Daring to be different

After events at Millbank and the declared threat of the National Union of Students to “decapitate” the Lib Dems, some of us are wondering how much next May’s Assembly elections are likely to be more entwined with wider UK issues than on previous occasions - regardless of referendum results. As much as additional powers will set the Senedd on a different course to Westminster, we can all assume that it will remain a roughly parallel one. That leaves the big issues and most of them are bad news for the ConDem coalition partners this side of Offa’s Dyke.

The NUS spleen directed at Clegg and his party for abandoning their pledges over tuition fees must be unsettling for Welsh Lib Dems. Ceredigion MP Mark Williams says he will be voting against an increase but it is not him who has to face the voters in six months time.

Labour clearly believes it can indulge in the luxury of having no actual policy over tuition fees and still do the finger-wagging at ministers over their excessive zeal in cutting public spending. This is clearly not sustainable in the medium term but for the moment they feel they can counter accusations over mishandling of NHS or economic myopia with equally pointed comments about the effects of ConDem cuts in public services on Wales. So where does all this leave Plaid?

At first sight, the suggestion of an independent, not-for-profit train service hardly seems the stuff of radical separatism but that it probably because it was not intended as such. Plaid's strategists have been doing their homework and it seems they feel next May could be as much as battle of ideas as much as ideologies. They could well be right.

Then again, it was probably high time that the Party of Wales came to terms with how the general election highlighted their limited appeal and left them with limited options. The Lib Dems may be going into freefall, according to YouGov polls, but it ain’t Plaid that is picking up their lost support.

The structural, mixed economy solution for a lamentable train service in Wales, as outlined by IWJ ticks a lot of boxes. It has a pragmatic feel as a policy concept and enough potential appeal to cause other parties to at least pause before dismissing it (or mentioning IueanAir). More to the point it is something different and thereby a welcome change from some Plaid bloggers who confuse establishing distinctiveness with slagging off Labour.