Carwyn Jones calls for all anti-Tory voters to back Labour

Carwyn Jones, Welsh Labour leader, is going to make a speech today in which he’ll go beyond the ‘choice’ narrative and make a direct call to the anti-Tory majority in Wales.

Jones will speak to the 75% of people who won’t vote Tory in Wales, and call in particular for Green, Lib Dem and Plaid Cymru supporters to vote Labour and stop a Tory government.

Jones is expected to say:

“In every constituency I’ve visited in Wales someone has told me they’re coming back to Labour after years of voting for other parties – or they’re saying they are lending us our vote this time to kick out the Tories. A progressive alliance of Welsh voters is building up, and we want more people to join.

“The vast majority of voters, up to 75% of them in Wales, will be going to the polls in less than two weeks with one big thing in common – they want an end to Tory rule at Westminster. But, many of them are going to wake up disappointed if we let Tories in the backdoor by splitting the progressive vote where Welsh Labour can win.

“There are seats right across Wales – particularly in North and West Wales – where a slight shift from Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the Liberals will give us a real chance of getting a vital handful more Labour MPs into Parliament. An extra two or three Welsh Labour MPs, with Welsh Labour values, could mean the difference between banning zero hours contracts, or not – scrapping the Bedroom Tax, or not – ending the war on Wales, or not.

“Our record in the Welsh Government shows that we are acting on the priorities of voters across Wales. We are fiercely pro-European, we’ve put sustainable development at the heart of Government, we are keeping the NHS free from privatisation and we have introduced new regulations to support the Welsh language. That’s an agenda that everyone on the left can get behind, but to do more – to go further and be bolder, we need a Labour Government in Westminster to work this us, not another Tory Government working against us.”