Alyn and Deeside by-election

Thanks to ITN News for publishing the full figures from the by-election caused by the death of Labour's Carl Sargeant.

• Jack Sargeant Labour 11,267 61% +15%
• Sarah Atherton Conservative 4,722 25% +4%
• Donna Lalek Liberal Democrat 1,176 6% +2%
• Carrie Harper Plaid Cymru 1,059 6% -3%
• Duncan Rees Green 353 2% -1%
• LABOUR MAJORITY 6,545
• TURNOUT 29%
• SWING 5% Conservative to Labour
• 
  

I suppose the only way that Labour was going to lose this seat would be for the party bosses to parachute a candidate in from the south. Congratulations to Jack Sargeant on his win, but one suspects that the Cardiff Bay hierarchy will continue to take the Gogs for granted.

The turnout was very disappointing, especially as the background to the by-election has dominated the headlines in Wales. The people who did turn out were clearly not bothered about the effects of leaving the EU on Airbus and agriculture, since the top two candidates both represented pro-Brexit parties.

Donna Lalek's increase in vote share (pushing Plaid down into fourth place) is highly praiseworthy as I understand that her campaign started from scratch. It augurs well for Liberal Democrat campaigns in more winnable seats.

Plaid's poor performance is going to increase the pressure on Leanne Woods to step down as leader.

A few thoughts on female representation

Today we are celebrating the restoration of women's right to vote. As this parliamentary briefing shows, the Great Reform Act of 1832 actually took away an implicit right. In practice, though, women voters may have been in a small minority because the franchise was based on property ownership. While there may have been no women MPs before 1918, there are occasional references to female local councillors.

Radio Wales' Sunday Supplement this week covered the centenary well (and still found time to compare the prospects of Theresa May and Carwyn Jones retaining the leadership of their respective parties!). The discussion between Vaughan Roderick, Helen Mary Jones and Kirsty Williams was particularly rewarding. There was agreement that the Welsh Assembly had fallen back from its position of gender balance when it was set up. Helen Mary seemed to believe that the main cause was the abandonment of zipping and all-women shortlists - though nobody pointed out that the Liberal Democrat representation in 1999 was exactly balanced without any overt pre-election gender preferences. I believe that another factor was the Labour government's move away from committee discussion, which tends to more consensual decision-making, to jousting on the floor of the Senedd. The latter may make better television but the aggression which it engenders puts people off. In trying to make Cardiff Bay more like Westminster, Labour has reduced women's interest in participating in government in Wales.

An end to polluting Jaguars outside no. 10?

The European Commission is disappointed with the progress made in reducing noxious vehicle emissions. It wants to give a boost to the process through public procurement. The proposal has been passed to the European Parliament for consideration.

In November 2017, the European Commission proposed a revision of Directive 2009/33/EC on the promotion of clean and energy-efficient road transport vehicles (the Clean Vehicles Directive), after an evaluation showed that the directive had yielded limited results, for instance by not encouraging a more significant uptake of clean vehicles in the market overall. The proposed directive aims to promote clean mobility solutions in public procurement tenders and thereby raise the demand for, and the further deployment of, clean vehicles. The proposal provides a definition for clean light-duty vehicles based on a combined CO2 and air-pollutant emissions threshold; for heavy-duty vehicles, it gives a definition based on alternative fuels. The proposal is in line with the European Commission's energy union package, which plans action on the further decarbonisation of road transport in line with the 2030 climate and energy targets, and with the EU's commitments under the Paris Agreement. The proposal has been assigned to the European Parliament's Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI). The Parliament has been strongly supportive of a wider deployment of alternative-fuel vehicles on the European market.

The UK's Conservative and UKIP MEPs may be expected to resist this initiative. One trusts that they do not hold the swing vote when it eventually reaches plenary, but if they do, we could have an interesting situation if Brexit goes ahead. The UK would be instrumental in hobbling the other 27 states just before departing.

Nuke still missing off Savannah, USA, after 60 years

On Feb. 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber dropped a 7,000-pound nuclear bomb into the waters off Tybee Island, Ga., after it collided with another Air Force jet. [...] The bomb — which has unknown quantities of radioactive material — has never been found. And while the Air Force says the bomb, if left undisturbed, poses no threat to the area, determined bomb hunters and area residents aren't so sure.

There is more here.

Connie at 150

It used to be one of the stock quiz questions: who was the first woman elected to the UK parliament? The dive-in answer is Viscountess (Nancy) Astor, but in fact she was just the first woman to sit as a MP. Countess Markievicz beat her to it, but as a Sinn Feiner, refused to take her seat. That Markiewcz was in gaol at the time was also a complicating factor.

But even the correct answer conceals a more interesting fact, that the lady was born into the Ascendancy. Constance Gore-Booth (her Polish title was acquired through marrying a fellow art student before she was involved in the independence struggle), born 150 years ago today, was a member of one of the families who had ruled Ireland since the Plantations, and had been presented at court. So the first two women elected to Westminster were quite posh. Contrast that with the fight that working journalist Anne Clwyd had merely to be selected as a candidate by a constituency Labour party, as she related on this morning's Sunday Supplement, celebrating the centenary of the Act that introduced a measure of suffrage to Westminster elections.

