Dyfed Powys Police Commissioner - Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

Update 

For a very worrying report, check out Plaid Wrexham on the motives of some independent candidates.

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Thanks to Selwyn Runnett, the St Clears LibDem, for pointing out the other day that anyone who wants to run a serious campaign in November's elections for police commissioners should expect to have to fork out at least £75,000. In Dyfed Powys, which is geographically the largest police area in Wales and England, a half-decent campaign would almost certainly cost more.

The whole idea of elected police commissioners was the brainwave of the Tories, and the legislation was pushed through with the help of the LibDems despite their failure to get either reform of the voting system or reform of the House of Lords through. As someone memorably said, this is not so much a coalition as a hostage situation.

Having voted the idea through, the LibDems now find that they cannot afford to field candidates in Dyfed Powys, even though parts of Powys and Ceredigion could still be counted as LibDem powerbases.

Plaid Cymru for its part has always opposed the idea on principle and is not fielding candidates.

Labour says that it is opposed to the idea, but is fielding candidates anyway with the aim, it says, of campaigning against cuts. If Labour had stuck to its principles and refused to take part, it is more than likely that the Tories would have had to back down and shelve the whole idea.

Labour's claim that Labour police commissioners will somehow be able to reverse cuts to police funding can also be taken with a pinch of salt, since the commissioners will be dependent for most of their budgets on the Home Office and Treasury in London.

In Dyfed Powys Labour has actually helped make matters considerably worse with fiascos such as the use of PFI schemes to fund white elephants including the new police station in Ammanford - now closed and mothballed. Despite being no use at all to the police, the building in Ammanford will continue to be a massive drain on Dyfed Powys police for years and years to come, and only last year Carwyn Jones came along for the celebrations held to mark the final opening of the massive new police Strategic Co-ordination Centre near Carmarthen, funded by Cardiff.

If Labour really wanted to "put more bobbies on the beat" (where have we heard that one before?), as it says, perhaps it should not have wasted tens of millions of pounds on schemes such as these and used the money instead to keep local police stations open and safeguard frontline jobs.

The Labour candidate in the elections is Christine Gwyther, whose career to date can be summarised as follows:

• 1999 - elected Assembly Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire
• 1999 - appointed first Minister of Agriculture in devolved Welsh Government
• 2000 - sacked as Minister of Agriculture by Rhodri Morgan as she was preparing to head off to the Royal Welsh Show
• 2007 - loses constituency to Conservative Angela Burns
• 2010 - contests Carmarthen East and Dinefwr in general election and loses
• 2011 - fails in her attempt to win back Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire

And that's it. Downhill since 2000. According to her website, she is now working in "front-line community development".

The Labour Party says on its main website that its candidates are talented and experienced. If Dyfed Powys is anything to go by, the party could be prosecuted under the Tades Description Act.

Christine's website (here) appears to have been knocked up in about half an hour. After a couple of paragraphs of waffle about the election, she tells us,

You can find out more about me and my vision for policing in Dyfed Powys on this website.

Except that you can't. There is nothing at all about her vision and precious little about her on the rest of the site, probably because she has no vision and her record is not exactly one to boast about.

Back in London, Ed Milliband explains:

Labour's talented and experienced candidates for Police and Crime Commissioners will campaign hard against these government cuts, putting neighbourhood policing first with bobbies on the beat and a promise not to privatise the neighbourhood patrol or leave it only to PCSOs.

Strange then that as evidence of Labour's commitment to real policing, Christine says:

The Labour Welsh Government is helping cushion the blow [of government spending cuts. Ed.] by introducing 500 community support officers across Wales.

And that's pretty much the entire website except for a section headed Cymraeg. It would have been better to use the heading Scymraeg. Here is the opening line:

Credaf mai hanfod plismona ym pobl, ac felly hanfod f’ymgyrch fydd pobl hefyd.

There is no Labour manifesto, and if any readers have been contacted by anyone from Christine Gwyther's campaign team, they can consider themselves lucky. Most of her energy seems to be going into campaigning through Facebook and Twitter, where she has 35 followers (how many of those are members of the public?).

By contrast, the Tory candidate, Christopher Salmon, has 86 followers on Twitter, where his 4 most recent Tweets include an "excellent supper" in Carmarthen and a "delicious lunch" in Aberystwyth with Tory leader Andrew RT Davies, with whom he was discussing "the future of Wales". The mind boggles.

Salmon believes that his background as a son of the landed gentry (Winchester, Oxford and Sandhurst) and an army officer (website here) has taught him the value of "sound common sense". His startling insight into policing is that crime prevention is what it's all about. If we can prevent crime, there will be no need for expensive detectives and prosecutors.

Unlike his Labour opponent, Salmon's website contains a diary which tells us where to find him. In the next week he has two community meetings, and will be at the Rhayader Horse Sales on 27 October. The following week is rather less busy, with a lunch at Peterstone Court and a harvest supper in Llanrhaeadr.

Also unlike Ms Gwyther, Salmon does tell us a bit about what he thinks. Andrew Mitchell was stupid to swear at police officers, he told us in September, but it was "time to get police tanks off the Downing Street lawn".

Unlike Ms Gwyther, Salmon is having no truck with all this Welsh language nonsense, and his website is devoid of Welsh, mangled, misspelt or otherwise, although he is proud of his ability to speak Russian.

As Cneifiwr has noted previously (fuller profile here), Salmon is a keen military historian, and has contributed pieces to Conservative Home and the Murdoch Times. Unfortunately, if a piece on the Boer War is anything to go by, facts and dates are not his forte.

If Cneifiwr can summon up the energy, we will follow these two great hopes for Dyfed Powys to the finish line on 15 November, although they might just as well toss a coin and get it over with now.