Wales Is Not New Labour

Westminster prime minister Gordon Brown has been criticised for abolishing the 10% tax rate, which had been introduced to benefit the lowest income workers. While raising taxes on the poorest working people in the country is to be condemned as contemptible, another effect may not have yet been calculated. Good governance in Scotland, at last free of a half-century and longer throttling by the Labour party, is being watched closely by Wales, the other devolved state in New Labour's country of the Nations and the Regions.

Welsh working people, too, are badly affected by the 10% tax rate abolition. Up to now Plaid Cymru has not enjoyed the same widespread and rapidly growing commitment displayed in Scotland to the Scottish National Party since it gained power and the long echoes of the Labour Movement's historic grasp on the working class died away. Apart from hopes by the Conservatives that their strength in Wales is not reduced to virtual nothingness as it is in Scotland, there should be great fear too, in New Labour, that Welsh voters will choose Welsh nationalism rather than the Conservative or Liberal Democrat opposition, to drive home their final loss of faith in a United Kingdom New Labour government that has suborned the name of their party but delivered insults and disadvantage to most of the Welsh people.