be achieved. Waiting times remain unacceptably long in the health service, with many patients who can afford to do so opting for private medical procedures. Every such private operation marks a failure for NHS Wales.
And while it is, of course, possible to receive education of a very high standard in Welsh state schools, too many pupils aren’t performing well and international comparisons demonstrate a crying need for improvement.
So has devolution been worth it? A thousand times yes. Despite the disappointments I have referred to, having a National Assembly and now a Senedd has - and I don’t mean this to sound anticlimactic - normalised Wales as a country. For the first time ever, it has an institution that provides a political focus where none existed before.
Whatever the majority think who do not bother to vote - and I’ve already referred to the paradox that most of them nevertheless approve of the Senedd’s existence - having the ability to make your own laws and raise your own taxes validates Wales as a nation in a way that couldn’t be said before devolution.
Politics entails grappling with real problems and trying to make things better. There are plenty of measures - many of them progressive and most of them modest - that have made lives better for the people of Wales.
Examples include free prescriptions for all, free bus passes for older people and the disabled (both thanks to Rhodri Morgan); legislation on human organ donation (thanks to Edwina Hart); stricter fire regulations in homes (thanks to Ann Jones) and, on its way, social partnership legislation aimed at improving pay and conditions for workers employed by firms that win contracts with or receive financial help from the Welsh Government (thanks to Mark Drakeford).
Devolution has also provided a measure of protection against hard-right policies from Westminster. The Senedd gives the people of Wales the opportunity to steer a middle course between idealism and cynicism. At present we have too much of both.
We have a cohort of (not all) Welsh nationalists for whom the present with all its complications deserves to be disregarded or railed against, as if independence will be a cure-all for all our problems.
At the same time we have a reactionary rump that opposes all initiatives that involve doing things differently in Wales from how they are done in England. It’s the real, imperfect country we inhabit that deserves our attention - not the romantic dream of a future independent state where problems no longer exist because they have been instantly solved by our new status, or nostalgia for a supposedly glorious past where we were attached like limpets to the coattails of our more powerful eastern neighbour.
Yes, Wales has huge challenges that have been imperfectly addressed over the last 25 years. But if there’s one thing we should have learned from the disdainful treatment the Welsh Government has received from Westminster in the wake of Brexit, it is that we need to stand up for ourselves against those who would rob us of our self-respect.
Contrary to the assertions of the small minority who campaign for the Senedd’s abolition, there is nothing unique to Wales in the criticisms that can be levelled against our devolved government. Yes, it has wasted large amounts of money on projects that haven’t been successful or even completed.
But the same can be said of the UK Government, whose record on wasteful expenditure is far worse. Yes, Welsh civil society is prone to cliquism and nepotism, with a relatively small network of individuals exerting influence through the public appointments and other positions they hold. But the same kind of networks exist in England, as exemplified by the awarding of Covid contracts to ministerial cronies.
Yes, Wales needs to regulate lobbyists, whose behind-the-scenes activities give legitimate cause for concern. So far, however, unlike Westminster,we haven’t had a scandal involving a Senedd Member pushing commercial interests for financial gain.
And while we can point to policy failures across the range of devolved responsibilities that have resulted in poor delivery, exactly the same can be said of successive UK governments. As devolution moves towards its second quarter-of-a-century, it could soon be facing fresh attempts from Westminster to roll back its powers.
There is certainly no possibility of the Senedd’s responsibilities being extended by the present UK Government, and even a future Labour government might not be as keen to devolve areas like justice and policing as Mark Drakeford and his colleagues might like.
Yet with the challenges facing the UK as a whole, there’s a possibility that Liz Truss may not want to trigger a major confrontation with the Welsh Government in the two years or so she has left of her party’s mandate before the next general election is due.
So far as the Welsh domestic agenda is concerned, we need to be realistic about what can be achieved. In an ever more complex world, we can’t expect the Welsh Government to solve long standing problems that derive from choices made in the distant past and the shortcomings of capitalism.
The same applies to administrations elsewhere. What we deserve, however, is a Senedd based on greater transparency than we have at present.
When he was First Minister, the late Rhodri Morgan pledged that the Welsh Government would be the most open administration in the western world. Sadly, as with so many other facets of devolution, the aspiration and the reality are today far apart.
That’s no reason to scrap the Senedd, though. There’s nothing else on offer and we need to improve what we’ve got. Over the years, concerns have been raised about the calibre of many of our politicians at the Senedd. The same, of course, could be said of many of the MPs elected to Westminster. Soon, with the expansion of the Senedd, there will be a chance to bring new talent on board.
Unfortunately, the new electoral system that’s on the cards may result in the election of more uninspiring party hacks - an outcome Wales neither needs nor deserves. Let’s hope that can be avoided. See more on Martin's analysis of Labour's proposed electoral stitch up here. We need MSs of principle who won’t be afraid to criticise their own party when it’s the right thing to do.
We also need to get away from the current unhealthy situation where people with reasonable criticisms of the status quo won’t speak out because they are worried their organisation’s public funding will be cut.
In 1997, we were promised a new inclusive form of politics, with the hope of prosperity for all. We haven’t got it yet, but we would be letting down ourselves and our nation if we gave up trying.
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