After Wednesday’s fun and games in the Welsh Assembly, it has emerged that Kirsty Williams has been approached about possibly taking a seat in the Welsh Cabinet.
BBC Wales also understands Mr Jones has discussed appointing Lib Dem AM Kirsty Williams as a cabinet minister.
Meanwhile the Welsh Tories suggested they will not support Leanne Wood for first minister again without a deal.
Neil Hamilton, UKIP assembly group leader, called on the smaller parties to “stick together” against Labour arrogance.
The Plaid Cymru leader was backed by the Conservatives and the seven UKIP AMs, as well as her own party, in the controversial tied vote last Wednesday.
Ms Williams was the only opposition AM to support Mr Jones.
The plot thickened:
Meanwhile, Labour and the Lib Dems confirmed talks were continuing between their parties, but refused to reveal what had been discussed.
A well-placed Lib Dem source said Ms Williams had discussed an offer to take up a post as a cabinet minister.
Kirsty knows only too well that accepting such an offer would come with many risks attached. The sensible portfolio for her to hold would be health and I suspect that she’d only do it if she was given carte blanche to sort stuff out. Extending her More Nurses bill, a key plank of the Liberal Democrat manifesto, would be an important part of that.
We shall have to wait and see what happens. There is no doubt that Kirsty would be a great minister, but she could come under attack for joining a government she had so heavily criticised. If she were able to make a real difference in office that people could feel, it could be a win-win situation, though. The downside is that there would be no distinctive Liberal Democrat voice in opposition to Labour. Much as Kirsty was right to back Jones the other day, Labour still has a massive attitude problem in Wales with that real sense of entitlement to power.
Kirsty and the party in Wales will no doubt be looking at all the aspects of a deal, particularly if the Tories are involved in some way. Watch this space…
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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32 Comments
Kirsty joining the Government would be a disaster for the party in Wales, making it much easier for the Tories to beat us in Brecon and Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire, while making it harder to beat Labour in Cardiff.
No problem with Kirsty nominating Carwyn for FM (they got 29 seats, they won, we have to deal with it), and in theory have no problem with the odd deal taking place along the way, but propping up Labour in Wales in such a way would be the wrong call by some distance.
Accept a special brief with an independent remit to report on / advocate for nurses / reforms to nursing, yes.
Health Minister? Not yet.
I’m not sure she would have anything to lose. The Lib Dems in Wales are already in an absolute mess – they just keep losing. If she’s really in politics to help people and is has talented as many in the party think, she will do a good job. If she has a fairly high profile job and does it well, the Welsh people might decide they want more of these Lib Dems. If she doesn’t take it the Lib Dems – as very much the 5th party – will get little or no media coverage and people might just forget about you.
On balance and in principle, I’d say ‘yes’ to increase our profile and show (again) we’ll work with all parties for liberal policies and good government. It would need clear explanation and clear terms (like we didn’t get with the Coalition Govt).
But I am not in Wales and will bow to those with local knowledge.
I reckon it will be fine to take the cabinet position as long as she doesn’t make out Lib Dems and Labour are marrying.
People might say she is selling out by taking a cabinet position, but what is so wrong about politicians gaining experience?
This makes sense otherwise the party will be ignored for 5 years and might as well pack up its bags and go home.
Surely Labour is the (minority) government in Wales and we and other parties are in opposition.
This should be the new reality without voting reform. No smaller party should touch government again without this constitutional change – which is the only thing that can protect smaller parties from being marginalised under First Past The Post.
Most commentators recognise that voting reform won’t happen without Labour support. So no-one should prop them up without it.
William, doesn’t Wales have proportional representation? Albeit under a top-up system. How proportionate does it need to be before coalitions are considered again?
Surely the issue is extracting enough concessions. If the previous Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition didn’t introduce policies that were anathema to many of its long-term voters then maybe things would have been better.
I’m not Welsh, so the Welsh views are most important, but considering coalition again throws up some universal dilemmas.
Option A) Kirsty enters the Cabinet, a large chunk of our manifesto is implemented, a Liberal Democrat is a key figure in Welsh politics, and we have something positive to tell voters in 2021.
Option B) Kirsty is completely marginalised. As a backbencher with no colleagues she’s almost invisible – no FMQ, next to no speaking rights, no place on a committee, no Liberal Democrat time to table debates, and no media coverage.
No brainer.
Some people do not seem to have learned much from the disaster that engulfed the party after the Coalition Government formed in 2010. It is very tempting but absolutely no.
Montgomeryshire was the safest Liberal Democrat constituency with almost 140 years of continuous representation except for 1979- 1983 but now the party’s share of the vote has dropped at each election since 2010 and was about 27% this year about half what it was in 2005. Is there any particular reason for this apart from the observation that barely 50% of the population are local people with the rest being incomers of various origins ?
