Welsh Recusants

Whatever our wants, our needs or our desires for the next Assembly Government, whenever it is formed, we have to accept that it will be formed according to the regulations set down in Westminster under the Government of Wales Act 2006.

The Government of Wales Act 2006 is the most partisan, one sided, biased and undemocratic act passed in parliament since the Act Against Recusants of 1593. The 1593 act ensured that only Protestants had any rights in England and Wales, but all (protestant or not) had obligations.

The Government of Wales Act 2006 has numerous clauses that ensure that Labour has rights but other parties have obligations. The Act contains a number of pro-Labour Vetoes.

The most blatant and most publicised aspect of the Act was that if Labour lost power then the other parties would lose their leaders and be put into an immediate post election crisis. If the Tories had won Montgomery and / or Brecon - Bourn would be out. If the Lib Dems won a seat or two in South Wales East, Mike German would be out. Even if Plaid had a generally good election but had lost Ynys Môn, there was to be no list comeback for the party leader.

Even if the "kick the leader" ploy hadn't worked (and it didn't) there was always the Labour minority clause to fall back on. Certain things, such as a referendum on extra powers, can only be passed with the consent of two thirds of Assembly members. In other words Labour needed to have fewer than 20 seats to be defeated. For Labour to have fewer than twenty seats under the terribly Labour biased system of elections that we have in Wales they would have to gain less than 15% of the vote, which was always unlikely.

As unlikely as Labour gaining just 14% of the vote was, The Government of Wales Act has a number of just in case clauses to counter such a result:

No Assembly Act can be passed without:

First the agreement of the Secretary of State for Wales
Second the agreement of the Westminster (Labour dominated) Welsh Affairs Committee
Third the Agreement of the House of Commons
Fourth the Agreement of the House of Lords
And of course, in fifth place "Royal Assent" (available only by the recommendation of the Labour Government)

Under the Government of Wales Act all non Labour voters are treated as Recusants.

The choice that Palid has is to support a minority government that rids Wales of the Political Recusants Act 2006 or one that fails to get much through the 2006 Act because of its internal bias, but highlights its injustice.

Either is OK by me as long as the choice that Plaid makes leads, ultimately to independence for Wales, not just from the UK, but more so from the false divinity of so-called Welsh Socialism.