Labour is the only real party of Wales

Swansea is a city I know well, it is the city of my birth and where I worked for ten years as a barrister before going into politics. The Swansea of that time and the city of today, however, are two different places. No longer do Dylan Thomas’ words about a “lovely ugly town” ring true – now it is just a lovely town, a city in fact, and a city on the up. A new university campus is being built, and the new SA1 waterside development are key drivers for an economic boom in this part of Wales. The cranes that pepper the skyline were once a common sight across small English cities too, but not today.In Wales, even with our budget slashed by the Tories in Westminster, we have continued to invest in infrastructure projects – taking on the economic downturn head on, not just rolling with the punches. We’ve built new schools, new colleges, new roads and new houses – we’ve redoubled our efforts using our own capital programme, innovative finance and European funding. Whatever it takes to keep building, we’ve done it and we’ll keep doing it.

That’s the sort of Welsh Labour attitude I was talking about at our annual conference this year. We are building a  bright and busy Wales, with private sector jobs on the up and international recognition for our creative industries. It is the sort of Wales, the real Wales, that the Tories are desperate to undermine. It makes it difficult for them to defend the chaotic Work Programme, when our own Jobs Growth Wales programme is performing so well – getting 16,000 young people into work. It makes it difficult for the Tories to defend axing the schools building programme, when in Labour Wales people are seeing the construction of bright, modern new schools in their communities. And it makes a mockery of Tory claims that Labour is somehow anti-business, when this weekend I was able to announce a new *40million scheme to support entrepreneurs in Wales. Inward investment figures show us that a Labour-run Wales is already a good place to come and do business, so it is right that now we make it easier for people to grow their own businesses too.

There’s lots more we want to do, to keep Wales ahead of the game. And the election of a UK Labour Government is absolutely vital to our ambitions. It will be the difference between five years of growth and progress, or five years of dismantling the state – brick by brick, service by service. The stakes have never been higher.

In their speeches over the weekend, Ed Miliband and Owen Smith demonstrated why Labour is the party of devolution, and the only real party of Wales. Announcing further powers for Wales and a fair funding settlement under the future Labour Government, they showed they understand what it takes to deliver. The constitutional debate for Labour is not a cause in itself, or an end point, it is about getting the right tools for the job – to make Wales a better, fairer and more hopeful country.

We expect the Tories to keep up with their war on Wales, but as this weekend demonstrated, it is only serving to fire up Welsh Labour supporters and voters. When the Prime Minister described Offa’s Dyke as a line between life and death he surrendered the moral authority to be truly a Prime Minister for the whole of the UK. And when Labour wins in May, he will have plenty of time to lament that folly.