‘Prosperity, power, participation: read Ken Skates Welsh Labour conference speech in full

Thank you for that welcome. And thank you Becky, you’re a great friend and a brilliant Member of Parliament.

Conference, welcome again to North Wales

Croeso i’r Gogledd Cymru.

This is home to so many amazing things.

Its people, the beaches, the mountains.

And, not far from here, the world’s smallest house.

The Tories held their conference there.

They didn’t fill it.

But conference, in truth though, in the Senedd we’ve also been reduced in size.

We lost many colleagues in May and now we are small in number.

But we are strong in heart.

I can put my hand on my heart and say each one is more than a colleague.

You are the best, most decent people I could ever hope to be in a fellowship with.

And our staff, MPs, peers, our amazing Labour councillors across Wales. Our trade union warriors. And you.

Every one of you.

We are a fellowship.

One that gets stronger whenever our resolve is tested.

And friends it has been tested this year as never before.

I know what the last six months have felt like.

For some of you, anger.

For some, disbelief.

For many, hurt.

And that is natural, because people here care.

You knocked on doors when they were difficult to knock.

You delivered leaflets when you knew the polls were going in the wrong direction.

Our candidates stood up in communities where they could feel the ground shifting beneath them.

And our staff worked day after day, in circumstances few people outside this movement will ever fully understand.

I want to thank them. I want to thank you.

When things were going badly, you did not walk away.

You stayed.

And you fought for this party.

Up and down Wales, decent people gave their time, energy and passion.

You know who you are and I thank you for keeping the hope alive as we faced our most devastating result.

And I’m sorry, I am sorry we couldn’t win what you fought for.

I am sorry to the people that needed a Welsh Labour Government.

To the single parents, struggling to make ends meet.

To every nurse and doctor working in our NHS.

To every patient sitting on an ever-growing waiting list.

To the families that are having to choose between heating and eating.

To the business owners struggling to survive.

I’m sorry.

To those who were forced to make the calculation to lend you vote to another party.

For every one of you that felt that we stopped listening.

That politics was being done to you, and not with you.

I am sorry.

Now, the review we publish at this conference is honest about what happened.

It needs to be.

But it isn’t a charge sheet, and this speech isn’t going to be an inquest.

We can learn without looking for scapegoats.

We can change without turning on each other.

And we can be honest about failure without letting failure to define us.

But I want to make one distinction absolutely clear.

If we had lost two seats…

if the result had turned on a few thousand votes in a handful of constituencies…

then perhaps the answer would be simple.

But Conference, this is not what happened to us.

We suffered the worst result in Welsh Labour’s history.

To the people of Wales and on behalf of my Party I am sorry. I am sorry we fell short on what matters to you most.

Speaking frankly, we sometimes didn’t prioritise the things the people truly cared about.

We didn’t make enough impact for those who needed us most.

Sometimes even angered the electorate, making it easier for people to look for something different.

We prioritised things that sounded good on paper.

Or things that lead obviously to a lively debate at constituency party meetings.

But didn’t answer the fundamental question of “How is this improving people’s lives”?

Conference, what is the Labour Party for, if not to alleviate poverty and lift people’s living standards?

To create jobs, improve our communities and deliver for people.

Our Party was founded to give a voice to the voiceless.

To lift living standards, to provide health and wealth for all.

At Liverpool I said there was no point picking up the shattered pieces of the past, gluing them carefully together and putting them back on the shelf.

I meant it.

We cannot recover by becoming a tribute act to our own past and hope to recover.

That does not mean repudiating that past.

Far from it.

Welsh Labour built devolution.

We protected communities through austerity.

We created institutions that will endure.

We made different choices in public services because they reflected Wales’s values – our values.

And every generation of Welsh Labour leadership contributed something special and important.

But honouring a tradition does not mean freezing it.

A movement is not a museum.

The clue is in the word. We have to move.

The answers that met the challenges of one generation cannot simply be carried untouched into another.

