Ö÷²¥´óÐã

Yes, thank you, Pembrokeshire was fantastic. They've wrung me out and I'm hoping that after all that rain I may have shrunk just a little bit.

It's straight up to the National Eisteddfod in Bala where my main concern this morning was the timetable of the piano solo for the over 19s and the under 12s solo. But another timetable made sure former Plaid president Dafydd Wigley's lecture for the Parliament for Wales campaign was pretty packed: his proposed timetable of a referendum on law-making powers.

Mr Wigley, still waiting for another title, set out that timetable as he saw it. It went something like this:

Option 1: a referendum before the General Election?

Verdict? Well nigh impossible and impractical. He can say that again and did, just to be perfectly clear. You can't call a snap referendum as you can a snap election. Rules is rules and it would take between 3 - more like 6 months by Mr Wigley's assessment - to call and hold a referendum. A referendum before next May? You'd have to call it early in the Autumn, it would be used to punish an unpopoular Labour government in Westminster, there's uncertainty around Rhodri Morgan's departure date, it would make next to no impact amidst all of that.

It won't happen. Quite.

Option 2: a referendum on the same day as the General Election.
Verdict? Any debate would be drowned out by campaigning for the election. Not a runner.

Option 3: After a General Election, before the Assembly Election.
Verdict? A goer and the former Plaid president's outright favourite.

Why? Where will we be in November 2010? Governed, quite possibly, by the Conservatives in Westminster. Would David Cameron be tempted to hold a referendum? Kick start the process in May, get a 'final answer' by November 2010. What better platform for the Conservative campaign in Wales for the Assembly election in 2011? Would the Tories want to be seen to be standing in the way and not giving Welsh voters the chance to cast their vote? Why not go for it early?

There would be no other election campaign to cut across a referendum campaign; voters would 'already have punished Labour'; Labour would prefer the thought and find easier to sell the option of Labour-made rules in Wales than Tory-made ones in Westminster; Conservatives who wanted to campaign for a yes vote could do so with no General Election in the offing and with no other election campaign on the go, Labour and Plaid would find it less difficult to cooperate on a referendum campaign.

Getting manifestoes written for the Assembly Election would be so much easier if the parties knew how much power they would have (or, of course, have failed to gain. Not many in the audience who contemplated that one).

A long list. As I said, Mr Wigley's favoured option.

Pitfalls? At a UK level, Labour may well be looking for a new leader. A new leader would be in place in Wales but would he or she have had time to make a mark? Wouldn't it be relatively easy for the Conservatives to argue that this was part of 'old Labour business', the sort of 'business' people were clearly fed up with and had not voted to support? Figures like - and I quote - Paul Murphy, Wayne David, Chris Bryant and Glenys Kinnock would be free to campaign against a yes vote.

All in all? Supporters of a yes vote ought to listen carefully and put a big, red circle around autumn 2010. He boomed just to make sure they could hear him over the wind.

Option 4: same day as the Assembly election in 2011.
Verdict? Some (think of the local AM ...) have been "charmed" by the idea. Not so Mr Wigley. Yes, it would save money and it would be hard for Labour MPs who don't want to see a yes vote to say so out loud in the middle of an Assembly election campaign where Labour's support for further powers is a clear policy but it would confuse voters, UKIP would stand in seats where the Conservative candidate supports further powers and it would be "a nightmare for Plaid canvassers". Yes, you can work with Labour when in government and fight them during an election campaign but work with them on a referendum campaign and go for them in an election campaign on the same doorstep, during the same pitch to the same housewife? A few in the middle rows shuddered.

"Don't play into the hands of the no campaign" boomed Mr Wigley again.

Option 5: after the Assembly election.
Verdict? Leave the long grass out of this.

The doors open, everyone rushes out to get to the pavilion in time to see who takes the crown home this year.

Mr Wigley leaves a prize - his idea of a prize of course - on the table for Welsh Secretary Peter Hain before he headed off himself. If Mr Hain is prepared to argue, as he told Golwg last week, that LCOs still unresolved at a time of a General Election should not automatically fall if a new government takes the reins and that the Conservatives, if they win, should be asked to play ball and accept that they represent 'the will of the people of Wales', why not call a referendum before a General Election and call on David Cameron to play ball (I translate a phrase of North Walian Welsh that I can't quite imagine Mr Hain uttering) if he wins the election and go ahead with it?

Mr Wigley foresaw a feather in Mr Hain's cap and the "ugly possibility" of Cheryl Gillan, as a future Welsh Secretary, 'defying the will of the people of Wales' and reaching for that veto.

Crowns. Feathers in caps and what the former head honcho of Plaid knows can only be seen as a very public challenge to current leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?