Peter Black

I was at Kirsty Williams' manifesto launch at the Wales Millennium Centre yesterday and was impressed with both the document and with Kirsty's presentation of it. The manifesto can be read here.

As I have said in a previous post it is not the role of leader to impose policy onto the party however Kirsty did pull out some key issues that she wishes to lead on, including simplifying local government funding, attacking the erosion of civil liberties and building a green economy. She also re-emphasised the key message that in voting for her she is asking party members to put in place a leader for the long term. She said that we need to embrace change and a new generation of leaders.

Rather predictably, her opponent responded by adopting the Gordon Brown refrain that this is no time for apprenticeships. In doing so she does Kirsty a great disservice. The Brecon and Radnorshire AM has been a member of the Assembly since 1999, she worked as a key part of the group when we were in government, has chaired the important Assembly Health and Social Services Committee and has had a major impact in the Assembly. There is no doubt that Kirsty is ready to hit the ground running as leader even if the first thing she does is to enter negotiations for a new coalition.

Personally, I think that the chances of such negotiations are negligible. Jenny's claim that party members "could well be electing someone who might be in the cabinet and Deputy First Minister within a few months’ time" is a misreading of the situation and appears to have been made solely to promote her own over-inflated view of herself as the Welsh Party's answer to John McCain. In fact Kirsty is perfectly capable of taking on either of these roles and would do so with competence and panache.

The one advantage Kirsty does have is her ability to unite the group behind her. By instinct she is a conciliator and has always been at the centre of efforts to resolve disagreements within the group. In fact the present leader relies on her to do this job as he is not comfortable with it himself.

In contrast when the leadership was discussed by the group in the run-up to the October 2007 Welsh Party Conference, it was Jenny Randerson who threatened to make the group unworkable if Mike German was opposed. It is difficult to see how this action fits in with the role of leader or how she can mould the Assembly Group into an effective team when she has done nothing to resolve the resentment that her actions generated.

In her manifesto, Jenny claims that the last Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Manifesto was a failure. She is right and yet she spent hours working on it with Mike German and was instrumental in blocking a number of radical proposals on the Party's Policy Committee.

She also claims in a recent leaflet that she negotiated us into government in 2000. That is not how I remember it at all. Jenny was certainly part of the negotiating team but I did most of the work on the finance side, helping to bring the various interests together into a workable document, whilst the final coalition document was concluded between Mike German and Rhodri Morgan.

It is true that Jenny played a key role in the creation of the Rainbow Agreement but that document, like the One Wales Agreement was largely undeliverable. More to the point Jenny admits herself that she failed in the leadership role of persuading the Party's Executive of its merits. In fact a majority in favour was turned into a stalemate by the end of the meeting.

That was unfortunate because the party needed to vote on the document itself, which it eventually did. However, the reason that the mechanism was in place at all was because the group and the party executive had been misled as to the degree of discussion that took place before the Assembly elections with all the other parties and felt the need to avoid being railroaded into an agreement without the opportunity to consider it properly.

We cannot afford to have that sort of secrecy and mistrust again. Members need to be engaged in the process and the new leader needs to reach out and involve them in the running of the party. We should be open to all options when the opportunity to negotiate comes around again but we must also be realistic in the final proposals and open with the membership as to the options available to us.

When Jenny emphasises her experience she underlines her closeness to the present leadership and the fact that she is the continuity candidate. Kirsty is the only option for those who want to see change, who want to see the party more focussed on winning across the whole of Wales, who want to see us make an impact in the national media and who want to see a distinctive edge to our campaigning.

Kirsty is rooted in both urban and rural Wales, she has the experience to take us forward, and she can provide the inspiration and the direction that we need.