Our values endure.

Our methods must change.

Our purpose endures.

Our politics must renew.

So, what have we learned?

A lot.

But I think one lesson matters above all.

As our time in charge became longer and longer, we became too interested in politics as something governments do

Not interested enough in politics as something people experience.

Conference, denial is no ally.

At times we’ve lacked empathy.

We believed we knew best.

Preoccupied with strategies.

With Structures.

Institutions.

Plans.

Frameworks.

Consultations.

All of them sometimes necessary.

But none of them is a purpose.

A parent waiting for support for a child with additional needs doesn’t experience a framework.

A pensioner waiting for a hip operation doesn’t experience a strategy.

They experience whether something works.

Or doesn’t.

That is one of the clearest messages from the review.

People care about health.

People care about making ends meet.

People care about jobs, schools and whether their community has a future.

And where we fell short on these we must have the humility to say sorry.

Because the review also tells us something that should give every person in this hall hope.

Most of the people who left us in May have not closed the door on Welsh Labour.

But the task now is not just to make Welsh Labour electable again.

It is to make Welsh Labour meaningful again.

To move from being seen as managers of a system…

to becoming builders of a society.

Because Labour has always been at its best building.

We built homes.

We built schools.

We built the NHS.

We built institutions.

But more importantly, we built something less tangible.

Security.

Opportunity.

Community.

Fellowship.

The belief that your neighbour’s wellbeing matters to you.

The belief that a child’s life chances should not depend on their parents’ wealth.

The belief that we make a good society together.

That is the Labour tradition I joined at fourteen.

That is the tradition I want us to renew.

Before I move to the road ahead I want to take a moment to thank someone who stood up and lead our Party during the most challenging of times.

Even when her own family needed her the most, Eluned Morgan stood up and steadied the ship.

Eluned guided us through the most difficult of times, under the worst set of conditions.

We did not win, but importantly, we did survive.

Eluned, as my mum would say, you cleaned up the boys mess.

We’re forever grateful.

Conference, talking about my mum, this is the first anniversary of her death.

She died of lung cancer last autumn.

Growing up, our dad had to go away to find work as a former steel worker.

This left our Mum to raise us often alone for most of the time.

Not a few of us, but five of us.

Five boys.

Conference, this isn’t a sob story, this is the daily reality of so many ordinary families right across Wales.

They get on with getting on.

My mum held down part-time jobs, she volunteered with Citizens Advice and she did her part to help others, who had it harder than us, as a community councillor.

My dad is my hero, he did what he felt was needed to provide the best life he could for his family.

And that meant he wasn’t always around.

Missing his boys growing up

And us missing him.

Life wasn’t easy for mum and dad.

But they loved us, provided for us and did what they could.

Instilling in me a determination to fight, to lift each other, to care for one another, to give back to our community.

Mum and dad knew what it meant to survive, to be our rock, to be our guides.

They knew as all of us here know, Welsh values are Labour values.

They inspired me, shaped me.

And likewise my brothers.

All four of them.

Each different, each contributing to the family.

And each one contributing to society.

Conference, indulge me for a second, so I can outline what kind leader I amgoing to be.

What fuels me when things get tough.

I’ve been leader for a few short months, so it’ll take time for you to get to know me.

Most of you know, I’m just Ken.

So, judge me on what I say.

What I do and what I deliver.

Not on how well packaged by the Party for social media, or how I communicate.

Judge me on my compassion and competence.

On my values and how I apply them.

On my connection with the people I serve, not just the Party I lead.

On whether I can listen, learn, deliver and succeed.

Not on ideological conviction.

Ideology is easy. It’s a script written by others.

Compassion and competence are innate and what matter now.

Judge me on those.

And some of you may be asking, is Ken willing to do the hard things?

I already have.

Plaid wanted to fob us off with a meagre funding increase for Additional Learning Needs.

The pressure to fold was immense.

