Overview

The Politics of Co-Opposition reveals how a completely new form of political engagement in the British Isles - the 2021-24 Co-operation Agreement between Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour - created history and provided the major part of the Welsh Government's policy programme for over three years. John Osmond, who was involved in negotiating the Agreement as Special Adviser to Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price, provides an insider's account of the political background to the Agreement - including a fascinating week-by-week diary of Price's first 100 days - how it was finalised and the compromises that were made to achieve it. Essential reading for politicians, political journalists, students and political scientists globally, the Co-operation Agreement, termed by academics as 'Contract Parliamentarianism', drew on non-coalition precedents in Sweden, New Zealand and Malaysia. It resulted in significant measures being introduced across 46 policy areas such as: free school meals for all primary school pupils, expanding free childcare to all two-year-olds, action on the second homes crisis blighting rural Wales, and reforming the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament) including a 60% increase in Senedd Members - from 60 to 96 - and a fully proportional electoral system from 2026. Brought to a premature end in May 2024 by Plaid Cymru as the result of the controversial internal election of the new Labour leader which resulted in the implosion of his short-lived government, The Politics of Co-Opposition is a fascinating and candid account of how innovative politicians co-operated on key mutually-agreed policies while maintaining their positions as government and opposition.

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9781860571688

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'After future Senedd elections, when parties search for mechanisms to achieve a working majority, politicians in Cardiff Bay will be able to refer to this book to see what can be learnt from Wales's first experience of Contract Parliamentarianism. In the meantime, for those wishing to know the inside story of an historic period in Welsh politics, this is a timely and thought-provoking book that seeks to persuade but also to inform.' Gerald Holtham, Professor of Regional Economy, Cardiff Metropolitan University 'Original...fair-minded...the book will have interest to politics scholars, as well as students of Welsh history...This is part of the story of the making of Wales since 1999. It is a story we are still writing and still making.' Leighton Andrews, former Welsh Cabinet Minister and Professor of Practice in Public Service Leadership and Innovation at Cardiff University 'A fascinating glimpse of the psychology deployed to achieve what was an historic agreement in which Plaid Cymru was prepared to lose an electoral battle in order to win the war of ideas.' David Williams, former Political Editor, BBC Wales

Author Information

John Osmond has been a prolific author, journalist and broadcaster for over 50 years. A political correspondent with the Western Mail during the 1970s, deputy editor at the launch of Wales on Sunday, and television producer with the HTV current affairs programme Wales This Week and the Channel 4 series The Divided Kingdom, he then, from 1996 to 2013, was Director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs. A lifelong political activist, he was chairman of the Parliament for Wales campaign in the 1990s, a Plaid Cymru parliamentary candidate in 2007, 2015 and 2016, and between 2018 and 2022 was Special Adviser to Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price.

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