Carwyn Jones: Labour needs more people like Prescott to help counter UKIP

UKIP does not pose a substantial threat to Welsh Labour “at the moment”, but this could change, Carwyn Jones has said.

The Welsh first minister was scathing about Neil Hamilton, the disgraced former Tory MP who now leads Welsh UKIP. He said “it is hard to be an authentic voice of the working class when you have [him] as leader”.

In an interview with LabourList, the Welsh Labour leader said the party must be wary of having “voices only from London” and needs to “rediscover people like John [Prescott]” who can speak to people of all backgrounds if it is going to protect against the UKIP threat. Whilst there was a time when people didn’t care whether their representatives sounded like them, people are now more detached, he said, making this far more important.

On the development of a deal being stuck with Tata, securing the future of Port Talbot and the British steel industry for the next five years at least, Jones was critical of the Westminster government and said they “haven’t really done anything” to secure the key industry.

In contrast, the Welsh government today laid out further investment plans to support the steel industry, including an £18m pound boost for Port Talbot’s power plant – which will seek to make powering the plant cheaper and greener.

Jones said that “businesses think we’ll have a soft Brexit” and that this has made a Tata deal possible, even in this time of uncertainty. He agreed that the weakened pound had helped with securing the deal, but that this is only a “short term solution”.

Jones also called for far greater spending on infrastructure across the UK, highlighting that compared to other Western countries our levels of investment are woeful. The “UK has too much history of making do with things” he said, and that it is presently “cheap to borrow” and that as a result we should make the most.

He gave cautious support for the idea of rail nationalisation, but was keen to criticise the British rail model – saying that the centralised system was not the right approach. He expressed dismay that the Welsh government is not afforded the same powers over the railways as the Scottish government.

Jones cautioned against those hoping for an early general saying that a 2017 election wouldn’t be something he’d “want” and that Welsh parties have depleted energy and financial resources after assembly elections this year. A general election would be better after the detail of Brexit has been decided, he added.