‘Welsh Labour has voted to devolve its rulebook. Here’s why that’s a good thing’

At this year’s Welsh Labour conference, delegates overwhelmingly voted to devolve the Labour rule book. This would make Welsh Labour, for all intents and purposes, a sister party to UK Labour. Members did this because here in Wales we have always had a laser focus on winning to deliver.

Political parties cannot deliver anything without electoral success and in Wales that route has involved demonstrating to the electorate that we are truly a unique Welsh brand. This strategy has helped us resist nationalist and Tory challenges, so we can focus on building council homes, building new schools, providing the UK’s most generous childcare offer, protecting Flying Start when the Tories catastrophically cut Sure Start in England, free prescriptions for all and so much more.

Let’s face it, there have been occasions when Labour have lost elsewhere in the UK, and we have continued to win in Wales – including spectacularly at the last Senedd elections. We must protect this record if we are going to continue to deliver for the people of Wales.

To make this change to the party structure, UK Labour will have to respect Welsh Labour’s decision as the power to devolve the rulebook sits with UK conference. I understand conference will be faced by many competing priorities but feel confident that members will grasp our desire to continue forging Welsh Labour’s own path. From the outside it may be difficult to fully comprehend the uniqueness of Wales and that is why I am so delighted that Keir has nailed his colours to the devolution mast.

I want to reassure colleagues in England that we remain a Labour family and we should always look to work together to improve the UK.  As the next Labour government approaches, I’d like to see this bond take a practical form.

Mark Drakeford is the UK’s most popular politician with colleagues like Andy Burnham in Manchester close behind. This is a tremendous resource for an incoming UK Labour government with a huge array of good ideas but they will clearly face challenges in taking their agenda forward.  This is something I discussed with the Hillsborough Law campaign recently. Keir passionately set out his plans to introduce a Hillsborough Law at the start of his conference speech in Liverpool last year. A bold ambition we should all applaud.

Politicians like Mark Drakeford and Andy Burnham clearly have a role to play in sharing their experience of government with incoming ministers to ensure bold and progressive ideas like a Hillsborough Law are enacted as quickly as possible.

Let’s devolve the rulebook but work together in the best traditions of our movement sharing experience and ideas well into the future.