Welsh Labour's Historic Compromise

Wales after the 2007 Assembly election

In the months heading into the 2007 Assembly election, polling suggested that Labour would lose seats, and rumours abounded of potential deals with other parties. In the last week of the campaign, the BBC ran a story that Welsh Labour was contemplating a deal with Plaid Cymru, to which Rhodri Morgan made a robust response:

This story is rubbish from start to finish. A formal complaint is being
made to BBC Wales about their decision to run such a story at such a
critical point in the election, despite the story being comprehensively
denied by Welsh Labour official sources.

Neither I nor anyone else acting with my authority has been engaged in any
such considerations or discussions. The obsession of the media and the
minor parties is with coalition speculation. As previously stated on scores
of occasions, Welsh Labour is aiming to form a government based on a
mandate from the people of Wales.

The key dividing line in this election is that the other parties can only
form a coalition government. Welsh Labour can form a government based on a
proper mandate from the people of Wales. That is what we are seeking. We
are certainly not going to be knocked of course by baseless media
tittle-tattle.

The Assembly elections on 3 May ultimately left Labour as the largest party, but without a majority:

Labour’s Group meeting on 7 May accepted that there needed to be discussions with other parties, but a number of us at the time were deeply opposed to a deal with Plaid and said so. Rhodri Morgan began conversations with both the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru to try to ensure a government which reflected the majority view in Wales, and which included Labour as the largest party. Rhodri said

We have been exploring the different options and I have been seeking and received a mandate to have talks about talks, negotiations about negotiations.

It is very early days and clearly we will have to keep the group and the wider party in Wales informed.

As far as the Lib-Dems and Plaid Cymru are concerned, I will be seeking to have talks with Mike German and with Ieuan Wyn Jones so that we can see whether we can produce a stable government and a government which can deliver for the people of Wales over the next four years.

The Assembly met and elected Dafydd Elis-Thomas as Presiding Officer and Labour’s Rosemary Butler as Deputy Presiding Officer during the first plenary on 9 May.

In Wales, Ministers remain Minister until a new government is formed, so the government continued, but without a full quota of ministers. By law, the Assembly had to nominate a First Minister before the end of the period of 28 days after a general election. In 2007 this meant by midnight on 30 May. So the clock was ticking,but it soon became apparent that the other parties were talking together to form a so-called ‘Rainbow Coalition’.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair confirmed that he would be standing down as Labour Leader and Prime Minister.

By the time we met as a Labour Group again on 15 May, no real progress had been made in coalition talks. Welsh Labour hopes included the possibility of governing as a minority, but Rhodri said that coalitions seemed to be unlikely.

Labour and Plaid exchanged ideas and Rhodri and Ieuan Wyn continued to meet. Labour was also talking to the Lib Dems. But Plaid was also talking to the other parties about a Rainbow Coalition. The Lib Dems had a Special Conference scheduled for 26 May, and Plaid had a meeting cheduled for the same day.

I personally preferred a strategy of ‘hugging the Liberal Democrats close and strangling them slowly’.

By 17 May, it looked as though the Rainbow Coalition was likely. In the words of the then Political Editor of BBC Wales, Betsan Powys:

The rainbow coalition partners are about to put Labour out of government in Wales.

Reviewing things in my Rhondda Leader column, I said:

I must express my astonishment that, at the time I write, it appears that Wales could be faced with the prospect of Conservatives back in government. For the first time since 1997, we could see Conservative Ministers in government here in Wales – alone of all the nations of the United Kingdom.

The reason? It appears that Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalists, are willing to do a deal with the Conservatives to form a ragbag coalition to run Wales.  Conservatives would get jobs in the Welsh Cabinet in exchange for supporting Plaid Cymru’s leader as First Minister of Wales.

Is that what Plaid Cymru and Liberal Democrat voters thought they were voting for on May 3^rd?

The Welsh Assembly elections left Labour as the largest party, but without a majority. Rhodri Morgan has been talking to both the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru to try to ensure a government which reflects the majority view in Wales, and which includes Labour as the largest party. But Plaid Cymru now wants to gang up with the Conservatives and Liberals.

On 22 May, the Plaid group decided to suspend talks with Labour and concentrate on efforts to form a Plaid-led rainbow coalition. But four Plaid Cymru women AMs - Helen Mary Jones, Leanne Wood, Bethan Jenkins and Nerys Evans - made it clear they were unhappy with this.

On 23 May, the Lib Dem ‘triple lock’ came into play. Their negotiating team and AMs backed the Rainbow Coalition. But their party executive was a dead heat, so no such motion would be put to the Special Conference. Welsh Labour issued a statement:

We've always said that our door was open to talk to either the Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru. Nothing has changed in that. Our aim has always been to provide a stable government for the next four years.