Surely the purpose of campaigning to get elected is to change things for the better, in a liberal manner. I think Kirsty should go for it. I didn’t agree with everything the coalition did, but things have changed for the better (Pupil Premium/ Tax allowances) because of liberal input. If Kirsty has an opportunity to lead and make changes for the better, she should.
If this is true it seems like a no-brainer to me. Have a strong talented minister with a profile implementing liberal policies in government – or a back bencher with no profile and no coverage.
I know some in the party are fearful of coalitions after last time (and rightly so) but given the alternative this seems like it would be an opportunity that we should not waste.
Eddie: “doesn’t Wales have proportional representation? Albeit under a top-up system. How proportionate does it need to be before coalitions are considered again?”
It’s a semi-proportional system, to be fair.
After the votes are counted, the only safety-valve for proportionality is the vote for first minister. Any deal that can be done to ensure a given candidate has enough votes to win when that question is put to the assembly is therefore valid – I think…
There is not a compulsion towards coalition, it just makes it arguably more frequently possible.
It would be nice if we had a similar vote after General Elections, before the kissing of hands thing. At Westminster, there is still a glossing over the process of parliamentary consent to a Prime Minister taking office, which makes the invitation of the monarch officially more important than the wishes of a majority of parliamentarians.
Can we find an MP to sponsor a Prime Ministers (Parliamentary Consent) Bill setting a timetable for an election of the PM by MPs after a GE? It could be the very first step towards proportionality.
How long before she joined |Labour?
This would be nothing like the 2010 coalition. Then the Lib Dems had the Tories and Labour desperate for their support and were completely out smarted by the Tories. Clegg negotiated from a position of strength and blew it. If Kirsty Williams can get herself the post of Minister for Health in the Welsh Assembly she will have done a marvelous job.
“Kirsty joining the Government would be a disaster for the party in Wales…”
Without wishing to be cruel/unkind, there doesn’t seem to be much of the party in Wales left to have a disaster in….
“Kirsty joining the Government would be a disaster for the party in Wales, making it much easier for the Tories to beat us in Brecon and Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire, while making it harder to beat Labour in Cardiff.”
That’s an argument against all coalitions isn’t it? I don’t agree, although see where you’re coming from.
But it’s just her all on her own this time, the party in wales couldn’t be more irrelevant. No one will hear from us, outside of the odd leaflet here and there, for five years. She must, if she can, join the government and get us out there again. Not ideal, but that’s the situation we are now in.
Labour 34.7% of the vote and 48% of seats. Lib Dems 7.7% of the vote and less than 2% of the vote.
Proportional?
Up to a point Lord Copper.
Kirsty , this could be a poison chalice , or no chalice ! I favour coalition , our Scottish unity on issues with Labour , wallace and Dewar ,experience is never alluded to , all is forgotten in the association , Clegg and Cameron.But this is neither, a worry for her and the Welsh party .
Especially for her to avoid the health brief .Health in Wales is to un “reformed “, the very opposite of England , too much and often wrongheaded reform. It is why their waiting lists and outcomes are the worst at times in Britain.They need a combination of investment and change .Labour , drifting are not going to go for the thrust of either .
This could be wrong for Kirsty herself too.I detect a desire to step back when we see her resignation as leader there.I and most would prefer she had stayed.We should feel the same about whre she is at now .Very useful as a reasonable and eloquent Assembly member .And shown very clearly in her exemplarary conduct since the debacle in that Assembly !
‘Montgomeryshire was the safest Liberal Democrat constituency with almost 140 years of continuous representation except for 1979- 1983’
From December 1910 to 1924 and from 1931 to 1945 the Liberal MP had been elected unopposed.
>> William Hobhouse wrote:
>> No smaller party should touch government again without [voting reform] – which
>> is the only thing that can protect smaller parties from being marginalised
> Eddie Sammon wrote:
> How proportionate does it need to be before coalitions are considered again?
One of the important properties of *good* PR is survivability for small and middle-sized parties.
Welsh AMS is clearly deficient in this regard, since you need 10-12% of the vote to be assured of winning a seat. That is way too high – a middle-sized party whose vote ranges between 8 and 18% can be wiped in a single election.
Such things are rarely accidental. You only have to look at AMS in Wales or STV in Tasmania to realise that larger parties will limit proportionality purely to cut out competitors.
On that basis, it’s not unreasonable for a smaller party to say that if it is about to suffer the pain of coalition, it shouldn’t have to suffer the pain of a periodically unsurvivable voting system as well. (Whether there is enough leverage to make it stick is another matter…)
There was a Labour – LibDem coalition in Wales from 2000 – 2003, after a year when Labour struggled to work a minority government. From the LibDem point of view, this was soured by the attacks on Mike German. I’m sure this is remembered in the Welsh LibDems.