To make life easy for the Plaid Cymru Government.

For the establishment.

But we did not yield.

We did not fold.

We stood strong and got £60 million extra for children this year.

We listened to the many voices across Wales and we delivered.

Early proof that we will be the voice of Wales again.

Standing up for what is right.

For what is just.

Showing strength and determination for people we care about.

That is our strength and purpose, our strength of purpose.

People not politics.

Communities not institutions.

Opportunity, not constraint.

Conference, the foundations on which we will build a new Wales are threefold:

Prosperity.

Power.

Participation.

First, prosperity.

We must, must, talk about the economy again.

Not occasionally.

Not apologetically.

Not as one chapter in a manifesto alongside seventeen others.

It must be at the heart of what modern Welsh Labour is for.

Because without a stronger economy, everything else gets harder.

Harder to fund our NHS.

Harder to improve our schools.

Harder for councils to sustain services.

Harder for families to feel secure.

Hardest most for young people to believe their future is here.

And by growth, I do not mean an abstract percentage on a spreadsheet.

I mean a good job. In every home.

A thriving high street.

A business able to invest.

A young person able to stay in the community they love and still fulfil their ambition.

A family reaching the end of the month without fear.

That is what economic growth is for – to make things better tomorrow than they are today.

I want Welsh Labour that is comfortable saying something we should never have become uncomfortable saying.

We want businesses in Wales to succeed. We want success to be rewarded.

We want entrepreneurs to start businesses here.

We want companies around the world to invest here.

We want Welsh firms to export more.

We want our universities, our colleges, our workers and our industries connected to the technologies shaping the next twenty years not the past.

And we want the wealth created here to improve the lives of the people who live here.

And Europe?

I’ve been ready for the campaign to rejoin for years.

Ready, determined and hungry for it.

Because I want to create prosperity and share it fairly.

Not manage decline more fairly.

That means empowering people, providing the tools to be better off and to remove the hurdles to decent work.

Take childcare.

For too many people, the chance to work is held back by the cost of wraparound school care.

Now we provided support for working parents of children before they entered school, but there should be no cliff edge.

That’s why this Welsh Labour Party will commit to free or affordable after-school care for every child, every parent and every community.

No postcode lottery.

No cliff edge.

Making work pay and making the economy stronger for it.

Second, power.

Let me ask you, what happens when you keep adding to a house without ever looking at the wiring?

Another extension.

Another appliance.

Another circuit.

Another wallbox.

For a while, everything seems fine.

But underneath, the system becomes more complicated, harder to understand, inefficient,  overloaded.

Eventually things stop working.

And if you ignore it for long enough, it can become dangerous.

For a quarter of a century we have, quite rightly, built Welsh institutions and accumulated powers in Wales.

But we haven’t always asked the next question.

Where should that power go? This won’t be easy for some to hear, but too much power has been retained in the centre and not devolved onward to where it can make the greatest difference to people’s lives.

The first great chapter of devolution was about moving power from Westminster to Wales.

The next chapter must be about moving power closer to people.

Because if we believe a decision is better made in Wales than in Westminster

Then why would we automatically assume every decision is better made in Cardiff than in Wrexham?

Or Swansea?

Or Aberystwyth?

Or Merthyr?

Or any of the communities represented in this hall?

The principle should be simple.

National where necessary.

Regional where required.

Local by default.

And always, always accountable to the people affected.

That means power and money.

Because there is no point telling a community it is empowered if somebody else  controls every pound it can spend.

Conference, I can tell you  that work on a prospectus for Rewiring Wales is under way, with the purpose of driving better health services, putting more money in people’s pockets, improving education and building a stronger economy.

No longer should it be assumed that the destination of devolution is only Cardiff Bay.

It has to be the citizen.

And there is a bigger argument here about what it means to stand up for Wales.

For too long, Welsh politics has sometimes treated standing up for Wales as though it simply means seeking more powers for politicians in Cardiff Bay.

