Quote of the Day

From ITV Wales’s blog on the continued fallout from Peter Hain’s 'intervention' on changing the Assembly’s electoral system.

‘A reasonable test for a properly functioning democracy might be whether its electoral system and political parties are capable both of delivering a government with a working majority and of creating the possibility of different parties forming that government.

The belief by many in the Labour party that they should only form a coalition if absolutely necessary means that Wales has only had majority government for seven of the twelve years since the Assembly was established.

As soon as Labour gets to thirty seats, their coalition partners –the Lib Dems in 2003 and Plaid Cymru in 2011- are ditched.

The Assembly doesn’t do very well under the second half of the test either, as the collapse of the attempt at a ‘rainbow’ coalition in 2007 demonstrated.

But the whole issue of how the Assembly is elected has been thrown open as a result of the cut in the number of Westminster constituencies.'
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