In a balanced or ‘hung’ political authority you don’t have to be in the Cabinet or in Government to get stuff implemented. You have to get a few’mechanical’ things changed to decision taking and exploit these.
There are smarter ways of using power.
Being seen to prop up a previous majority party that is losing support and discredited (partly due to our own attacks) on issues like health isn’t a great place to be. Gordon Brown in 2010 comes to mind. Surely part of the price as a minimum should be a new Labour leader and hence a fresh start?
Being in coalition without any leverage to defeat the administration in the chamber is a terrible place to be. The larger coalition partner only takes the junior one seriously if they have the power to team up with the opposition and defeat the administration. For this reason alone I would urge Kirsty not to take this offer – she’d basically be a hostage, her only leverage being the once-only option to resign when the inevitable happens and Labour does something unacceptable, an option from which it will be challenging to emerge with enhanced credibility.
If she presses ahead regardless of the above, surely PR for local government must be part of the deal, as in Scotland previously?
Ian Sanderson (RM3) – Presumably the Liberal candidate was unopposed because the other parties thought it was pointless to put up a candidate. In some elections before 1910 there was more than one Liberal candidate in some Welsh constituencies as well as a Conservative but one of the Liberals normally still won.
The present electoral system in Wales (and Scotland) allows a party to keep all the constituency seats won, even if it is more than they would be entitled to under PR but they do not get any more in the regional list. The success of UKIP in Wales meant there were not enough seats left for the Liberal Democrats. The number of regional list AMs would have to be increased or the number of constituency AMs would need to be reduced to rectify this. There already seem to be divisions among the UKIP AMs so maybe they will lose their seats in due course as has happened in many local elections since 2013 for similar reasons.
People don’t know what the Liberal Democrats stand for and so we need to differentaite ourselves from other parties and show clearly what we stand for that other parties don’t.
Kirsty being in a Labour Welsh Cabinet makes it harder to differentaite ourselves. She can exercise power by voting for the Labour policies we agree with and voting against those we disagree with.
Lib Dems have tried both ensuring a strong democratic leading party and doing the right thing from inside only to be rewarded with the ownership of victories being stolen, victories being dismantled and the population betraying the idea. Kirsty has been the only opposition member to try do the right thing from the outside up to this point (although Nathan Gill seemed to be tempted, but that was just to challenge Hamilton) and the decision of stepping inside or outside is a heavy one.
Does Kirsty need to be in the cabinet in order for Labour to use her ideas? I don’t think so as this challenge in itself will have Labour more wary of appearing entitled that ever before. I suspect Kirsty can appear separate, be separate when needs be but be safe in the knowledge that Labour owe her and are likely to be willing to discuss with the only sensible politician in opposition.
The decision should be taken by a Special Conference of Welsh Liberal Democrats. If this Conference approves a coalition then Kirsty becoming a Cabinet Minister is one of the issues to be discussed subsequently. The Labour Party assumed that as it has run a minority Government with 30 AMs then it would be allowed to continue with 29. Even so under the Assembly rules, the Labour Party needs 2 extra AMs to pass its budget. With Kirsty they are still one short.
Labour + Lib Dems = 29 seats
PC+ Tory + UKIP = 29 seats.
It’d still be a minority government without a hope of passing anything without help from other parties.
We saw last week that the PCs, Tories and UKIP are out to play games. And even if a Lab-Lib coalition was formed, where’s the guarantee they could win a vote of confidence. The numbers were exactly the same last week, and Carwyn lost…
The Tories have said they will abstain on the next vote, so Labour will get the First Minister position. As previously stated Sir Winston Churchill became PM again in peacetime in 1951 and offered the Liberal leader one Cabinet position, but was refused, although David Lloyd George MP had spoken in favour of Winston Churchill MP in the Norway debate in 1940.
The experience of the Progressive Democrats in Ireland was that it was essential to have two cabinet ministers, because of the risks of different interpretations of all sorts of meetings. Carwyn Jones is not Charles Haughey, but the risks remain.
If she were to accept she should be accompanied by the current leader of the Welsh party in all negotiations and insist on being accompanied by a non-voting Liberal Democrat assistant of her choice at all Cabinet meetings and at all bilateral meetings with Labour Ministers.
There are also physical risks. Shirley Williams has written about events in crowded voting lobbies in the Commons. Charles Kennedy received huge quantities of electronic hate mail. APNI members are still receiving implied threats in the form of a bullet in the post.
Will Leighton Andrews re-join the Liberal Democrats?
Plaid and Labour have cut a deal on the First Minister, subject to approval by their AMs.
Plaid have also experienced the effects of being the smaller party in a coalition.