I reject that test.

Standing up for Wales means standing up for the people of Wales.

Peoples’ jobs and wages.

The NHS.

Their children’s schools.

Their communities.

Their future.

That is the test I will apply in Cardiff Bay.

And it is the test I will apply in Westminster too.

If working with a Labour government delivers for Wales, I will work with you.

If Wales needs something different, I will say so.

Third, participation.

Because there is a danger in imagining that rebuilding society is simply a job for government.

It isn’t.

A nation is more than the state.

It is families, workplaces, trade unions, sports clubs, chapels and community halls, voluntary organisations, neighbours… the thousand ordinary relationships through which we look after one another.

We have spent years talking about what citizens can expect from government.

And those expectations matter.

The state has responsibilities.

To provide security.

To create opportunity.

To care when people need care.

To ensure that no child begins life so far behind that hard work alone can never close the gap.

Government must keep its side of the bargain.

But true citizenship is not a spectator sport.

A strong society depends on contribution.

Not contribution imposed from above.

Not a lecture from politicians.

And certainly not some new system of conditionality dressed up in warmer language.

I mean something much older, much more human. A form of Basic Law.

Reciprocity.

Fellowship.

Knowing that we have obligations to one another.

That we all contribute.

That we all benefit.

That we all have a stake.

And a new contract is needed.

A Citizen’s Contract.

Friends, this is the new argument.

Prosperity.

Power.

Participation.

A stronger economy.

Power closer to people.

A stronger society.

And none of this requires us to spend the next four years pretending everything Welsh Labour did in government was wrong.

Nor does it require us to defend everything because Welsh Labour once did it.

The lesson of Clear Red Water was never that Welsh Labour succeeds by manufacturing distance from Westminster.

It succeeded when political difference reflected real differences in people’s lives.

Free prescriptions.

Bus travel.

Different choices in health and education.

Things people could see.

Things people could feel.

Things people understood.

The review is clear that Welshness without material purpose is not enough.

Welsh Labour must be confident in its identity, but judged by what that identity means for jobs, wages and public services.

Welsh by purpose, not by posture.

And opposition gives us an opportunity to prove that immediately.

We will not oppose something simply because Plaid Cymru proposed it.

Nor will we support something merely because it has a Welsh Government logo on the front.

We will ask one question.

Does it make people’s lives better?

Plaid wanted power.

They now have it.

So they must be judged as a government.

Not by the number of commissions they create.

Not by the constitutional arguments they start.

By what happens to waiting lists.

School standards.

Household bills.

Jobs.

How people feel about the future, about their community, about their prospects.

We are going to hold this Plaid Cymru Government to account.

We’re going to make them answer for their choices.

So, the people of Wales can see who they truly are.

That their whole reason for being is to separate Wales from the UK.

Think back to the promises we heard during Brexit.

Think of the lies, the falsehoods, the broken promises.

Take back control of our laws. Spend our money on our priorities. Strike a new deal with our neighbours.

Now, Plaid want us to believe something very similar.

So when Plaid Cymru tells us Wales would be better off outside the United Kingdom, we’re entitled to ask them:

How?

What would it mean for the NHS?

What would it mean for a business selling to customers across the border?

And what would it mean for the family who told us on the doorstep that their wages just don’t go far enough?

I’m afraid, Conference, the Senedd today is weighed down by two nationalist parties.

Welsh Nationalists on one side, British Nationalists on the other.

Plaid and Prejudice.

Reform want us to believe we’re better off outside the EU.

Do we?

No.

And Plaid wants us to believe we’re be better off outside the UK.

How much will they put on the side of their independence bus?

Plaid, like Reform, want to make us believe that isolation, separation and division will solve all our problems.

And while Plaid Cymru promoted themselves as progressive before the election, their actions in government, in government, I don’t think have been faithful to such promise.

ALN. Didn’t intend spending an extra penny.

Rivers. Tearing up protections against winter agri pollution.

