Referendum one year on

The latest Welsh referendum took place a year ago this weekend. It marks a useful time to take stock of what has happened since then.

I still see this referendum as a major achievement and worthwhile price for seeing-out the One Wales coalition. Even accepting the referendum itself was a hurdle placed in the legislation by Peter Hain to water down and delay devolution, it had to be won. The margin to win the Assembly in the first place was so thin, and the 2011 referendum dealt a blow to that defeatist midnset.

Hindsight does make things easy but it's not difficult at this point to contrast the sense of purpose the One Wales government had compared with the pointlessness of the current Welsh Government. I for one was pleased not only with the constitutional advancement but the progressive, leftist direction of policies achieved during that period.

One year on- what has the Welsh Government delivered with the new powers?

The answer of course, is absolutely nothing. This isn't me making propaganda points. And it is a fact that making laws doesn't give Wales meaningful new powers (it just speeds up existing powers). But the point stands that no laws have been initiated apart from an obscure tidying-up council byelaws. There's no point legislating for the sake of it, but there is plenty that needs to be done, on organ donation for example, and work should have begun on the sustainable development bill by now as well. There are plenty of potential pieces of legislation where I would be in full agreement with the Labour Government because of their occasional left-ish agenda- more so than with the other British parties- so i'm not being partisan, but they really aren't bringing anything to the table.

Because of the culture of co-operation that surrounded the Yes campaign, people criticising this are being tactful by saying things like "it's all of the parties' fault" or that Welsh politics is collectively to blame, but constitutionally it is primarily the job of the Government to lead on this, through their legislative programme. If critics of the lack of legislation spread the blame, it lets the ruling party off the hook.

Another point to raise, one year on, is to state the obvious; the people of Wales wanted more than what was on offer in March 2011. The more important referendum lies ahead of us, on fiscal powers (the Welsh wings of the British parties are too weak to implement reforms without a referendum). The Assembly still doesn't resemble a real parliament because it has very limited powers compared to Scotland or the north of Ireland. The referendum victory only ended the excuses culture in the field of legislation, where we now don't need permission. It didn't end the excuses culture on policing, or funding, or taxes, or broadcasting or any number of other hot topics which have emerged in the past year. These areas of society were simply never intended to be put under Welsh control. As soon as you have broadcasting or policing you have seriously weakened the imperialist British state's grip on Wales. There is no inevitability about those powers being granted to Wales unless they are struggled for and achieved.

The pessimist in me wants to bemoan the fact that we are stuck in this battle for piecemeal devolution bit by bit. But that's life- the Labour party controls part of the political dynamic in Wales and has to juggle its Welsh and unionist tendencies in a constant compromise over Welsh autonomy.

This is implict in the comments of Roger Lewis, from the WRU and the Chair of the Yes for Wales campaign:

"History is now in the making...we have yet I believe to harness all of the vitality of March 3rd 2011...there is so much more to do...change is constant...we must not be afraid to make decisions, or to make mistakes. The real failure is if we do not try."

Does the Welsh Government want to make decisions for Wales and be accountable to the Welsh people? Or will they be content to let the Tories in London do their worst? The next few years will put both their Welshness and their labourism to the test.