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Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Yes for Wales - make it happen!

I will be making a speech in Plenary later on today calling on a cross-party 'Yes!' campaign to be established in preparation for a future referendum to give the Welsh Assembly full law-making powers within the confines set by the Government of Wales Act 2006. The full speech can be read here.
Comments:
How about a speech directed to fixing the very GVA poor Welsh economy? After all, if the Welsh economy was a GVA rich Welsh economy then Wales would be in a much better position to acquire more powers and ultimately full independence from London.

... meanwhile the Welsh economy is where exactly ... oh, at the bottom of the British economic league tables thereby resulting in an overall low wage economy.
 
good for you Peter, should have been done a year ago. it's about time the parties stopped dithering over this (scared of losing votes?) and put their cards on the table. Now. NOT when London has a Tory govt, too late. Now. This week. Today.
 
Just read your speech, Peter. Have you ever thought it would be a good idea to join your sentences together and group them in paragraphs?

Perhaps that's irrelevant. The main point is to stop TALKING about doing it, and actually start the campaign.

Think of a name. Get a group of people together who are prepared to stand with you. Put up a website.
 
while i understand the official position of labour and plaid is to "wait and see' the outcome of the all wales convention i can see no reason why supporters of increased powers for the assembly -of whichever political persuasion they may be - should not begin work now on an all party YES campaign as we had in '97!

The reactionaries are already organising themselves - with far right wing tory and implacable opponent of any form of devolution david davies openly talking of establishing a formal NO campaign, while a 'NO' campaign has already apparently been established by labour anti-devolutionists in islwyn!

We need to begin the task of taking POSITIVE reasons why we the assembly should have more powers! It would be a monumental error to allow the anti-assembly brigade to make all the running!

Hope u get support for this in the chamber peter.

Leigh,
swansea.
 
It is written as a speech not an essay so it is arranged to aid delivery.

As for forming a campaign it is not that easy. The Electoral Commission determine what is and what is not an official campaign. It needs to meet certain criteria and that means that we need all-party co-operation. That is not forthcoming.
 
While parts of the speech are way too party-political (you are a politician after all) the majority of it was something that needed to be said and needs to be said over and over so Thank you for saying it!

The purpose of a Yes campaign is to convince the people of Waoles to vote Yes. It makes no sense to wait until we're guaranteed to win before startng a Yes campaign, we will never be certain to win if we don't start making the arguments for further powers, and make them loud.

For future reference though, you mentioned Peter Hain two times too often. That has-been doesn't deserve the coverage.
 
@ Peter: "As for forming a campaign it is not that easy. The Electoral Commission determine what is and what is not an official campaign."

did the Electoral Commission sanction the 'no' campaign? Seems that if they deem a 'no' campaign to be official, then a 'yes' one should be too, by default.

Meh, I don't understand politics, that's why we pay politicians to do it :)

If "the people" started a yes campaign, would that help or hinder the process?
 
True Wales is not an "official" No campaign. The Electoral Commission won't select an official campaign on either side until there's a fixed referendum to campaign for.
 
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