We learned over the weekend that the Wales Office will become the Welsh Office if the Conservative win the General Election, apparently Wales Office sounds too colonial according to the Tories (stop sniggering).
It’s not the name change that particularly bothers me although it’s us tax payers who will be paying for the signs to be changed, but what the change signals.
We already know that Shadow Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan is ‘Wales proofing’ her Party’s agenda by appointing a shadow minister in every Whitehall Department with a specific duty to ensure Wales is not inadvertently left out of key legislation.
She added that the Wales Office would play an “enabling role” across Government under the Tories, now apart from the obvious that Health, Education, Economic Development and Transport among other are devolved, this sounds like a shot across the bows of the Welsh Assembly Government already, not the working in harmony message there has been in so many Welsh Conservative press releases.
And that brings me to the obvious question does everyone in Welsh Conservative Group in Cardiff Bay agree with what the Shadow Secretary of State is proposing and if not what does that say about their attitudes to devolution and Wales. Did Nick Bourne who is now an advocate of more powers correct Cheryl Gillan when she spoke at the pre Party Conference News Conference when she described the referendum as ‘some obscure constitutional matter’?, these things matter as Tory chairman Eric Pickles said the single greatest electoral vulnerability of the Conservatives is the label of: "Same old Tories."
I can’t say the prospect of Cheryl Gillan empire building at the Wales Office enthuses me anymore than Peter Hain always putting Labour first and his endless self promotion does at the moment, but as I said in my last post we still don’t know what the Tories are offering Wales apart from deficit reduction even after their party conference and its that uncertainly that worries voters and the reason the Tories are struggling at the moment.Any source
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