Monday, September 18, 2017

Who looked for "the 75%"?

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Welsh devolution referendum. Today Welsh devolution seems fully entrenched, with calls for abolition limited to the margins - Ukip were the last significant party to oppose devolution and they ditched that several years back. Last year a group called Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party/Plaid Diddymu Cynulliad Cymru took less than 5% of the vote. Whatever the debate over the detail of powers, devolution looks set to stay.

But devolution wasn't always so popular.

Back in 1997 the referendum passed by just 6721 votes. On a turnout of 50.22%, 50.3% of voters voted for the assembly. This is, I think, the narrowest margin of victory in a referendum ever in the history of the UK.

There are many parallels to the more recent Brexit referendum. A narrow margin of victory. Disagreement about the franchise used for the referendum (it used the local government franchise rather than the Westminster). Dissatisfaction about the timing of the vote (particularly holding it a week after the Scottish vote in the seeming hope of harnessing momentum to encourage a yes vote). A belief the campaigning was one sided with the government of the day promoting their view. Fear that the outcome would inadvertently lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. And so on.

But at the time very little of this meaningfully manifested after the vote. Some of the controversies had arisen during the passage of the legislation to hold the referendums, but the government of the day was highly dismissive and frequently just pointed to its recent election victory as meaning critics should just shut up. The main controversy about the resource imbalance of the campaigns came over a year later when Lord Neill of Bladen's report into political funding said that "a fairer campaign might well have resulted in a different outcome". (12.32 - a PDF of the full report: The Funding of Political Parties in the United Kingdom.)

Notably there was no great attempt after the vote to set it aside. Nobody talked of "the 50%" or "the 75%" or even "the 81%" who hadn't voted for it. The media did not search for regretful voters to hold up as "proof" the mandate had lapsed. There were no noticeable cries of "advisory" or appeals for Parliament to disregard the outcome. When the Neill report came out a year later there was only a minor flurry about its findings and no overturning of the Government of Wales Act, which was already on the statute book.

The odd voice was raised in objection but was invariably dismissed with reference to the democratic outcome. Demands to rethink or review were dismissed. In this regard, it should be unsurprising that more recent referendums have seen much the same attitude after the event.


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