‘Skates faces an uphill climb. His first task is thus to dump the baggage’

“Rhodri says Plaid will support us. Yes. They’ll support us all right. Like the Rope Supports the Hanging Man.”

Rt Hon Baron Kinnock of Bedwelty, Welsh Labour Special Conference, July 2007

Nostalgia abounds in reporting Labour’s collapse in Wales last Thursday. It is indeed the end of the first era of Welsh devolution. The 27 years in which a Labour First Minister led successive Welsh Governments is done. Whether Welsh Labour is finished depends if the voluntary Party has the will to adapt and recognise that there are no safe seats anymore.

Thursday saw the manifestation of a tectonic shift that’s been underway for many years. Some will highlight the 2007 One Wales coalition that first brought Plaid into government. I tend to focus on the 2015-16 period which brought Corbyn then Brexit. Corbyn’s election shot the USP of then Plaid Leader Leanne Wood from under her ahead of the 2016 Assembly (as it still was) elections. Brexit then drew the parties back together as the disintegration of the seven strong UKIP contingent made Carwyn’s technically minority government secure. 

At the 2021 election immediately following the pandemic, Drakeford’s handling of the crisis along with Plaid’s placing independence front & centre of their pitch basically carried Labour home. 

But with waiting lists slow to even start falling, the predictable reaction of motorists to the decision to reducing the urban speed limit from 30mph to 20 and a programme yet again dominated by constitutional tinkering (this time Labour and Plaid using their joint two-thirds majority to expand the Senedd itself) public frustration mounted.

The close outcome of the contest to succeed Drakeford in spring 2024 between Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles sparked off an inferno that consumed the careers of both contestants; revealed clear internal divisions between the Labour MS and swept Eluned unexpectedly into the First Ministership as a compromise to broker a ceasefire.

With Senedd expansion secured and the government in disarray, Plaid understandably withdrew from their co-operation agreement with us and sought clear green water. Eluned staggered on with a cabinet she seemed incapable of changing despite the majority having announced their intent to retire.

If the suicide of Carl Sargeant in 2017 can be said to have shaken morale in the Senedd Labour Group, then Hefin David’s last July destroyed it utterly. I am not an actuary, but this coincidence should certainly be concerning those persons responsible for aspects of the pastoral care of MS. Politically the hammering inflicted at the consequent Caerphilly by-election confirmed both that y Werin had had enough and that Plaid Cymru could not only beat Labour in the Valleys, but also harness an electoral coalition that could beat Reform.

Thursday wasn’t just a rejection of Starmerism. It was that, but it was worse in Wales because it was also a rejection of what Welsh Labour in the Senedd had become.

Nostalgia has been a feature of Welsh culture at least since the Roman Legions departed. It’s fine to be aware of your past; but unwise to LARP like you live there. The heavy extractive and primary manufacturing industrial base that brought into being a working class and then a Labour movement is gone. The last blast furnace stands cold. Amazon’s distribution centre is now the biggest employer in Neath Port Talbot. Grass and trees cover the artificial hillside above Aberfan, with the Taff Trail cyclepath directly beneath running MAMIL’s and active families along the former railway line. The Welsh working classes today are more likely to be hairdressers, delivery drivers, child or adult carers, and security guards (professions the wider Labour movement does little to represent) than miners, dockers or steelworkers. There is only so long Labour can rely on traditional loyalties and identity. ‘Grandpa would turn in his grave if I voted Tory; so I voted Reform’ etc.

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Ken Skates instantaneous elevation by the Welsh Executive Committee on Saturday to become ‘interim Leader’ suggests he was the only one of the Nine Senedd Members to step forward.

What Ken surely appreciates is that there’s no quick fix to Welsh Labour’s situation. He and his colleagues are an irrelevance in the Senedd right now. They need to accept that the challenge facing the whole of Welsh Labour now is to catch and overtake Plaid in the left lane ahead of a First Past The Post (FPTP) General Election in three years’ time. There seems little doubt that Reform will take-up the rightward baton.

Ken should start by drawing a line under the recent past. He should acknowledge the failure to raise GVA and living standards since 2010, the lack of relative progress in improving our schools PISA performance or addressing child poverty. He could also disassociate himself and his new colleagues from the legislative nannying like bans on fast food packaging and the speed limit change that, meretricious though they may be on public health grounds, have little direct connection to socialist aims and served to alienate further segments of the electorate. 

Such measures are what a law making Parliament with no meaningful levers of taxation or redistribution defaults to. The same phenomenon is observable in Holyrood. Moreover when Labour governments did attempt to rationalise the hospital network, merge local authorities or reform the school year they were prevented by the lack of a proper Siambr majority and refusal of Plaid to co-operate.

Before Ken can begin to beg people’s forgiveness he and Welsh Labour must perform penitence.

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