Labour Conference, Poujade and the Local Elections

Firstly my apologies for being absent from the blogosphere for a while due to a family bereavement.

On getting back to work, my first port of call was Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno – and here’s something most people missed - rule changes were introduced to formalise the name of the Party as ‘Welsh Labour’. Now not a lot of people know this, but I was the first to suggest the change of name (from ‘Labour Party Wales’) at an Assembly Labour group ‘away day’ back in 1999. Good to know it’s finally been made official!

The big issue of course was our campaign launch for the local elections due in May. I’d say conference was a solid platform for this, but there’s no denying these elections will be tough. A tight, perhaps overly tight, local government settlement will give any incumbent leader little room for manoeuvre, and this will be a street by street, issue by issue campaign. Labour local authorities have a good record to campaign on all the same – our schools buildings programme alone has been historic in scale, and we need not be afraid of taking on the current fashion for Poujadism at local level. All opposition parties, of course, indulge in this to an extent – but in the Valleys in particular, the current rash of Independents have developed this into a fine art – whilst of course offering four fifths of bugger all in terms of positive proposals.

I’ll be knocking doors in neighbouring Blaenau Gwent as well as on my own patch – the thought of the people of the area being as ill served by a ‘People’s Voice’ (ie gaggle of Poujadists) as they already are at Assembly and Parliamentary level doesn’t bear thinking about.