Plaid Cymru’s leader Ieuan Wyn Jones declared:

The people of Wales deserve leadership and a stable government. Plaid Cymru offered that option but the Liberal Democrats have tonight turned their backs on their duty to the people of Wales and have shown absolute contempt for the electorate. It was as a result of their decision to suspend talks with Labour that Plaid Cymru was required to offer an alternative government. The Liberal Democrats have now shown that they are unable to take serious decisions and are undeserving of government. The proposed coalition between Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is now dead.

Welsh Labour also published the draft proposals that it had made to Plaid Cymru.

On 24 May, Plaid published the text of a draft agreement between the three parties who would have formed a Rainbow Coalition.

But by now it was clear that the only way of avoiding another Assembly election was for a First Minister to be nominated, and that would mean Rhodri Morgan continuing as First Minister, running a minority government. Rhodri was elected FM unopposed on 25 May. I was away at a funeral.

The next day, the Lib Dem conference voted to try to resurrect the Rainbow. There were also noises from Plaid that they wanted to do the same. Rhodri Morgan was hosting journalists at a barbecue at his house when ITV Wales’s Nick Speed got the news.

[A few days after this, Cabinet Secretary Lawrence Conway was cycling through Cardiff to the Bay and met Plaid Cymru chief executive Dafydd Trystan cycling in the oppositite direction. As a result of their conversation, informal discussions commenced again between Labour and Plaid, as Rhodri recounted in his book.]

The next week, Rhodri announced his Cabinet, on 31 May, and later in the day the Deputy Ministers and Chief Whip. I was called to Cathays Park to meet Rhodri. I was appointed as Deputy Minister for Social Justice and Public Service Delivery, with Special responsibility for housing. Carl Sargeant was appointed as Deputy Minister for Business and Chief Whip.

When I got back to the Assembly after my appointment, the first person I saw was Carl, who was in his in office with his wife, Bernie. I was able to congratulate him, and he me. Later, Carl, and Bernie, and I went off to the Eli Jenkins pub (near the Assembly) for a celebratory drink, and my wife Ann came to join us afterwards. Other people were about who’d clearly already picked up the news through their own sources, and one or two phone calls started to come in. One person who saw themselves as a potential successor to Rhodri phoned Carl first to congratulate him, and then as soon as they’d come off the phone to Carl, they were on the phone to me, which amused us greatly. About 20 minutes later, another potential leadership candidate rang to congratulate me….

Under the Ministerial Code, I cannot record here impressions of ministerial life without approval from the Welsh Government, so those are for another day. However, political and Assembly matters, and things I published at the time, are publishable without approval.

I’d noticed some silly commentary around my appointment, with suggestions that I was a ‘nat-basher’ and an obstacle to deals with Plaid. I published this on my blog:

There have been a number of strange claims made over recent weeks that Welsh Labour is somehow divided between a 'unionist' and a 'nationalist' or 'Welsh' wing. This claim has been made on several occasions over the past decade, usually by Plaid Cymru members and supporters. At the margins of Welsh Labour you may find one or two people who believe it, but I know of nobody in an elected position who subscribes to the view.

Labour is a unionist party. There is a clear need, following the 2007 elections, for us to address the positioning and profile of Welsh Labour. We shouldn't let others, who have their own games to play, try to conjur some mythical divide in Welsh Labour between Labour nationalists and Labour unionists, which doesn't exist.

There was a Labour Group meeting on 4 June. Rhodri kicked off by saying he wanted to carry on the whole thing about inclusivity, moving on with letters to Ieuan and Mike this week, and he would outline his willingness to carry on discussing, for example, with Plaid the Barnett formula and the referendum issue, and with the Lib Dems, the issue of STV for local government elections. We had quite a discussion around the table. Everybody I think really who spoke had concerns about, particularly, the STV question, because it would play so badly in the Labour party, particularly with our council groups, and particularly in the run up to local elections next year.

I came in on that and said, there’s a paradox here. Obviously, as I’d said in group before, I preferred a deal with the Lib Dems to a deal with Plaid, but the most difficult demand that was under negotiation in any of these discussions was the issue of STV in local government. Obviously Rhodri would be seeking to reach out to the other parties of the left and centre left on issues which concerned them and concerned the people of Wales. Things like reform of the health service, the whole reconfiguration issue in other words. Child poverty and affordable housing. And what was interesting was how many people around the table mentioned affordable housing as a key issue on which we had to move. But STV was the most difficult issue.

[Rhodri’s Cabinet met on 4 June to discuss the Legislative Programme and the Ministerial Code. At the time of writing, the link to the Minutes is broken.]

