Row as Welsh Labour blocks high flying candidate from standing for the Senedd
Martin Shipton
A huge row has broken out over a decision by Welsh Labour to exclude from a Senedd election shortlist a candidate seen by some influential figures as one of the party’s brightest hopes.
There are allegations that Owain Williams has been kept off the eight-person shortlist for the new super-constituency of Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf by supporters of former First Minister Vaughan Gething.
Mr Williams is said to be close to Jeremy Miles, who was narrowly defeated by Mr Gething in last year’s Welsh Labour leadership election.
A panel convened by the party’s Welsh Executive Committee (WEC) decided to keep Mr Williams off the shortlist and local party members in the two Westminster seats of Cardiff East and Cardiff North will now decide the order in which the candidates will be ranked. Six MSs will be elected from the super-constituency by the closed list system of proportional representation.
School election
Mr Williams, 38, first stood as a Labour candidate in a school election in 1997, the year that Tony Blair won a landslide general election victory.
Educated at Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Melin Gruffydd and Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf in Cardiff, in 2003 he won a sixth form scholarship to study at Eton College. He played cricket for Wales as a schoolboy.
He is the son of Rhodri Williams, the former chair of the Welsh Language Board and S4C, and his father was criticised at the time for sending him to Eton.
Subsequently he studied at Oxford University and is now a management consultant with ghSMART, which has been described as the world’s premier leadership advisory firm. Mr Williams is the firm’s principal leadership specialist, advising clients on their most pressing challenges, including leadership assessment, talent management, culture and organisational change.
His profile picture on X, formerly Twitter, pictures him with former First Minister Mark Drakeford, Cardiff North MP Anna McMorrin and Cardiff North MS Julie Morgan, whom he says he has known since he was 10 years old.
He describes Lord Ellis-Thomas, the National Assembly’s former Presiding Officer who died earlier this year as “Uncle Daf”.
Unison
In a statement posted on social media Mr Williams, who had been endorsed by Wales’ largest trade union Unison, wrote: “Welsh Labour have decided not to shortlist me as one of their top eight candidates for the Senedd in Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf. I think this is a bad decision.
“Since announcing my candidacy, I’ve made a clear argument: we need to renew the party and the country, with new thinking and nothing that cannot be questioned. So many people, within the party and beyond, were excited by this. I think it’s a grave mistake not to allow the party membership in Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf the chance to vote on this platform.
“I’m grateful to every one of you who has supported my campaign to this point. Many of you took considerable political risk in doing so.
“Your encouragement has left me more convinced than ever that Welsh Labour and, more importantly, Wales needs nothing less than transformation. That work must go on, and I will play my part in every way I can.”
David Llewellyn Davies, who was chief special adviser to Mark Drakeford during the early part of his period as First Minister, posted a message that said: “I am speechless. How can @WelshLabour have decided that one of its most gifted and talented members cannot make the top 8 in a shortlist for his own constituency? Wales denied an MS of Cabinet quality who would have made a positive difference to the lives of Welsh people.”
Professor Daniel Susskind, an economist and writer whose latest book Growth: A Reckoning was chosen by former President Barack Obama as one of his favourite books of 2024, posted: “What a terrible decision by Welsh Labour. I am disappointed for @Owain2026 because he is a good friend. But I am even more disappointed for Wales because Owain is one of the few people in the party with the ideas and vision the country so desperately needs.”
Author, political philosopher and barrister Jamie Susskind posted: “Absolutely staggering that someone as capable and thoughtful as Owain isn’t being championed by Welsh Labour. What on earth has possessed them?”
In 2021 Mr Williams was candidate number four on Labour’s regional list for South Wales Central. None of the candidates on the list were elected because of the party’s success in the first-past-the-post constituencies.
‘Dominant’
A Welsh Labour source told Nation.Cymru: “Owain is very close to Jeremy Miles. Vaughan supporters, especially around [Secretary of State for Wales and Cardiff East MP] Jo Stevens’ office have kept him off the shortlist. They haven’t been particularly subtle about it. They are very dominant on the WEC.
“There were rumours that they were going to keep him off the long list over a membership issue relating to whether his membership was registered in Cardiff North or the Vale of Glamorgan, but it didn’t happen. Apparently Jeremy and others kicked up a stink.
“Now they’ve succeeded in keeping him off the shortlist. It’s a classic way of killing the chances of a candidate who those in charge of the party machinery don’t want to see elected.”
The eight candidates who made it to the shortlist are TUC Cymru general secretary Shavanah Taj; Cardiff councillors Sarah Merry, Jennifer Burke, Dan De’Ath, Jackie Jones, Lee Bridgeman and Bernie Bowen-Thomson; and Jo Stevens’ special adviser Matt Hexter.
Before the first election to what is now the Senedd, then Welsh Secretary Ron Davies said his ambition was for the body to comprise Wales’ “brightest and best”.
The increase in the number of MSs from 60 to 96 has been seen by some as an opportunity to improve the calibre of Members.
On Monday August 4 Mr Williams is due to interview First Minister Eluned Morgan on the National
Eisteddfod Maes in Wrexham.
