Reflections on Defections

Having had time to digest Oscar’s rather surprising decision to cross the floor yesterday, I find myself wondering whether anyone crossing the floor should resign.

I say I’m surprised because Oscar (whom I counted a friend) has always struck me as a honourable person, idiosyncratic in his views and his approach to life, rather more right-wing than your average Plaid member, but dishonest no.

But let me take a step back for a moment – when should someone resign?

Let me kick off with a principled departure from a group. Let's imagine (and I emphasise imagine) for a moment that Labour had entered a coalition in 2007 with the Tories, having explicitly in their manifesto and campaign ruled out a Labour-Tory coalition and let's imagine that a list member had decided that they could not sit idly by and resigned the Labour whip. Under such circumstances I think someone could quite legitimately argue that they had been elected on a manifesto and a series of pledges and that in resigning the whip they were staying true to those voters that had elected them.

There are other instances where politicians have genuinely had 'Road to Damascus' moments and changed pretty fundamentally their views on the major issues of the day. I think this is rather more tricky – in an ideal world, where a politician who represents a constituency changes their party they should resign and face the electors in a by-election. On the list such opportunities are not afforded to members and therefore, at a push, you might want to argue that where someone has genuinely changed their mind they may remain a member until facing the electorate at the next election.

Oscar’s conversion however seems not to fit into either category and this is where my surprise really does kick in. According to his statements yesterday, Oscar has never believed in independence. He did not present himself as a convert to the Union Flag, but rather as someone who has always been a unionist and argued thus. The record however suggests otherwise, particularly on the latter point. In speeches around South Wales East, at Plaid meetings and at Plaid conferences Oscar routinely pointed to the successes of independent countries and held out his hope that Wales could be as successful as other independent countries. Not once, did I hear Oscar argue at Conference, Council or National Executive against the Party’s constitutional policy – indeed he positively embraced it.

I note this because there are people within Plaid, as within every party, who do not agree 100% with every policy proposition, but they will generally speak out when the opportunity arises, vote against particular policies and generally look very unhappy with particular decisions. Regular conference attendees will be well aware of the types that will congregate around coffee shops or bars bemoaning a particular policy decision or another. At the very least they will remain silent. There was none of this from Oscar.

That leaves one very uncomfortable feeling: that he was potentially being dishonest all along – a far more serious charge than changing one’s mind. I don’t want to believe that and I still think that there is an opportunity for the man I believed to be (and still hope is) a man of honour and dignity to do the right thing - to resign as an Assembly Member.