PHASE two of the National Assembly for Wales’s commission for electoral reform is beginning to take shape, with welcome reforms from phase one winning wide support on issues such as lowering the voting age to 16 and the piecemeal reforms to the title of the assembly to Senedd. 

The Welsh labour movement now welcomes the debate surrounding the number of Assembly members Wales needs, how they are elected and how to ensure the assembly fully reflects the communities and people it serves in the 21st century. 

However, within this debate we, the Welsh left, must seek to grasp this opportunity to offer an alternative view to the contemporary political system and constitution in order to combat the dramatic rise in public support for Welsh independence as demonstrated by the recent All Under One Banner Cymru march which saw thousands of supporters take to the streets of Cardiff in favour of independence.

The Welsh Labour Party must seek to emulate the progressive steps taken by our sister party in Scotland, in setting up a working group in order to deliver a substantial set of constitutional proposals based on the ideals of shifting power from those who own the wealth in this country back to those who, through their hard work and endeavour, create the wealth throughout our nation, rather than simply shifting power from one set of politicians to another. 

The desire for this organic link between the Scottish and Welsh Labour Parties on generating these distinctly Labour constitutional policies can be identified by leading Labour historian Dr Ewan Gibbs, a member of the Scottish Labour working group, who states: “Labour's promise of an economy for the many not the few must be replicated in a democratic revolution which dramatically transforms the British state. 

“The need for decentralising constitutional change and meaningful empowerment for communities far from Westminster and the City of London is best understood in Scotland and Wales. Only a dramatic redrawing of our political institutions can allow us to live in shared prosperity and with democratic dignity.”

In terms of Welsh devolution, we are beginning to see a recognition not just on the left but across Wales, since the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, that Wales is in need of more economic as well as political power. 

From seeking to generate publicly owned green industries such as the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon to seeking to renew vital parts of the traditional Welsh economy such as Trostre steel works and Ford Bridgend. 

More significantly, there is a swelling of support for the fundamental change of the basic structure of the contemporary UK with the logical first step being the abolition of the House of Lords, to be replaced with an elected senate of the regions and nations, to increase the voice of Britain’s “forgotten areas” in its economy since the collapse of British industry. 

When making these arguments, the Welsh Labour left must use the language of “breaking up the centralisation of power” in order to radically reconstruct British society at its roots, to prise it away from Westminster and extend it across the whole country.

Key to extending these ideals outside of their natural bases of support in the Scottish and Welsh Labour left are the efforts of Jon Trickett MP, who has been tasked with drawing up plans for a British constitutional convention and who is set to make a speech at a commemoration to the 200-year anniversary to Peterloo entitled “This is What Democracy Looks Like: Building a Politics for the Many” run by the campaigning group Politics For The Many, including speakers such as Labour peer Pauline Bryan, Communication Workers Union general secretary Dave Ward and journalists Dawn Foster and Hilary Wainwright. 

Hopefully, Trickett’s speech will enable us to see how far these ideals have grown across the English party and its comparatively huge membership.

The policies advocated — namely a socialist federalism — will not simply benefit those areas that won devolution in the late 20th century, largely through mass campaigns from the labour movement and the radical left. 

Instead these ideals will benefit “the countless casualties of Britain’s reversible political and economic system, from the miners at Orgreave to the workers at Caterpillar and Ravenscraig, all stuck at the wrong end of an ancien regime that lay hundreds of miles out of sight and reach” by bringing both economic and political power back into these areas, as argued by Rory Scothorne in his latest piece for the New Statesman.