Animal welfare. Badger culls are likely.

Two year waiting lists gone within months. Not any more.

Payments to struggling households. Nowhere to be seen.

Fairer Council Tax. Kicked into the long grass.

And what about free school milk?

We grew up thinking only Maggie Thatcher was a milk snatcher.

And Reform?

Well, they arrived in May promising disruption.

To be fair, unlike Plaid, they have delivered.

Their Welsh leader has stood down.

Their language in the Senedd is crude, inflammatory and racist.

One of their MSs has crossed the floor to Plaid Cymru.

People can judge that shambles for themselves.

But my argument with Reform goes deeper than the personnel.

Anger tells you something important.

People use anger when they believe nobody is listening.

We would be foolish to dismiss it.

But anger alone cannot rebuild an economy.

It can’t shorten a waiting list.

It can’t teach a child.

It can’t create the kind of society I have described today.

Reform’s response to anger is exploitation.

To feed it.

To fuel it.

To encourage it.

To harvest it.

Our answer to anger must be agency.

The feeling that you matter.

That your voice counts.

That your community has power.

And that politics can still improve your life.

There is something else I want to say today.

Defeat is not destiny.

No serious political party is entitled to permanence, true.

But no serious political party is condemned to permanent defeat.

What matters is whether you learn.

Whether you reconnect with your purpose.

Whether you return to the places and people you stopped hearing clearly enough.

Whether you change.

Whether you can accept, rather than exclude.

I’m a unifier of values, not exploitative of political difference.

That’s where I am instinctively, intuitively.

And our  own Welsh review tells us most who left Welsh Labour in May have not ruled out supporting us again.

I don’t read that as reassurance.

I read it as responsibility.

They are not waiting for us.

And they owe us nothing.

But the door is not locked.

Our job is to become worth opening it for.

And that begins here.

With us.

This party must change.

Our candidates need to be in communities early enough to become part of them, not introduced to them at election time.

Our MPs, MSs, councillors, trade unionists and members need to feel like parts of one Welsh Labour movement, not separate organisations occasionally sharing a logo.

And the review is clear that ownership must be sharper.

Because organisation follows purpose.

Not the other way around.

First know what you are.

Then build the organisation capable of carrying it.

So working with all of you, I will give this party a direction, and I will not change it with the weather.

I will make our purpose clear enough that any one of you can explain it on any doorstep in under thirty seconds.

Health and wealth for all.

I will listen.

In rooms like this, yes.

But also in the places where people are not pleased to see us.

To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt – we must do the things that we think we cannot do.

She also had some very wise words about avoiding the easy paths.

Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run, it is easier.

That’s why, everything they do, our Senedd team will ask:

Will it bring down the cost of living?

Will it raise living standards?

Will it lift people out of poverty?

Will it deliver health and wealth for all?

Those are the questions people asked us on the doorstep.

They’re the questions we’ll ask in the Senedd.

I joined this party because I believed where you begin in life should never determinee where you end.

I still believe it.

I believed then that hard work should bring security.

I still believe it.

I believed we are stronger when nobody is discarded and nobody is left behind.

I believe that more strongly today than ever.

And at Liverpool I talked about hope.

I said then that hope is what survives the storm…

and politics is what rebuilds afterwards.

Conference, the storm happened.

We survived it.

Now we build.

We will build an economy that creates opportunity.

We will build a democracy that gives people power.

We will build a society in which contribution is valued and nobody is left behind.

Not a return to what Welsh Labour was.

A renewal of what Welsh Labour is for.

There will be setbacks, no doubt about it.

There will be arguments, I’m sure.

There will be days when the scale of the task feels enormous.

And we are still in the foothills.

Nobody should pretend otherwise.

But here in North Wales, we know how a mountain is climbed.

One step.

Then another.

Then another.

Never give up.

Leave no one behind.

Stand up for the people of Wales.

And, Conference, build. Together.

Conference, diolch.