The next day we had the Royal Opening. My diary records:

We had the procession that had been got up by Dafydd El, of the Assembly members, and Rhodri and his Cabinet, then Deputy Ministers. Huw Lewis wasn’t there so I was able to go round joking that it was a shame because Huw would have been down to bring the Union Jacks, and I had the bowler hats secreted away, and Carl had the orange sashes. But without Huw, we couldn’t do the march properly. This was playing up to the whole ‘Unionist’ nonsense that has been appearing recently on the web blogs and the BBC. That all went very smoothly today…. I should say a word on the church service. It was all quite seriously done. They had a choir, obviously of the Catholic cathedral in Cardiff. The only thing that didn’t seem to go that well was the singing of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, because it was being sung at such a slow pace, and there were trumpets in the delivery of the tune, but we had come in on “Gwlad, Gwlad” about five or six bars before the trumpets, so as we were getting to “pleidiol”, they were still doing “Gwlad”. We all had to go back and catch up with them, which was a bit silly, but there we are. In the end it came off. I don’t think any of us likes to sing the anthem too slowly, which was what we were being forced to do really.

I noted on my blog at the time:

I have spent the last week getting to grips with the Housing brief. I was delighted to be offered the opportunity by Rhodri to take on the challenge of delivering our manifesto commitments on affordable housing. Ten years ago I was a relatively new Board Member of Tai Cymru, the then Housing quango in Wales, and at the same time actively involved of course in the Yes for Wales referendum campaign. I produced a paper with Gareth Hughes, then of the Welsh Federation of Housing Associations (now known as Community Homes Cymru) and now of ITV Wales, arguing that savings could be found to liberate more funding for housing from the Government's proposal to abolish Tai Cymru as part of the devolution settlement. This got me into some trouble with the other Board Members!

Twenty years ago I was the UK Campaign Director for the 1987 UN International Year of Shelter for the Homeless, campaigning for changes in housing policy and raising funds for innovative projects in the UK and overseas. I worked in that role from the end of 1984 until the end of 1987, helping to set up the charity and working closely with our President, the late Lord Scarman, and his deputy, one Ivor Richard, whom I was pleased to see again at the official opening of the Assembly this week.

So it's good to be back and working in the field. I had a useful initial informal meeting with the Welsh Local Government Association at their conference this week. Housing is moving up the political agenda in Wales, and there is a great deal to be done. Rhodri mentioned our planned Legislative Competence Order in the Assembly this week, and I hope we will be able to take that forward shortly. I believe there are opportunities to work with AMs from other parties to advance the housing agenda, and I look forward to that.

Some of the Opposition parties were trying to claim that Labour should have consulted on its programme for government, since we were in a minority. I noted in my diary ‘I think Plaid are being more responsible in their approach, and intelligent in their approach, and I think they realise that they can’t afford to turf us out overnight’.

We were watching the Lib Dems quite closely:

We’re all on Operation Kirsty at the moment, trying to bolster Kirsty, who is pretty demoralised by everything that’s been happening with the Lib Dems. The rumour is she’s been given a week to think about whether or not she comes on board with Mike German and the rainbow, if she wants a seat in the Cabinet. She herself says that they’re decidedly split. I happened to arrive in the tea room in the afternoon, looking for some coffee and something with sugar in it, bluntly, just as she was there, so we sat down and had a coffee together, and… Well, I had a Coke, she had a coffee, and we ate chocolate cake… And discussed things, and she gave me a complete run down on the Lib Dems. She said Peter Black was under severe pressure locally from the Bridgend and Swansea gang as to his stance on the issues. She herself said that the two Jenny’s were split. Jenny Willott had voted against the rainbow coalition at their executive, obviously, whereas Jenny Randerson was very much in favour of it. She confirmed that the local authority leaders were very much behind the recalled conference. While she had considerable support herself in Brecon and Radnor, beyond that there was clearly a large lobby going on in the other direction. She said it was very difficult, and she was finding it was getting to her to the extent she didn’t really want to come into work in the mornings. Carl was also on “Kirsty Watch” and he was meant to be taking her out for clubbing in the evening with a gang, I think Alun Cairns from the Tories and others were going out, but Kirsty said Carl had promised her clubbing and a kebab, so we were all entertained by that.

Letters to Mike German and Ieuan Wyn Jones from Rhodri were issued. And then of course we found out subsequently that Mike German had rushed off and leaked everything to the BBC, unbeknown to either our side or to Plaid, and Plaid, Ieuan Wyn in the Chamber, attacked us over that, because he clearly thought we had put them into the hands of the press. Ieuan’s subsequent reply to Rhodri pushed for a lot more.

I wasn’t certain how long we had as a government:

I think we’re living on borrowed time bluntly. It seems, for example, that the opposition parties aren’t necessarily going to be prepared to meet with us unless they have the Tories with them. They’re only prepared to meet, as far as we can see, as three opposition parties, because they obviously understand that we want to try and divide the Tories from the others.

[As I told the Institute for Government in 2018, ‘we had to assume government, if you like, and perform government,without knowing whether this was going to last more than a few weeks’. According to John Osmond, Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price believed that the opposition parties lost the first 2 weeks after the 2007 Assembly election as Rhodri Morgan ‘parked himself’ in Cathays Park, and Alun Ffred Jones, later Plaid Cymru Culture Minister in the One Wales coalition, believed that the nomination of Rhodri Morgan as First Minister was a game-changer in terms of the balance of power in Cardiff Bay from that moment.]

