Having lost its way, can Welsh Labour rediscover its purpose in time for the next Senedd election?

Martin Shipton

Is Welsh Labour still alive – or has it died?

It’s a question worth asking after a period when what had been a carefully crafted ideological position seems to have fallen apart fast.

It was back in 2002 when the then First Minister Rhodri Morgan set out his philosophy in a speech delivered in Swansea that, in its written version, spelt out the “clear red water” that existed between his administration and that of Tony Blair in Westminster.

Rhodri, as everyone called him, together with his senior aide Professor Mark Drakeford, did not subscribe to the New Labour programme of Blair.

They were in favour of keeping public services firmly in the public sector: they didn’t want to tinker with long-standing arrangements under which schools were run by local authorities; they were against any move towards privatising the health service; and they resisted as much as they could the Private Finance Initiative, which saw public bodies paying private companies to build and maintain hospitals and schools at huge expense.

They also favoured universal benefits like free prescriptions, taking the view that it made sense for everyone to have a stake in the welfare state.

At the same time Blair’s government in England was experimenting with different ways of delivering public services, and was less committed to keeping state control.

For better or worse, that’s how matters continued throughout the period until 2010 when there were Labour governments in Westminster as well as in Cardiff.

Ideology

To be fair, both Blair and his successor Gordon Brown seemed happy to allow Wales to do things differently, and there was no evidence of pressure on the Welsh Government to align its ideology with that of New Labour.

In parallel with what he described as his “Classic Labour” philosophical position, Rhodri and his colleagues created a “Welsh Labour” brand that has had a remarkable degree of electoral success.

It somehow chimed with developments in the cultural sphere that were characterised as “Cool Cymru”, including rock bands that were assertively Welsh as well as new buildings like the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay (much less frequently referred to as Butetown or “The Docks”) and the Millennium (now Principality) Stadium in Cardiff city centre.

The creation of the National Assembly as an institution, and later the building of the Senedd, also fed into the idea of Wales as a reborn nation. “Welsh Labour” tapped into the idea of Welsh patriotism, offering a political home to those who wanted a form of light-touch nationalism that didn’t demand a commitment to outright independence like Plaid Cymru and thus didn’t frighten the horses.

Welsh Labour was, nevertheless, steadfastly pro-devolution. And devolution, as Ron Davies used to put it, was a process, not an event. That meant a gradual accrual of more powers, and explains why much effort was devoted to acquiring them. “Give us the tools to do the job” was a frequent plea from Welsh Labour ministers, who didn’t mind – to quote another cliche of the time – parking their tanks on Plaid Cymru’s lawn and stealing the smaller party’s policies.

New dynamic

When the Conservatives under David Cameron came to power in 2010, a new dynamic came into play for Welsh Labour. The country’s problems could be laid at the door of the UK Government, whose austerity policies inhibited attempts to improve public services. This didn’t, however, stop the onward march of devolution, with a referendum on primary lawmaking powers resulting in a comfortable Yes vote in 2011 and limited tax-levying powers following later.

Brexit didn’t turn out well from the point of view of pro-devolutionists, and for the remainder of the Westminster Tory years battles had to be fought, sometimes politically and sometimes in the Supreme Court, to stop the march of devolution going into reverse.

In terms of Welsh Labour’s own position, the party under Mark Drakeford appeared to approve of his journey towards a radically changed UK, with equal status for the four constituent nations in a confederation based on equality and mutual respect. Such ideas were spelt out in a series of keynote speeches he made that could be seen as pursuing the devolution continuum.

In the last six months, however, the party has gone through a tumultuous and deeply unsettling period.The leadership contest to choose Mr Drakeford’s successor was dominated not by policy or constitutional debates, but by the behaviour of the leading candidate.

HS2

During the general election campaign the Shadow Welsh Secretary – now the Welsh Secretary – Jo Stevens dismissed Welsh Labour’s aspiration for more devolution in a couple of sentences and subsequently backtracked on the party’s longstanding call for funding justice in relation to the HS2 rail scheme.

The beleaguered and soon-to-depart First Minister offered no opposition to what amounted to huge U-turns.

In recent days we’ve seen a group of supposedly Welsh Labour MPs signing up to proposed changes to planning policy in England that if implemented in Wales would trash the Welsh Government’s long-standing commitment to sustainable development, as enshrined in the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. And while in the past there have been MPs who have consciously opposed Welsh Labour policies, it seems that this time those concerned are oblivious to the fact that they’ve signed up to a new policy that runs counter to Welsh Government thinking.

Nothing, however, is being said about it.

Has the idea of a distinct Welsh Labour policy agenda disappeared in a few short months and will the party now become no more than a branch office of UK Labour?

One gets the sense that some people would like that to be the case, and that such a change may have occurred unconsciously, and without anyone paying attention.

New austerity

It’s certainly the case that the party hasn’t come to terms with the new austerity measures that Chancellor Rachel Reeves has made it clear will be coming our way. However much she may try to dress up such decisions as an unavoidable consequence of a “black hole” in the public finances left behind by the Tories, they will be conscious political choices made by her that will result in public sector job losses.

The wider labour movement, including TUC Cymru, has yet to come to terms with this either.

Perhaps I’m being too impatient in expecting answers after barely a month of a Westminster Labour government, but it does seem to me that Welsh Labour has lost its way.

After the euphoria of the general election victory, the party needs to confront the fact that in Wales its share of the vote was down four points on 2019, which was generally regarded as the worst election outcome for Labour since 1935. It must also take account of the fact that the Senedd election in 2026 will be fought on a wholly proportional electoral system – and that a polling study puts the party just one point ahead of Plaid Cymru.

What can Welsh Labour do to fill the vacuum?

Blaenau Gwent MS Alun Davies is optimistic. He’s happy that Eluned Morgan is taking over as First Minister and has faith that she will be able to restore the party’s vitality.

‘Move on’

He said: “We need to draw a line under the last six months and move on. The key thing is that when we come back after the summer recess, Eluned needs to make a series of keynote speeches in which she sets out the direction of travel in different areas of policy.

“The public sector has always been more important to the Welsh economy than it has been in England, and that will continue to be the case.

“Things must, however, change. Britain has the most centralised economy in western Europe and that has created a situation where Wales, as well as other parts of the UK, is seriously underfunded. There needs to be a fundamental readjustment of the way resources are allocated, and the Welsh Government needs to be making the case for that in common with regional leaders in England, for example.

“Wales has been badly served by the Barnett formula [which determines how much money is allocated to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland] and it needs to be reformed.

“The HS2 scandal [in which the English rail scheme was unjustly classified as an England and Wales project, thus depriving Wales of up to £4bn in UK Government funding] is a disgrace and illustrates the injustice well. But the same funding injustice applies in other policy areas too.”

As Mr Davies points out, there’s undoubtedly a lot for Eluned Morgan to get her teeth into.

As the old Welsh Labour election slogan put it, let’s hope she stands up for Wales.

If the party doesn’t get its act together, it could be kicked out of office in 21 months’ time.