Most of Roger Scully’s article on the IWA blog on Welsh Labour’s decline doesn’t really tell us anything new, but he does have some interesting things to say on the corrosive effects of one party dominance has on a society, not that you would get anyone acknowledging or admitting to it mind you.
He writes ‘Labour’s task in the May 2011 National Assembly elections is probably rather less formidable that it will seem on the morning after the general election. An unpopular Conservative government in London might make that task less formidable still.
This doesn’t mean, however, that we should expect a return to the days of Labour hegemony in Wales. Sustained periods of single-party dominance do happen in democratic political systems, but only rarely. Once they subside it is rare too for them to be re-built.
And we should be very glad of that. Because, however immediately satisfying a crushing election victory may be to loyalists of the winning party, sustained single-party dominance is emphatically not a desirable state of affairs. It is not something anyone should wish for their country. Most instances of long-standing single-party dominance produce phenomena such as widespread corruption and intellectual stagnation. (Wholly foreign to Wales?). Of the democratic polities that have experienced it, probably only Sweden under the Social Democrats could remotely be classified as politically healthy.’
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