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
My bullsh*t radar came to life when I read :
Mr Williams is the firm’s principal leadership specialist, advising clients on their most pressing challenges, including leadership assessment, talent management, culture and organisational change.
He may indeed be a good person but the consultancy community is among those most responsible for the creation of the careerist herd of self centred creeps that have infested leadership positions in our public and private sectors.
Exactly!
That’s the way to beat Reform – an Eton educated Toff who’s an expert on leadership despite never being a leader. He doesn’t even live in the area.
He won a 6th form scholarship according to the report, based on attaining sufficient academic level and pupils that gain a scholarship can also get fee remission award, those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford some or all of the school fees on the basis of a means-tested bursary. This was the same mode of entry that Eluned Morgan FM had to Atlantic college.
Read comments below. This is not a working class boy done good
Not sure how you can say that. He attended state primary school and state secondary school. While not exactly working class (middle class), I can’t see any shame here. He did win the scholarship to Eton and he did well enough to get into Oxford University. Honestly this is not the kind of person we want to be throwing mud at when there are plenty of others that bought their way into everything and anything and barely had the grades to show for it (and more than one became PM). He’s also got experience of working in the private sector… Read more »
It does depend on why he went to Eton. Was it to ingratiate himself with the home counties imperial class, or was it to become a sleeper agent, learning the wily ways of the foe.
I would rather a candidate not remotely linked to Vaughan stands in east Cardiff.
Labour’s Mab Darogan?
Staggering? No, entirely predictable. It’s what Welsh Labour do. Deckchairs on the Titanic anyhow.
Another one of the Cardiff Labour Taffia career path from a young age and mentoring for a life in political circles.
They say they feel the anguish and frustration of people in Wales but never had to actually experience it from a lived life perspective.
I don’t know Owain Thomas and more interested in what he can do rather than who he mixes with, though swapping Glantaf for Eaton is obviously a black mark.
What we do need are people who have proven themselves in the real world, where companies have paid for their real abilities, rather than the current failures who rely on toxic backhanders from criminals or dodgy wind farm operators.
But this is politics, where politicians put their self interests ahead of the country, hence the ongoing failures.
Never mind his politics, let us stand in awe at his hereditary! And his nobile friends, “Uncle Daff and the “Philosopher Barristers”. He Rhodri William’s son (who would of ever guessed ) he’s attended Eton, he fought in Spain? No, but he would of!
Keep him out? No slot him right in, he is Starmer Welsh Labour personified! The peasants will love him, he’s aristocracy!
He’s an Eton educated plonker. Got what he deserves. Same as his father!
“Huge row” does some heavy lifting in this article. Owain, his pals the Susskind bros (not sure how they are experts in Welsh Labour?) and Dai a former SPAD who’s making a hobby out of criticising Labour.
The headline promised much more of a ding dong. Where’s Jeremy in this row? Maybe he’s embarrassed by Owain claiming that he was the intellect in the Miles campaign?
In fairness, I’d never heard of Mr Williams until recently- the others have been involved in Cardiff Labour for years
This is proper storm in a tea cup stuff!
Not ‘blocked’, just not selected.
Good point. Which one would Owain suggest should be deselected to rectify the ‘bad decision’?
The list is pretty poor all round. Sarah Merry clueless and I wouldn’t include Owain Williams. Wales needs more business savvy people with first hand experience not career consultants.
Last week there weren’t enough candidates, this week they’re fighting them off.
The Labour Party has quite enough Management Consultants in their ranks already (i.e. more than zero).
We need more real people. Not gravy-train trough-nuzzlers – no matter who’s bloody nephew they are.
One possible upside though might be that when Boris Johnson is recalled to lead the Tory party again, for the final Churchillian fling, our Owain would be able to immediately connect at his level, one old Etonian to another, so much in common, the Wall game, Eton mess at table and well, elite privilege. Boris could chuck Wales a few quid now and then and Owain could praise the “special relationship” and grovel like the best of Labour past. It’s how things are done in the Big house Btw “In the UK there are one million children in every year… Read more »
There will definitely be a connection, and a useful one, but it will be transactional not emotional because as everyone knows the whole point of Eton wasn’t just to learn how to recite the classics in response to serious questions but to eliminate the boys’ humanity in readiness for a career serving the Empire. Because you can’t be a good colonial administrator if you’re worried about “feelings” and “fairness”. Hopefully Owain wasn’t there long enough to have the full treatment and emerged with his humanity intact.
Why would a management consultant for a prominent company want the lifestyle and probably a pay cut to stand as a member of the senedd? A peerage at the house of Lords maybe?
Interesting that the fuss is about the white Welsh-speaking man who went to Eton and not any of the other candidates who didn’t make the shortlist…what a massive sense of entitlement! clearly a case of “If I don’t get what I want, I’ll throw my toys out of the pram and get my influential friends to do the same!”
Interestingly, nobody is speaking up for local councillor Julie Sangani, an Indian immigrant who wasn’t shortlisted. White privilege alive and well!