The Prince of Wales held a dinner at Cardiff Castle as part of the Assembly opening celebrations:

I spent some time talking to Ieuan Wyn, again part of our strategy of reaching out, being friendly, opening out to them. I think it’s a really long haul, bluntly. There’s no question in most of our minds that the BBC, actively, BBC Wales actively wants the rainbow coalition. It’s not just a question of it being more newsworthy and their belief that there’ll be splits and therefore more leaks and changes of direction and so on. Clearly a number of them are fed up with the view that they think we have, which is that many of them are Nationalists and hostile to Labour. The truth is, several of them are Nationalists, but it’s not really about that in my view. I think there is a cultural problem in BBC Wales about the way it handles issues. Inevitably, BBC Wales culturally and corporately is, of course, in favour of more and more devolution, because the more devolution there is, the more BBC Wales’s position becomes entrenched, and the more and more chance it has of greater operational freedom from the BBC centrally.

As the week went on, I noted:

Adam Price disingenuously suggested he was in favour of a red/green coalition with Labour yesterday. This is… We simply believe, bluntly, this is cover. They want to set up the idea that they are enthusiastic about doing a deal with Labour and then to try and set us up to respond negatively so that they can go away and say, “Well, we tried but Labour wouldn’t play ball, and therefore we’re going to go ahead with the rainbow coalition.” It’s pretty obvious what they’re up to. Edwina slightly threw the cat amongst the pigeons, I think, last night on Dragon’s Eye with her interview when she suggested that she would be happy to sit around a Cabinet table with Ieuan Wyn. She did that in a sort of facetious way, a jokey way, but clearly I think a number of people had been concerned about it.

Anyway, today Plaid have been ratcheting things up. It’s fairly clear that they’re going to try and engineer a way of getting rid of us, I think, so I doubt, bluntly, that we’re going to be in our jobs much more than a month or so. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they tried to “no confidence” us in the last week. That will give them control of the budget process and plenty of time over the summer to read into their briefs and so on. Everything is up in the air. It’s a shame. I’d like to do this job. I think there are things I can do. It will be very difficult for us, I think, in opposition, to create circumstances for winning seats back in 2011, and I think there’ll be convulsions within the Labour party in Wales. I think the MPs have serious concerns, or some sections of them do, within the Parliamentary party at the moment. I suspect the Labour council groups will be very agitated about the Assembly as well. So, I think we may get squeezed from both sides which will make it very difficult really for the process for setting a new course for Welsh Labour.

[Rhodri’s Cabinet met again on 11 June. Issues discussed were largely routine legislative and budgetary planning matters, including timetables. The minutes also ‘noted that the Leader of the Opposition had responded to the First Minister’s letter on further engagement, and that the contents would be made public.’] 

By the 13th of June I recorded:

The big issue of course has been the developing set of discussions with Plaid Cymru. It is clear that there is a serious discussion going on now. The possibility of a Labour/Plaid coalition is now on the agenda, which it wasn’t before. This is somewhat derailing the rainbow coalition. Whereas we thought initially it was just a bit of a game by Plaid to legitimise them going in with the Tories, trying to blame us for the collapse of any deal, it does seem that they’ve moved more positively over the last 48 hours, and it seems that they actually want to engage in active discussions. I said at group yesterday morning, Tuesday, that I thought really all this was out of our hands, and it was still a bit of a game, but in the course of the day, it did develop. In the afternoon there were claims on the BBC that Plaid had been offered three Cabinet posts, which meant we all started getting moving again last night. In the morning, Rhodri had been fairly forthcoming and open with us. It was still a bit of a long shot, but clearly things had moved on in the day.

This morning we had a further discussion. I’d done a little bit of planning last night, and suggested to a number of people that we needed to get a grip of how we handle this with the wider party, the intention being that we should bring it to a Special Conference. I opened up on that immediately after Rhodri spoke, and said, to be fair to Rhodri, he’d said he could see merit now in some kind of consultation with the party, or conference with the party, which could happen, to use his words, “Roughly coincidental with the Plaid conference.” That was a complete change of mood music to be honest, because at yesterday’s group meeting, he and others had been playing down the possibility of a Special Conference. Anyway, after I came in a lot of people piled in behind me and agreed with the need for a Special Conference. That became the decision really.

