While the contest for the Scottish Parliament has attracted attention, the campaign for control of the Welsh Assembly has largely passed the rest of the United Kingdom by. In one sense, this is inappropriate. The next Assembly will have extra powers to legislate and so be more influential. In another sense, however, any indifference is not really surprising. It is widely assumed that Labour will continue to be by far the largest party in the Principality and the only question at stake, therefore, is whether it will win enough seats to form an administration on its own or instead be compelled to lead a coalition.

It is, in theory, possible that another outcome might emerge. If Labour were to hold only 25 or so of the 60 Assembly places (as some opinion polls suggest), then it would be feasible for an alliance of a modestly revived Conservative Party, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats to take office. This is, nonetheless, not likely to materialise. A coalition encompassing the nationalists, the most “Welsh” and usually the most left-wing of the four main parties here, and the Conservatives, seen as the most “English” and the most right-wing (although that would hardly be difficult in Wales), would be extraordinarily unstable. The Liberal Democrats would not be very enthusiastic about dealing with either of these parties anyway. The chances are that they would revert to Labour, with whom they were happy to share authority in Wales between 2000 and 2003.

That it so often seems to be Labour by default is not an ideal outcome. The Welsh electorate is entitled to a real choice yet Plaid Cymru is not really an acceptable option and the Welsh Tories have long been a cautious lot, often terrified of advocating market economics for fear of being cast as barbarians. Cardiff is doing well (thanks in part to the surreal combination of a new football stadium, the Charlotte Church industry and Doctor Who) and it has a thriving business community which politicians of all parties should nurture with more effort and enthusiasm than they have done. But there are other places where economic and social progress has been modest to the point of negligible. Wales is not a de facto one-party state because its citizens are too content to benefit from change.

This is not assisted by the somewhat monolithic mentality of the Welsh Labour Party. Its leader and First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, is less old Labour than palaeo-Labour, taking pride in avoiding Blairite public sector reforms and treating new Labour as a highly unfortunate English affliction. There are Welsh Labour MPs with a different attitude, notably Kim Howells, the Foreign Office Minister, but he is tied up elsewhere. As a rule, Welsh Labour has a closed mind on policy and shows little intention of opening it.

For that reason alone, Mr Morgan certainly does not deserve an overall majority. His statist instincts might be tempered by the quirky Welsh Liberal Democrats, who have a libertarian streak to them. A better-than-expected showing by the Conservatives could also jolt Labour out of its complacency and encourage the Tories themselves to be bolder in future. Plaid Cymru, by contrast, has mutated into a strange blend of Owen Glendower and Leon Trotsky and should not be trusted with political office. It can only be hoped that Welsh voters have something approaching serious competition come the 2011 elections.