Ripening time? The Welsh Labour government between Brexit and parliamentary sovereignty

Abstract

The Welsh Labour government occupies a unique position in UK territorial politics, favouring neither the status quo nor independence for Wales while advocating a new settlement for the whole state. This article provides a detailed examination of its policy, focusing on its position on the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Drawing from a range of documentary sources, we analyse the Welsh government’s constitutional proposals and its decision-making in the wake of the 2016 referendum on European Union membership. We argue that Welsh policy is defined by ambiguity. While it advances an alternative constitutional vision, it refrains from rejecting Westminster’s sovereignty outright. In the aftermath of the referendum, it sought to accommodate that sovereignty with its own constitutional claims through enhanced intergovernmental collaboration. In light of the Johnson administration’s centralising reforms, the strategy appears to have failed. Caught in the fractious politics of the Union, Welsh constitutional policy now faces an uncertain future.

Multi-level political change: Assessing electoral volatility in 58 European regions (1993-2022)

“…Again, the years from 2008 to 2022 see the consolidation of SNP dominance with only a slight increase in RTV caused by vote shifts between Labour, Tories and Lib Dems. In Wales, the decrease in RSV is due to the stabilization of electoral support for Plaid Cymru (PC) and Labour’s continued dominance (Davies and Wincott, 2022). In general, contrary to what we observed in the other three countries, UK regional politics (at least in the four cases of the first devolution wave) seems to have gone through a process of consolidation and stabilization.…”

‘Muscular Unionism’: The British Political Tradition Strikes Back?

“…The BPT’s unitary approach is complemented by a predominantly functional approach to governance, acknowledging territorial distinctions only where it cannot avoid doing so (Davies and Wincott, 2022; Kenny et al, 2020). This functional approach to governing is one of many contributing factors to ‘congested governance’ (Skelcher, 2000) in English local government, where it underlies contemporary critiques of ‘silo government’ and a failure to join up public services at a local level.…”