There was a kind of rolling discussion within the Labour Party at this point. Several of us were talking to MPs as well as other Labour AMs. That evening it was confirmed that Plaid had agreed to carry on talking with us and get into more detailed conversations. We knew by now that they had a National Council meeting scheduled for 7 July. We also continued to keep in touch with Lib Dem AMs, particularly Kirsty Williams. I noted:

I remain myself pretty sceptical of a deal with Plaid, but I just think we’ve got to try and keep all the options open as long as we can, in order to see whether it’s possible to keep ourselves in Government, and I think we should do that at all costs. Probably without question, the bulk view in the group is that we should stay there at all costs….The mood is very much in favour of carrying on in Government. There’s some slightly odd speeches in Group being made about the dangers of being in opposition and so on, and people not being really prepared for that. People were arguing that we wouldn’t be forgiven by the electorate if we went into opposition and let the Tories back in power, all these kinds of things. But I think there is a serious danger that people are just trying to get past the moment, rather than thinking seriously about the long term implications of allowing Plaid to appear as a credible force having learnt the ropes in Government. A lot of people are saying, “Well, either Plaid goes into Government with the Rainbow Alliance and makes their own mistakes, but still gets that experience, or they’re in Government as our junior partner and get experience that way.” I still think people are being naïve about that. I would like to oppose the deal really, but there’s also now a question arising of whether we, as Deputy Ministers, will be allowed to say anything. It’s not clear to me that we will. There will be the issue of Collective Responsibility which is meant to be enforced, so they may make it very difficult for us. I’m not in resigning mode. I’m not a resigner. I think if you’ve been asked to do a job, you should try and do it. At the end of the day, if Rhodri is going to replace ministers in the context of a deal with Plaid, I’d rather he replace me, in other words sack me, than I resign.

As all of this was going on, of course in Scotland, the SNP were taking over as a minority government.

At this point Rhodri went up to meet the MPs. By all accounts, they were more supportive than they might have been. I was told people were more appreciative of the difficulties of Rhodri’s position and therefore not going to be awkward about it. They were raising all the kind of concerns we in the Assembly had too, but understood it was not helpful to rock the boat and we were in a very difficult position. MPs were being very well behaved though it was quite difficult not to do interviews. Interestingly, I record at this point:

However one factor of all these discussions is that now the rainbow appears to be slipping away. The Liberals are getting itchy feet, and Mike German wants to talk to Rhodri again, so they’ve started another dialogue. So because we’re in discussion with Plaid, the Lib Dems have come back to the table. So who knows what might happen. I mean, I think there are lots of twists and turns in this story still and we’ll just have to see what transpires. I don’t think anybody really knows what the outcome will be. We’ll see.

On the 14th I joined the negotiations on the draft One Wales programme to talk about affordable housing, which did not prove too difficult. I later reflected:

on why I was pulled into the negotiations. I suspect it’s to give some sign to Plaid at one level that this is being taken seriously by people from all aspects of the Labour party, all positions in the Labour party. I suspect it’s also to try and buy me in to the negotiations to give some cover, but whether it means I have any long term durability as a Minister, I rather doubt.

I was glad at this point that there had been an agreement to a Special Conference:

I still think strategically it’s very serious for us as a party. I’m glad that we got the agreement yesterday, of course, to do the Special Conference, but I still think there are lots and lots of problems here.  The RCT Labour group has obviously come out against it, and some of our local councillors have already sounded off to the media. I have no doubt that there’ll be reaction amongst ordinary members of the public in the Rhondda to us doing a deal with Plaid as well. I had a long chat with a prominent Rhondda Labour Party member who was now of the view that we should try to stay in Government and not go into opposition, which obviously is a common position with the Labour group and the Assembly now. I’m not sure that will be the view of the Rhondda party overall tomorrow. I think most of them will believe we should be opposed to a deal with Plaid Cymru, which has been my position since the beginning of this process.

To be blunt, however, if there is an agreement at a Special Conference to go into coalition with Plaid, then I’ll have to sign up to that. Clearly, there are issues about whether there is Collective Responsibility on Ministers, whether we are allowed to express our disagreement with a coalition with Plaid. I don’t think those things have been resolved, but I suspect the argument will be that we shouldn’t.

I had a chat with other AMs worried about a deal with Plaid, about what was happening with negotiations with the Liberal Democrats. We didn’t believe anything was particularly happening,but we didn’t really think we had many cards in our hands either because we don’t have the contacts to really push the Lib Dems ourselves, with the exception of possibly via Kirsty. Some were saying perhaps MPs should come out and speak against the idea of a referendum in order to undermine the Plaid deal. I said, “Well I couldn’t see any point to that because the only way you get the Liberals back to the table is when they understand that we are seriously talking about Plaid.” That was a non-starter, bluntly, I said. At the end of the day I think this is not in our hands altogether. ….We also discussed the timing of the conference. I’m very strongly of the view that we should go after Plaid, in case have Plaid have two options on the table at their 7^th July conference, because we don’t want to find ourselves voting for a deal with Plaid and then Plaid snubbing us. That would be appalling I think for the party.

