Duw It's Hard
"Duw it's hard" as Max Boyce put it some thirty five years ago when he sang Live in Treorchy. I'd always argue to be allowed to stay up to watch him on tv, even though I had no idea what on earth "empty gurneys red with rust" were. He was Welsh and he was on late: that was a good enough excuse for my brother and me.
Today it was Live in the Media Briefing Room for Nick Bourne and David Melding but their considerably smaller audience of lobby journalists left with the same feeling: Duw it's hard to be an effective opposition party these days.
They took a clear enough line: their approach to the economic crisis is different enough to the Labour/Plaid coalition that in the long term, people will get it and it will benefit the Welsh Conservatives. "I'm sure of that" Nick Bourne muttered more than once. In the short term the Tory group is here as a responsible opposition to support where needed, criticise where needed.
But hard to make that work? I think they'd agree it is.
How do you make effective use of your "ten point action plan to kickstart the economy" when some of your points reflect ideas already taken on board and others reflect a basically different approach to Labour/Plaid policies that if it's to gain you votes, it will do so in the long term?
How do you, in a once-a-week press conference balance David Melding's gentle summation of talks with officials about the current approach to easing the pressure on the Welsh economy as "well begun" and clearly useful, with the attack in the press release on Gordon Brown and Rhodri Morgan for causing many of the current economic problems?
Of course both approaches can be absolutely right. But Duw, this morning, they were hard to balance.
Even harder when the double act was joined by Cheryl Gillan, who was "just on a visit" to the Assembly. She's the kind of visitor who smiles, sits to one side but rarely leaves without making her point. Looking the visiting school inspector she threw in her pennyworth on the LCO row. Why not, she suggested, take away the job of scrutinising LCOs from the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and instead, create a series of committees to scrutinise each LCO as they come up to Westminster?
She was, she said, trying to be "constructive" but had got nowhere with the Secretary of State.
The Deputy First Minister had just upped the Affordable-Housing-LCO-ante by insisting that "there is a precedent being set" and "a wider principle involved" here.
Paul Murphy may at this point be tempted to join in with Max Boyce.
All together now ...
I'm Betsan Powys, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on .
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