It's the season for a stonking Lib Dem gain on Wearside

Local Authority Byelection Results

Thursday 12th January 2017
Sunderland MB, Sandhill
LD Stephen O’Brien 824 [45.0%; +41.5%]
Labour 458 [25.0%; -29.9%]
UKIP 343 [18.7%; -7.2%]
Conservative 184 [10.0%; -5.7%]
Green 23 [1.3%; +1.3%]
Majority 366
Turnout 23.8%
Lib Dem gain from Labour
Percentage change since 2016

Thursday 1st February 2018
Sunderland MB, Pallion
LD Martin Haswell 1251 [53.9%; +49.5%]
Lab 807 [34.8%; -15.9%]
Con 126 [5.4%; -7.2%]
UKIP 97 [4.2%; -24.7%]
Green 39 [1.7%; -1.8%]
Lib Dem gain from Labour
Percentage changes from 2016

Sunderland voted "Leave" in 2016, in spite of being partly dependent on industry which exports to the EU. Alyn & Deeside also voted "Leave", although Airbus must make a huge contribution to the local economy; next Tuesday's by-election result will be interesting, to say the least.

"Out of intensive care, but not out of the hospital"

 - was Swansea City manager Carlos Carvalhal's assessment of the team's situation after the win against Arsenal. Chances of coming off the ward must have improved with the signings in the transfer window, borrowing Welsh international Andy King from Leicester for the rest of the season looking especially shrewd. One could wish for more cover at full-back, positions where Swansea City used to have strength in depth, but at least the ability to create and score goals has been enhanced. In addition, the team has recovered its self-belief.

This will be needed for tomorrow's tough match in Leicester and in the final run-in. There are home matches against fellow-patients Southampton and Stoke to come, but Swans will have to travel to Bournemouth, Brighton, Huddersfield and West Bromwich. There is also the little matter of the return fixtures against Chelsea, the two Manchester sides and a rejuvenated Everton. 

A cross-bencher's view of EU withdrawal

I apologise for breaking my own self-denying ordinance in posting two Brexit-related contributions in succession, but this speech by a cross-bench hereditary peer in the debate on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill yesterday was so full of good sense that I had to share it:

The Earl of Sandwich:

My Lords, en principe I am against repealing the 1972 Act. I have a personal reason for this. My father was the 1960s equivalent of a UKIP leader. He campaigned against Europe and it irritates me that he has somehow posthumously won by means of an advisory referendum—referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins—that not did not even express the will of the majority of registered voters.

Apart from that—I will get over it—I am unashamedly European. I have lived and worked in Europe and my degree was in European languages. I have Italian in-laws. I want to preserve peace in Europe. I support enlargement of Europe. I refuse to go into choppy, uncharted waters with a salt-caked smoke stack. I do not think that the Government have got it right.

However, I am also an independent. I sympathise with the Lib Dems, but I also understand some of the fears of Brexiteers about regulation, the eurozone, closer union and immigration. Those are genuine fears. But I would prefer that these vast issues were tackled inside Europe in some form or other. As the noble Lord, Lord Patten, and others made clear, this major decision is all about one party and not about the whole country. I see Brexit as a costly and desperate scramble to retain all of the undoubted advantages of the EU without having to sit around the table talking about them. Monsieur Macron was right: we are having our cake and eating it, but we are also getting bad indigestion.

The country now divides into three: the Remainers, the Brexiteers and those, like me, who are still asking, “How do we get out of this mess?”. The human cost of Brexit is undeniable: just look at the loss of NHS staff besides all the forecast effects on education, culture and the economy. But there may yet be a way out, short of complete withdrawal and without a second referendum.

Few of us want to sabotage the Bill. It is a necessary Bill and the debate is not about the Government’s plans—since on many things they have no plans. We must, and I am sure that we will, vote to retain all of our current EU-derived legislation. But along the way a few things stand out so starkly that they have to be mentioned, and they have been. We still do not know where we are going. Worse than that, on some issues we are going into a chasm or void—words used by the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, last week. But he also quoted Burns:

“Oh let us not, like snarling curs,

In wrangling be divided”.

The darkest hole is in the sea between Ireland and the United Kingdom, something equivalent to the Corryvrechan. The Government’s position on the border issue is muddy because they are trying to reconcile the irreconcilable between the Irish and Northern Irish positions. I urge the Government to show their hand soon and to be guided, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, said, by the Belfast principles, since as my noble friend Lord Eames and others said last week, they cannot leave the people in such uncertainty.

The people of Gibraltar share some of the uncertainty felt in Northern Ireland. How could the Government get so close to the cliff edge as to cause anxiety and even worse, if the people of Gibraltar are not given proper guarantees? Then, there is devolution. Last week’s debate showed clearly that the devolved Administrations were not properly consulted and that amendments in the Commons were never discussed. There are still many UK issues to resolve in the UK before we go back to the EU negotiating table.

Constitutional experts are still worried about the exceptional use of delegated powers and whether the Government should assign a single status to retained EU direct legislation. My noble friend Lord Kakkar showed how much damage there will be to science from any uncertainties that continue through the transition. Children’s charities and lawyers are concerned about the exclusion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Other people are in considerable doubt about future references to rulings of the ECJ. The Greens and many others say that environmental law is not being fully translated into UK law. We heard about that from the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. I shall be supporting amendments on all these issues unless the Government put down their own to meet these concerns.

I feel confident that this Parliament will now have a say on the final deal although, if it rejects the deal, there will have to be further renegotiation. The EU knows this and would like us to remain in Europe. I believe it is not impossible that, in the event of rejection, we shall have the opportunity to remain as a member under Article 50, but on new terms. If not, then the Government will have to look for some intermediate status, alongside the single market. No one seems able to forecast what that might be or even whether such a status exists.

In short, we have got ourselves into a mess. I doubt if any party, or any organisation outside Brussels, can pull us out of it but I hope and am confident that this debate will have made a contribution.