Eluned Morgan’s apology to me – and what it says about Welsh Labour

Martin Shipton

A personal apology I received this week from Eluned Morgan illustrates the difficulties she has within her own party, let alone the challenges she faces from opponents.

Emily Price, my colleague at Nation.Cymru, had posted an ironic message to X suggesting that her and my invitations to the First Minister’s keynote speech in her capacity as Welsh Labour leader must have got lost in the post. It later emerged that my former Media Wales colleague Will Hayward – now a freelance journalist – also hadn’t received an invitation to the speech.

After Emily’s post, I received a personal message from Eluned Morgan in which she stated: *I’ve just heard that you were not invited to the speech today. Is that true? I’m so sorry if that is the case. Do you have a copy of the speech? Can I send it to you?”

I responded, confirming that indeed I had not received an invitation, and that I’d like to see the text of the speech.. Baroness Morgan responded further, stating: “Outrageous. I am so sorry. I will send it over now from my personal account.”

In the email in which she sent the speech, she wrote a covering note that said: “I am so sorry that you were not invited today. I can assure you I will be having words.”

I think there are two things to be learnt from what happened.

Trumpian

Firstly, that Eluned Morgan is essentially a decent person. She went out of her way to apologise to a journalist who hadn’t been invited to her speech event, in a way most politicians wouldn’t.

Secondly, that the Welsh Labour staff machine is out of control and acted in a Trumpian manner by excluding from the list of journalists invited those it considers to be difficult and, to use a euphemism, “unhelpful”.

President Trump has been strongly criticised for banning the Associated Press (AP) news agency from White House press conferences because it has refused to bow to his demand that what has long been known as the Gulf of Mexico should now be called the Gulf of America. It’s a typically spiteful move by a president who is … typically spiteful.

There is no doubt in my mind that Emily Price, Will Hayward and I were not sent invitations because we were prominent in the efforts to hold Vaughan Gething to account for the behaviour that led to his downfall. The comparison with Trump is pertinent, although in the case of Welsh Labour it is anonymous party apparatchiks who made the decision to exclude, rather than the party leader.

It’s indicative of the fact that the party machine is out of control – or, to be more precise, out of Eluned Morgan’s control.

Smarting

As a number of party members have told me, Welsh Labour headquarters, in what continues to be known by many as Transport House in Cardiff, has been largely populated by Vaughan Gething’s leadership campaign team. They are still smarting from his ignominious ejection from office.

These days, if they are loyal to anyone, they are loyal to Keir Starmer rather than Eluned Morgan.

It’s the sign of a dysfunctional party when its leader cannot rely on the loyalty of its staff.

One problem that Welsh Labour has is that its funding depends to a considerable extent on allocations from UK Labour. Staff salaries are paid by UK Labour from its central coffers; the money raised in Wales wouldn’t be sufficient to pay them. This makes Welsh Labour – which is, of course, a brand name rather than a legal entity – financially dependent on central party funding. That can have an impact on where loyalty lies.

Yet at a time when – as the content of Eluned Morgan’s speech shows – Welsh Labour really does need to have its whole team on board with her new concept of the “Red Welsh Way”, it seems extraordinary that there are those whose instinct will be to back the Starmer / Reeves Way instead.

The questionable loyalty of Welsh Labour’s staff is part of a bigger problem of the party’s positioning in advance of next year’s Senedd election.

Frosty

It didn’t take long for the euphoria that followed Labour’s landslide general election victory last year to ebb away. We were told that two strong Welsh women – new First Minister Eluned Morgan and new Secretary of State for Wales Jo Stevens – would, with their respective governments, work in harmony together to serve Wales’ interests.

Following a row when Ms Stevens suggested that the First Minister was fully behind the UK Government’s welfare cuts – a view Baroness Morgan says she does not hold – the relationship between the two is, at best, frosty.

As a loyal supporter of Keir Starmer – whose patronage she relies on to stay in his Cabinet – Ms Stevens can’t offer wholehearted support to the Red Welsh Way ideas set out in Eluned Morgan’s speech.

Given her friendly gesture in sending me a copy of her speech, it would be a serious omission if I failed to give my take on it.

Inevitably, as the First Minister herself obviously intended, the Red Welsh Way is being compared with Rhodri Morgan’s Clear Red Water speech delivered in 2002.

Both speeches were intended to distance the approach to aspects of public policy being pursued by the Welsh Government from that of its counterpart in Westminster.

But there are significant differences too. When Rhodri Morgan gave his speech, Labour was riding high at a UK level. Under Tony Blair, the party had won two successive landslides and wasn’t under threat from the opposition Conservatives. In Wales the Welsh Government had settled down under Mr Morgan following a wobbly start under his predecessor Alun Michael. The coalition with the Liberal Democrats had brought some stability. Therefore Rhodti Morgan was speaking from a position of strength when he set out his “clear red water” approach.

Panicking

Eluned Morgan does not have that luxury. Her speech has been delivered at a time when Labour is panicking about the rise of Reform UK, and when Plaid Cymru is gaining traction in Wales. It has the sense of a hastily put-together appeal for support. In saying that, I am not doubting its sincerity.

It’s significant, however, that the specific policies that encapsulated “clear red water” in action in 2002 were ones that because of the devolution settlement did not require permission from the UK Government to implement. Despite the constraints of the settlement, it was possible to introduce universal benefits such as free bus passes for the over-60s and free prescriptions for all.

Likewise, because health and education were devolved policy areas, it was possible to avoid reforms being introduced in England like foundation hospitals and foundation schools, which had greater independence than traditional public sector hospitals and schools.

The Welsh Government of Rhodri Morgan was also determined to avoid as much as possible the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes for infrastructure spending beloved of the New Labour government at Westminster. These had been shown to be extremely expensive in the long term.

While it has already been criticised for insubstantiality, Eluned Morgan’s Red Welsh Way is in fact trying to go further than Clear Red Water, by encroaching on policy areas that are reserved to Westminster.

Welsh Government consent

In her speech, she called for more money for coal tip remediation, control of the Crown Estate, HS2 funding, a ringfenced share of the UK Government’s Clean Steel Fund, reform of the Barnett formula, the rethinking of welfare reform, for youth justice and probation to be devolved, and an end to the UK Government acting in devolved areas without Welsh Government consent.

These are the kinds of demands one would expect a government representing Welsh interests to make. But so far there has been little sign that Keir Starmer is prepared to deliver such concessions.

The danger for Eluned Morgan is that she comes to be seen as a First Minister who doesn’t command respect within her own party and is unable to persuade colleagues at Westminster to give her what she seeks.

But tempting though it may be, it’s too early to write her off.

She also said in her speech that Welsh Labour will start to spell out its vision for the future of Wales in June.

Bring it on.