Progressive parties must unite to defeat Reform, says Drakeford at launch of new group

Martin Shipton

Progressive parties in the Senedd need to work together or risk ceding the initiative to the far right, according to former First Minister Mark Drakeford.

He was speaking at the launch event of a new group called Progressive Voices Cymru at Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre. A discussion involving Mr Drakeford and former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood was moderated by Professor Kevin Morgan of Cardiff University, who chaired the Yes for Wales campaign at the time of the devolution referendum in 1997.

Since taking charge of the Welsh Government following the Senedd election in May, Plaid Cymru has failed to get its supplementary budget passed by the Senedd because of Labour’s decision not to support it. This week, Welsh Labour leader Ken Skates has criticised Plaid’s childcare offer because it is available to “millionaires” – a stance in opposition to Welsh Labour’s previous backing for universal benefits like free prescriptions or, indeed, free treatment from the NHS.

Speaking of the need for cooperation in the Senedd between progressive parties, Mr Drakeford said: “While we will not agree on every nuance of every policy amongst ourselves, there is another view of politics that is represented in frighteningly large numbers in the Senedd. And if we can’t agree amongst ourselves on these things, we cede ground to those who we don’t agree with at all.”

Mr Drakeford quoted the American political scientist Larry Bartels, who has written that far-right populist parties have thrived in places where progressive parties have spent too much time attacking one another over relatively small differences.

The former First Minister then said the challenge facing progressive parties in the Senedd was to find common ground where they could come together and protect Wales against a much more difficult fate if they failed to do so.

Ms Wood agreed with Mr Drakeford’s analysis and said: “The fundamental need to find a way of working together [has] not gone away. It’s become a normal way of doing things in Wales to work across party lines, and we’ve got to make sure we preserve that in the testing circumstances of the current Senedd.

“For me, the priority now is very different to where we were in 2007, and the far right weren’t in the picture in 2007. The far right was Nick Griffin [then leader of the British National Party, who lived in mid Wales and represented North West England in the European Parliament for one term].

“When I talk about the far right today, I mean much more than Reform, because Reform is almost the moderate version of the far right. It can get a hell of a lot worse. If we look at Restore and ‘Tommy Robinson’ out on the far, far right, who knows what the real threat is to this national project and what those risks are?

“So I don’t think we’ve got any choice, to be honest with you. I think progressive people and people who want to stop the far right have to work together.”

Collaborating

Ms Wood said she was not convinced that a coalition at this point between Plaid Cymru and Labour would be the best outcome in the Senedd.

She said: “But there are many other ways of parties working together and collaborating with formal agreements through compacts, cooperation agreements and year-by-year budgets. I would like to see some sort of agreement where a multi-year settlement can be adopted, so there isn’t this big question about whether or not the new government will pass its budget, because those kinds of discussions help the far right. As far as I can see, they give them a boost – they give them energy.

“In Wales this is the new normal and we’ve all got to get our heads around it and be mature about it and put those tribal differences to one side. There are many commonalities between the Plaid Cymru manifesto and the Labour manifesto. There’s a need to see what can be pulled out of both, and what can be worked on together to give a sizeable bloc to defeat the far right and make sure that in the next Senedd election, they have far fewer seats than they’ve been given this time.”

Readjustment

Mr Drakeford said he thought the delay in reaching an accommodation between Labour and Plaid in the Senedd was partly down to the fact that MSs from both parties were adjusting to the new situation, with Labour never having been in opposition before and Plaid never in government on its own.

He said: “So there’s a big readjustment job to be done. On the Labour side, to be able to play that part of a constructive opposition, but one that wants to use the opportunity that it’s got and the numbers that it has to advance some things that are very important to Labour voters. And there are very few ministers in the new government … who have been in the position of having to do the hard yards that being in government means.

“So I think the current struggle sometimes to find common ground and a way of collaborating on the progressive agenda just comes because nobody is used to the position they are in. Everybody is having to find a way of getting used to it.

“It doesn’t necessarily need a lot of spare energy or thinking space to be able to craft that new relationship. People will need to work with it. So much of politics is about relationships, about finding ways of getting on with other people and being able to have the conversations that you need to have. That takes time.

“We must hope that the autumn has more of that about it than did the summer. And there’s good reason for thinking it might. Everybody arrives after an election, exhausted. Everybody arrives, having spent weeks hearing the other party criticising the things that you have worked hard to try to achieve. Everybody’s a bit sore, and it’s hard in those circumstances to immediately begin the progressive conversations. Let’s hope the autumn is different.”

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