There’s long been a
feeling among non Labour folk that
Labour leaders in Wales always put the UK party's interests before Wales, but it seems
that view is now shared in the ivory towers of the crachach as Geraint Talfan Davies writes on
Click on Wales about sorting out Welsh funding and facing up to the issues that need addressing.
He writes ‘It is complicated by the inconvenient
intertwining of Welsh and British politics. Carwyn Jones heads the only Labour
administration in the UK above the local government level. He must, therefore,
feel some obligation to make Labour’s case against the UK coalition’s policies,
especially as those policies will impact so heavily on his own government and
on the less well off, of whom Wales has more than its share.
But discharging this
political obligation may well run counter to the best negotiating strategy for
the pursuit of the Welsh interest. If you have no leverage, you need friends
and allies, even cunning and dissimulation. But you also need the courage to face
up to all parts of the funding equation.'
