Welsh Labour ‘couldn’t afford to become a separate party’, says interim leader

Martin Shipton

The idea of Welsh Labour breaking free from UK Labour and establishing its own party is unrealistic because it would be totally unaffordable, according to Ken Skates, the party’s interim leader in Wales.

Some Welsh politicians, notably the former Counsel General Mick Antoniw, frustrated by UK Labour’s perceived lack of respect towards Wales, have suggested autonomy for Welsh Labour and a new relationship based on equality with UK Labour.

But Skates told Nation.Cymru: “Having a separate party, it wouldn’t be affordable, I don’t believe, because we’re a net subsidised party to quite a considerable sum. So whether we want it or not, the question of how it would be funded is probably even more significant. I think we could afford 1.5 full time equivalent employees if we stood alone.

We had 18 at the point of the election, but it would be a very small sum of money that we would be able to generate from our own membership.”

The great majority of funding for Welsh Labour comes from the UK party.

Asked what he attributed Labour’s catastrophic losses in the election to, Skates said: “I think there are a huge number of factors, and I think that will have to come out through an objective review. But I’ve been meeting with the candidates who were defeated.

“I’ve met with the nine of us and the eight colleagues who were elected council group leaders as well, to begin the process of assessing what happened, how we got to this point.

“I’ve also got the data from all of the canvassing as well. The feedback on the doorstep most frequently concerned health and how the community felt and looked to the community that they lived in. It’s very much through the lens of whether their lives were getting better.

“What struck me most recently is that perhaps we haven’t been forceful enough as a party in reminding people that Britain’s decline has been taking place for 14 years, and Brexit smashed our GDP levels, we had Covid, we had austerity where basically wages were suppressed and we had Boris Johnson who ballooned our borrowing. So that toxic combined effect of suppressing wages and increasing borrowing, which has to be repaid through higher taxes, is I think why people feel so angry right now. But it’s reached a critical point.

“I think there are made in Wales issues as well that are likely to have been a factor. But through the review, we’ll be able to get to the heart of it all. And actually moving on, what I’m keen to do is to make sure that our purpose is clearly stated and that it is based on our genuine passions. So our genuine passion is about helping people who are in need, helping people and enabling people to be successful in our society.

“We are the builders of society in Welsh Labour. We’re not managers of a system. And we’ve got to be able to express our passion and our purpose to people again. Connection is so important. We’ll be looking in the review at how we connect with people, how we connect with communities, how communities connect with one another. My fear is that we’re seeing society fragmenting, crumble. And with that, respect is in decline. I think tolerance as well is in decline, while anger and frustration are rising. That, as a result, is changing people’s behaviours. I think we have a job on the left in bringing people together and in saving society.”

Keir Starmer

Asked how much negativity he had found about Keir Starmer, Skates said: “So Keir came up, loads of different people came up as well. And I’m not going to go into who they were. Because many of them were my colleagues. The anger was often targeted at an individual, but actually the individual was a lightning rod, if that makes sense. So we’re all associated as leaders, or rather our parties are associated with us. We can’t escape from that.

“But we’ve got the data which shows that it was the issues largely that were being raised on the doorstep. This time for the first time in my memory issues that are local to the community and within Wales were being raised day in, day out. And people for the first time actually knew who was in charge of things. In the past, it’s often been the case that people have thought that the UK Government’s in charge of education and health, whereas actually for this election people were very alert to the responsibilities that we have compared to the responsibilities that the UK Government has.”

It was put to Skates that, for many people, Labour was no longer standing up for Wales properly in the way that it should – and the antagonistic attitude towards devolution adopted by the UK Government and Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens was a significant element in Labour’s defeat.

Trust

He replied: “I think it goes even further than the narrow talk about respect for institutions from others. I think it’s more a case of trust of the public in the political economy that we’ve got. People are struggling right now and have been struggling for far too long and right across the board. Trust in politicians and politics has been in decline. People felt that we had lost our way in terms of what we represent, who we are and what our purpose is, what we’re for, and that I think we need to recover. We need to be absolutely crystal clear what we stand for and where our passions lie, and what our purpose is in politics today, because there is a real risk that we could be consumed in the battle between Welsh nationalism and British nationalism or English nationalism, which is what Reform represents.

“I think we need to position ourselves as not anti any other nation, or anti any other people, but proud to be Welsh. We should demand the respect that we deserve, but also build a society based on unity and improving people’s lives. In terms of what we heard on the doorstep, the day-to-day issues really came up: the state of health, education issues, potholes. It was a huge array of concerns that were expressed by the public.

“Ultimately, though, I think we lost the election at the moment that we fell into third place in the polls, because at that point, we began to face the squeeze that in past elections we exerted on the Greens and Plaid. This time around, 62% of people who went from Labour to Plaid identified the risk of Reform as the reason for making that switch. So it might be that that vote, that switch isn’t very sticky. Our priority now must be to ensure that that doesn’t become habitual. The only way that we can do that is by accepting what’s gone wrong and recognising that we need to define very clearly what we stand for and who we are. And then and only then put together the policies which really are authentically Welsh Labour.”

Devolution

When it was put to Skates that many Welsh Labour MPs weren’t signed up to the party’s agenda on more devolution, he said there had been increased frustration amongst councillors that they were too often ignored in terms of the policy setting process and in terms of being heard and listened to and contributing to the direction of the party.

He said: “I’m keen to make sure that we rebuild the party from the branches up and the community up.”

When suggested that it was absolutely ridiculous that Carolyn Harris, the deputy leader of Welsh Labour and MP for Neath and Swansea East, was able to oppose Welsh Labour’s policy in favour of devolving powers over the police to Wales, Skates said: “I’m not sure because we have to have a debate, I think, which is open to all points of view. Now that we’re in opposition, we’re not going to be able to exert the sort of influence that you have in government over another government. So I think that is going to be a debate for Plaid Cymru, who are now in government.

“But I’m more relaxed about the relationship with MPs, given that we’ve been through a pretty brutal election and there’s recognition that we need to do something about the Labour Party in Wales, Welsh Labour and how we connect with people.”