Labour's Welsh chances hurt by local record

Labour's Welsh heartlands cannot be relied upon to deliver a rich seam of seat gains for Ed Miliband in next month's UK general election, in spite of five years of austerity from a Tory-led government that has few friends in the valleys.

The latest Welsh Barometer opinion poll for ITV, released at the end of March, on March 30 puts Labour on 40 per cent of the Welsh vote, up one point, and the Conservatives unchanged at 25 per cent. Although the Labour vote appears to be holding up, the party is polling 10 percentage points below where it was in 2012, when it looked on course to make big gains as the coalition's spending cuts started to bite.

Mr Miliband's lack of appeal is among reasons cited for this decline as well as signs the economy is turning around.

But analysts say Labour's chances have also been damaged by the Tories highlighting their record running the local assembly in Cardiff. With David Cameron promising further powers to the assembly - fulfilling a pledge made at the time of the Scottish independence referendum in September - attention is again likely to focus on the achievements of Carwyn Jones, the first minister and his devolved administration.

On securing new inward investments and its wage subsidy programme to bring down youth unemployment, Wales has made significant progress. But on the main policies on which local ministers are judged - running the National Health Service and the region's schools - it is a less impressive record.

Mr Jones conceded in an interview with the Financial Times that the missed targets on hospital waiting times and other performance measures was having an impact on the party's standing, although he blamed the media coverage. "Inevitably most people read papers that are published in London, and are pretty much English papers. They'll get their impressions from those papers and we understand that," he said.

He says his ability to address the challenges is hampered by the coalition's budget settlement. "We are doing what we can, given the cards we've been given," he said.

Certainly Wales' high levels of welfare dependency - with a quarter of the working age population on some sort of benefit - means the region is disproportionately hit by the coalition's reforms.

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Because of the way Welsh spending is determined by what happens in England under the so-called Barnett formula, the coalition's decision in 2010 to ringfence health has been beneficial to Wales, where it accounts for up to 45 per cent of its budget.

"It may not feel like it, but the Welsh government's budget has actually been relatively sheltered from the full effects of the UK government's austerity programme," says Richard Wyn Jones, professor at Cardiff University.

On Merthyr Road, a middle class shopping street in the Cardiff North constituency, a Tory marginal tipped to go Labour in May, people seem resigned to further austerity, which both the main parties - Conservatives and Labour - are committed to.

"You've sometimes got to have the hard times to have the good times. But things are improving, you've only got to look at the number of people out shopping," says Paul Timothy, a telephone engineer.

Labour is projected to take 28 of the 40 Welsh seats in May. This is just two seats better than in 2010 when its vote share fell to 36.2 per cent, its worst result since 1918.

The Conservatives are on course for eight seats, unchanged from 2010, which was its best performance since 1983. The party is making the offer of modest income tax raising powers for the Welsh assembly - the centrepiece of last month's St David's Day announcement on devolution - its key manifesto pledge to Welsh voters.

But the weakness of the Conservatives in broad swaths of Wales means that Labour is unchallenged in many areas. "The joke in the Valleys is if you pinned the red flag to a donkey they'd vote for it," says Gordon French, a retired businessman, alluding to Labour's dominance in the former coal-mining and steelmaking industrial belt.

<>Party insiders concede Labour in Wales is suffering the problem of incumbency. In power in the assembly since devolution in 1999, some ministers have served, albeit in different jobs, for the whole 15 years.

Professor Brian Morgan of Cardiff Metropolitan University believes successive devolved governments have spent too much time devising populist policies - such as free bus passes and free prescriptions - without addressing the economic challenge of closing the productivity gap with the UK.

"Now for the first time the Welsh government has to make some really serious decisions. Its hand is being forced. That's why I think devolution of tax powers would also be a good thing because it would force them to realise the true opportunity cost of some of the programmes they introduce."

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