The Welsh are rubbish (and other arguments)

The Yes camp are insisting that the Monster Raving Loony party have their say in the Welsh referendum (Getty Images)

It feels as though the Welsh referendum on law making powers has descended into chaos.

The Yes campaigners only want to talk about the referendum question. The No campaigners, possibly realising they can’t win the argument, have decided to talk about something, anything, else. The public themselves are hardly talking about it at all.

The polls show a consistently large number of people can’t make up their minds how to vote (or have decided not to bother), and there is serious worry about low-turnout – as low as 25% some think.

The Monster Raving Loony party are involved, and as no one has official designation as lead campaign group, on either side, the Yes camp are insisting that the Loony’s have equal billing in the media.

The No camp has a website that doesn’t exist. The Yes camp website couldn’t be found, when searching, for a while after it was launched. People are shouting at each other on the radio and on the television – often debating different things entirely.

The Yes camp seem to be angry at the No camp for not spending public money and the No camp are angry at the Yes camp for spending too much. A No campaigner has offended nearly everyone in Wales in an article where he appears to be saying there aren’t enough talented people in the country (or not enough people – it’s not entirely clear). There have been arguments about who has the best Welsh cakes.

Oh, and the Welsh Assembly Government is taking a bus around Wales (good for them).

The writer Douglas Coupland once said, ‘Blame is just a lazy person’s way of making sense of chaos’; and it’s easy to attribute the blame for this chaos to the No camp. True Wales as an organisation are nothing if not a little eccentric, with the exception of the lead spokeswoman, Rachel Banner; their press handling has been, well, unusual.

True Wales spokesman Len Gibbs, for instance, had a particularly rough ride in an interview on Radio Wales in which he asserted that nobody reads political leaflets. He went on to explain that True Wales had been distributing leaflets all over Wales, ‘I thought you said nobody reads leaflets’, the presenter asked, ‘they don’t’ Gibbs replied.

Another True Wales spokesman, Paul Matthews, has not been faring much better; telling Insider Media last week, ‘I am a Welsh person. We’re not the most innovative or creative, and very often those that are, move out of Wales.’

As a political strategy, it has to be said, telling the people of Wales they are a little bit rubbish, whilst asking them to vote with you, is itself quite creative. Matthews later clarified his position to the BBC telling them, ‘I wouldn’t agree no-one has the abilities. I think not enough people have the abilities. ‘We’re only three million and there’s something like 60 million in England so it wouldn’t be surprising if they were twenty times more innovative than us.’

But there have been some victories for the No camp.

Rachel Banner gave the Yes camp’s Roger Lewis a real run for his money, and arguably won the debate, on the Welsh politics programme Dragon’s Eye. The True Wales launch seemed to go well (with the exception of the non-existent website they advertised). Banner also produced this excellent article on the Wales Home website, outlining the No case in a lucid and intelligent way.

The decision to not seek official designation, regardless of whether it was because they didn’t meet the criteria, or simply because they wanted to save tax-payers’ money, seemed to wrong-foot the Yes camp. Online, they gained the early advantage by at least ensuring their main website could be found, although as Matt Williams pointed out in an article, again on Wales Home, it did originally look a little amateurish.

On Twitter the True Wales account contrasts well with YesForWales tweets. The impression given is of an organisation enjoying the banter and cut and thrust of debate, and not all that concerned about being politically correct. The never-ending stream of Yes campaigners and voters firing questions at them tend to get courteous and sometimes witty replies. The Yes account, on the other hand is made up of re-tweets and announcements, without any real sense of a person behind it.

Elsewhere, of course, the Yes campaigners are clearly having the best of it. With experienced and talented organisers, like for instance Daran Hill (a key member of the 1997 Yes camp), you’d expect media presentation to be more polished. And it is.

The launch was slick and got a lot of press attention. The cross-party unity on the Yes vote was a clear USP and was heavily emphasised before, after and during the launch. The Twitterverse was alive following the launch with politicians from all parties expressing how happy they were to be working with each other.

Although this is doubtless impressive – there was a slight miscalculation. The only thing that the public dislike more than politicians sniping at each other is politicians getting on. This emphasis on AMs (who True Wales regularly claim have a vested interest in a Yes vote), could put the campaign at risk of an anti-politics No vote. After all, when did people ever do what politicians told them to?

However, there have also been precious few slip-ups – Janet Hayward, a head teacher involved in the Yes campaign, had to pull-out after a complaint about her taking schoolchildren to the Yes launch. But overall the campaign has been steady and assured. The cross-party unity also seems to be holding. All in all it’s not at all what we expect (especially in an election year). There have been no Cretin-Gate type incidents.

Where the Yes campaign have slipped up it is, perhaps, because they are trying to manage the chaos created by some of the True Wales campaigning.

For instance the reaction to the decision by True Wales not to seek official designation and take public money was over the top and played into the hands of the No camp, who regularly exploit issues around spending public money to further their argument.

Likewise the incessant complaints that True Wales are not debating the real issue of the referendum vote and are instead insistent on attacking the Welsh Assembly for it’s failings, does at times seem weak. Perhaps they should engage with the issue rather than trying to avoid it – shuffling their feet and repeating ‘I really wish you wouldn’t keep mentioning that’, isn’t working.

After all, the record of the Welsh Assembly can surely be stood up.

As poll after poll reveals – the advantage lies firmly with the Yes camp. But every now and then the No campaigners are wrong footing them. The No camp has scored some solid points but always look likely to say something daft and/or self-destructive.

It is, an intriguing battle of unequal opponents schooled in different ways of campaigning. Is it good democracy? Probably not. Is it orderly, intelligent and reasonable debate? No, of course it isn’t.

It’s chaos – but chaos is always more interesting than order.

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