However, others were strongly arguing that we should have our conference before Plaid. There was also the issue of how we negotiated with the Lib Dems:

We had to find a way forward with discussion with the Lib Dems, and if that meant discussing STV more seriously then that’s what it meant. I spoke to a prominent MP who thought a referendum on STV was a daft idea. I said, “Well, it may be a daft idea, but why not let it go ahead? If a Referendum Bill in Parliament is subsequently laughed out of court, it’s laughed out on court.” I think he could see that. At about four o clock or so, or maybe half past four, we got a message saying that the Lib Dem talks had started again. I hope that becomes public at some stage because it will help in terms of managing the discussion within the Labour party about the talks with Plaid. But we’ll wait and see.

The breathless nature of the developments subsequently is best captured in my diary notes.

Friday 15 June

This was a busy day with constituency activities, a Group meeting, and a meeting of the Rhondda Labour Party General Committee:

The big item of course all day remained the continuing coalition talks. I got to the group meeting. It wasn’t a great feeling. Immediately there was sort of ambush about leaks that had been in the Western Mail that day. ….It wasn’t the most helpful of things. The atmosphere was pretty poisonous. There was almost an element of Stalinism in the way in which people moved to try and put forward a motion of unity, which we were told was a reaction to what had been in the Western Mail. I wasn’t very pleased with that. It wasn’t a nice atmosphere, bluntly. Clearly there needs to be discussion about leaks, which will happen at the next group meeting. The move came because the leak was seen to have come from people opposed to the deal with Plaid. So that left all of us in that position in a rather difficult situation.

We were given the document. There were a number of things in it which are going to cause difficulties. The idea that we set up a referendum campaign within six months of starting this agreement. Then, fundamentally, a move on public services clearly designed to get the Unions on board, which would mean us phasing out use of the private sector within the NHS to assist the NHS within the next four years. Ending use of PFI. Well there isn’t much to be honest anyway. Getting rid of the internal market. Now, I was very concerned about that as I thought it might mean a major reconfiguration, again, a reorganisation rather, with the abolition of LHBs and Trusts. I made that point, but others intervened to say it wouldn’t. I was very concerned about affordability. There were commitments on student fees, which seemed to me to be open-ended, and the affordability issues are in danger I think of undermining a lot of our own manifesto.

The usual six of us raised questions about the document. There were others who had issues on the affordability point. It was a wider group of people than that which is very worrying. I don’t know whether it’s sustainable really. I think it will raise lots of difficulties with Members of Parliament. The whole atmosphere was unpleasant. Depressing really. And we were rushed through the discussion because Rhodri needed to get off to the Welsh Executive. It was not a sensible way in which to conduct discussion around a lengthy and complicated document. All the copies were handed in afterwards, because people were concerned about leaks. Well I think that’s understandable but it really wasn’t a very satisfactory way of discussing the document.

I went off to the GC in the evening. In between I talked some of the MPs. One of cour colleagues arrived from the Welsh Executive and was able to brief on that. It was clear that, as usual, 90%, 95% perhaps, of those at the GC, about 40 people there, were opposed to a deal with Plaid. I gave a long outline of how things had developed since our AGM on 18^th May, and explained where I thought we were going. I also explained that I thought, on the basis of what I’d been told about the Welsh Executive, that it was very likely that it would go through the Special Conference, because the Unions seemed to be on board, and our Welsh Executive member confirmed that. Some of the Union delegates I think were a bit sheepish when they heard that, but as I say, still 95% opposed the deal with Plaid. One or two spoke up in favour of the deal. So, 95% against, but I think they were also very realistic, and they are a very loyal party ultimately. They know that if it goes through conference, they won’t really be able to argue against it, and they’ll just have to put up with it. So, let’s see where we are. I think the reassuring thing for me was that they gave warm applause to the idea that I should have a free hand in what I did, which was Chris Bryant’s suggestion. I think the fact that I have been critical of an arrangement with Plaid Cymru for the last six weeks since the Assembly election has worked in my favour, so that was helpful.

A prominent Westminster MP rang after I got back. He wasn’t across the documents. I briefed him a little bit about that. He thought a lot of it was undeliverable. He wanted to know what I thought we should do. I told him I thought we’d just have to wait and see what Plaid did. It’s quite possible that on Saturday, Plaid could opt for the rainbow coalition idea, rather than deal with Labour, in which case, all bets are off anyway, so there’s no point in getting worked up about it.

Saturday 16 June

As I write, just after two o'clock on Saturday, we’ve still heard nothing from the Plaid event, so we don’t know what it is that they are planning. We are told that there is likely to be a decision today, which surprises me. That was their Chairman on Good Morning Wales this morning. My expectation, bluntly, would be that they would put forward two options to their National Council, and continue to negotiate in order to try and get the maximum out of each. I think it’s also become clear in the last 24 hours that the idea of having discussions with  the Lib Dems is a no go area. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of appetite on our side, bluntly, but also we don’t think really Mike German has been very active in seeking to do that. We think he’s waiting to see what Plaid do today.

