Some of you may have noticed that on Sunday’s Politics Show I offered a critical perspective on the prospective runners and riders to become Leader of Welsh Labour (if and when Rhodri ever tells us when he’s going – and please let this be soon because there are only so many years you can take to resign).
I have been a bit surprised by the reactions I have had to these comments and a similar discussion on the Radio Wales Phone In programme earlier in the week. Not so much the hostility and those who said I was “brave” (a euphemism for foolhardy) but rather those who wanted to say how good it was that somebody was “telling it like it is” and “pulling no punches”.
Now, I’m not so egotistical to think this has anything particularly to do with me as an individual but rather how few people are even prepared to peep above the parapet. There are of course some notable exceptions who are prepared to don a hard hat and break cover … and some of them write on this blog.
Wales is a small country certainly but its civic society is tiny, closely integrated and mutually dependent (apologies to the 2,902,585 people who aren’t inside the Cardiff Bay Bubble). This doesn’t only lead to ‘group think’ but perhaps also to a fear of speaking out because it means we won’t get those research funds; gain access to decision makers for our organisation, client or indeed ourselves; get to sit on this committee or that quango or even a medal in the New Years Honours List. To mix a couple of metaphors here there is a fear that if you’re not singing from the same hymn sheet or running out for Team Wales then you won’t be part of anything.
I understand why people feel the need to remain neutral – as long as we realise that we all bring our own subjectivities to bear on anything we say and that neutrality can be a guise for actually being manipulatively partisan. This neutrality can also lead to debate and commentary that is not only anodyne but can also be asinine.
A healthy mature democracy needs critique, criticism, challenge to orthodoxies and radically different ideas – and it also needs humour and sometimes biting satire. I once heard an AM say “if you haven’t got anything nice to say then say nothing at all!” … sometimes though there isn’t anything nice to say and it needs to be said.
