All professions have their annoying buzzwords and shibboleths they use to talk to each other and the Welsh political bubble is no exception.
When it comes to political speeches and contributions I’ve always valued content and substance over style and delivery. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone through various Senedd speeches thinking to myself, “Just get to the point”, as much as you probably have with my tomes.
It gets to a stage though where some words just lose their meaning entirely. Here’s a tongue-in-cheek look at a few of them.
Normal usage: “Important or likely to be important in history.”
Welsh usage: “To pre-empt history before history has had time to judge whether something is historic or not.”
History is often something that happens to people. It’s not something we can usually steer but some people will give it a bloody good try though.
When a Welsh politician or political commentator says that something is “historic”, odds are that it probably isn’t but they want it to be so it’s not forgotten.
Given how little impact devolution has made on our political consciousness since 1999, it’s no surprise that many Welsh politicians and political parties will be overly concerned about their legacies.
Nobody likes to think that their time and efforts may have been wasted. They want to stave off the adage that “all political careers end in failure”. The harsh truth is that the bar that needs to be hit to be considered historic in the proper sense of the word is unlikely to ever be reached by a sitting Welsh politician.
Global and geopolitical events like the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit are historic by default.
The establishment of the Senedd itself is historic as is the gradual development of a body of Welsh law; independence would be historic as would a return to direct rule. Everything else in between though? Nah.
The history texts of the future – outside of very specific university-level courses – are unlikely to include the Senedd’s name change, lowering the voting age or budget deals as “historic events”. Leave history to the historians.