This morning there was yet another leak from the Labour group, which is going to piss people off, bluntly. It was a stupid leak. It came again from somebody opposed to the Plaid deal. But it’s making the position of those of us that are opposed to the Plaid deal much more untenable, so we’re going to have to look at what we… Well, I’m going to have to look at what I say in the group on Tuesday, because I don’t like this kind of disloyalty. I made a lot of notes on the whole issue of leaks and so on about things I want to say on Tuesday in any case. But it just puts us all in a difficult position.

[Plaid’s National Executive voted to continue talking to Labour.]

Sunday 17 June

I think we’re now in a very difficult position. As late as Thursday I was saying in the Labour group that I thought we shouldn’t behave as though this was the only game in town, i.e. a deal with Plaid. But in practice, as things have gone by, it seems to me that that is now the only game in town. It’s either Plaid or it’s opposition. While there is an argument to be made that you can renew yourself in opposition, which you can’t do as easily in Government, I think we’re at a point where choices have to be made. It’s clear, it seems to me, that the vote will go through the Labour conference in July, with the Unions behind it. I think the issue for us is we’re going to need unity. The big strategic question remains that Plaid are challengers to us in many of our constituencies. There are also serious problems with lots of the document and where it goes beyond where many of us would want it to go. But I don’t see any alternative logically any longer. My position has never been determined by the situation in the Rhondda. It’s always been an issue of the strategic development of Plaid as a rival to us. A question of giving them credibility. I understand all those issues, but, bluntly, as things have gone on it seems to me that we are in a position where there is only now this on the table. There are lots of things in the document I don’t like, lots of things I think are unwise. But basically the negotiating team is being supported by the group. The Executive has agreed to Rhodri continuing and to go for a Special Conference. I think Rhodri will probably win a majority in the conference on that basis.

What is worse is that the Liberal Democrats’ position is now ludicrous and has really put them in a position where they can’t be seen as credible companions. Mike German basically said on The Politics Show today that he would not really talk to Labour until he was told by Plaid Cymru that the rainbow was off. But the point is, Plaid Cymru will only tell him the rainbow is off when they’ve got an agreement with us, at which point Liberal Democrats would expect us to renege on the deal with Plaid. This is just ludicrous negotiating tactics. It would leave us in a position of betraying Plaid to deal with the Liberals, at which point Plaid would want to put the rainbow back together, which is just, you know, a vicious circle. It’s complete nonsense, bluntly.

Some remain concerned with the strategic issue about Plaid replacing us. My own instinct on that now to a degree is that coming together with Plaid gives us an opportunity to weaken them, if we handle them properly,  because it will erode some of the anti-Labour vote that they pick up. It will also raise in the minds of some, “Why vote for Plaid when you can vote for Labour, who have taken on some of their issues?” So I think the strategic issues are complex. I’ve come to the view myself that I’m going to start arguing for the deal with Plaid, because I can’t see a way through without that. I think there’s a question of how far on a limb do I want to go in respect of the Lib Dems in public. We will see. It’s risky. Very risky for me I think. But then I think the whole position at the moment is risky so I don’t know what we do. I could sit on my hands, but I think the dynamic in the party is moving in the direction of this deal. I’ve had very little in the way of complaints locally despite the opposition at the GC. Obviously the councillors mainly are opposed. But, there we go. I think we’ve got to move. We’ve got to make it very difficult for Plaid to renege, to go in with the Tories, so if that if they do that in the end, then we’re in a position to expose them. But the Lib Dem’s position is completely… Well, it’s Mickey Mouse politics, bluntly.

The other members of the gang of six are going to be cross and upset. But I just don’t think they are contributing in a constructive way now to the discussion. I think there is only one game in town. The difficulty is going to be this document. The reality of the document is it’s going to concede things that Westminster cannot concede. The MPs are going to be very hostile to it.

[Rhodri’s Cabinet met again on 18 June. Items discussed included the European Aeronautic Defence Space Company investment at Newport, the Falklands Commemoration Service, plenary and Legislative Consent Order business.]

Thursday June 21st

It’s been a very long week. I got in to see Rhodri on Monday afternoon to talk about the whole issue of the coalition positioning following the statement by Mike German of course on The Politics Show on Sunday, which he then essentially then repeated or amplified on Good Morning Wales on Monday morning. Rhodri concurred with my view that it was now looking very difficult to see how one could conclude rationally a deal with the Liberal Democrats without opening up the risk of the rainbow coming back into play. I had a session with him, and I said I was anxious to be helpful. He was obviously pleased to hear that.

The discussion in group on the Monday was difficult. I had to come in earlier than I expected because I didn’t see many who wanted to speak and clearly people who were opposed to the deal were taken aback by what I’d said about the Plaid deal being the only game in town.

I made the point about the Liberal Democrats. I made the point about leaks. Then in the end, Rhodri came in and said I’d set out the problem with the Liberal Democrats’ current position. I think there was a lot of support around the table for what I’d said in terms of where the Liberal Democrats were.

There’d been a lot of concern about leaks, obviously, I’d joined with that myself, so we felt I couldn’t get my argument out simply, but if I was chatting to journalists outside the Chamber, it would be alright for me to make it clear where I stood, so that’s what I did. Well, in fact, I was walking downstairs with Mark Palmer from the BBC, and Nick Speed from ITV, and they asked me what I thought. I said I thought the only game in town was now Plaid Cymru. As a result of this, there were calls in as to whether or not that meant I’d changed my mind, and later on in the evening when I played back Wales Today, I saw a journo saying that one of the straws in the wind was that “Leighton Andrews, who was believed rightly or wrongly to have been against a deal with Plaid Cymru, has now changed his mind.” That apparently had also been on Good Evening Wales quite early on, at about four o clock, because it had been picked up on one or two blogs after that. So, the message had got out, I think.

In the evening, I heard a report on the meeting Rhodri had with MPs. It was clearly very difficult, significantly difficult. They were much more robust than they had been the week before. Many of the issues that came up obviously focused on the document. They specifically referred to the referendum obviously. There was also some surprise that in the course of the day the Assembly had announced that they were going to have a commission into, not just Barnett, but also the tax varying powers and so on. This had come as a bit of news to us to be honest. I think the scope of what wa announced surprised all of us in the way it came up in the course of a plenary debate. I wasn’t that surprised that MPs had got up in arms. I certainly found it hard to explain, myself, as to why they decided to do that because clearly they were making this announcement in advance of an agreement with Plaid, and it was one of the things that Plaid were demanding, so you had a sense that we were giving this agreement away without in practice having been forced into it through negotiation.  We were almost pre-empting our own negotiating position which was very strange. Today, Thursday, I started to wonder whether the reason this had been done was to grab the headlines and take coverage away from the reaction of Labour MPs to Rhodri’s meeting.

Today, we found that Plaid had tabled a debate on affordable housing for next week, so I will be the Minister replying. We had a bit of a debate today about how to present the right-to-buy after the reaction in the Labour group. We’re starting to work through some phrases and bolster it, and change the way in which we present it because clearly the MPs have been getting a bit overwrought about it. I think it’s manageable, but it will need a lot of finessing.

I gave my position on the proposed deal in a response to a call from the Western Mail and set out the full detail on my blog:

It has been widely known since the election that my preference has been for an agreement with the Liberal Democrats.

Over the weekend the Liberal Democrat leader appeared to state that he would only re-open talks with Labour if Plaid Cymru confirmed that the so-called rainbow coalition was off.

Clearly the only circumstance in which Plaid Cymru are likely to reach that conclusion is if they finalise a deal with Labour, in which case renewed talks between Labour and the Liberal Democrats would be too late. Therefore at this moment the only two options appear to be a formal arrangement with Plaid Cymru or Opposition.

We are in a new political situation in Wales which will require Labour to work constructively and in co-operation with others in government. I believe that the people of Wales will expect Labour, as the largest party, to lead any new government and I am committed to help achieve that goal and deliver our manifesto commitments.

I have argued strongly for a special Labour conference, so that our constituency and trade union members in Wales can take the final decision, and I am pleased that this is happening.

I have no more to say on this subject at the present time. I am not going to give a running commentary on negotiations.

The Western Mail article gave a lot of attention to this.

[The final meeting of the Cabinet of Rhodri’s minority government took place on 25 June. The First Minister advised Cabinet that coalition negotiations with Plaid Cymru were close to a conclusion and that the text of a document was being finalised. Cabinet discussed the implications for Wales of the appointment of Gordon Brown MP as Prime Minister and noted that he had indicated that affordable housing was among the highest priorities on his agenda, as it was on the Welsh Assembly Government’s. Ministers discussed the chairing of the independent commission to investigate issues relating to the funding and financial powers of the Welsh Assembly Government.]

Wednesday 27 June.

The proposed deal, what I now call the historic compromise, was announced.

We also had the question session and the debate on affordable housing and that went well. I responded to the debate on affordable housing, and my speech got warm support from most people in the Chamber, I think at the end of the day, apart from Mark Isherwood who I took on over the facts on spending on social housing. I also got a laugh, particularly from the Plaid group, when I used the quote from the Edward H. Dafis record, Dewch At Eich Gilyddd, which was quite funny to observe, given it was that day that the agreement had been voted through by their members, their Assembly members.

It got picked up on Betsan Powys’s blog who said now she’d seen everything, my quoting Edward H Dafis with a smile on my face. Most of the Assembly Cabinet were there to hear me. Rhodri was there looking on very supportively. He’s been very supportive all week actually. He asked me to get in touch with Peter Kellner to see how one would go about polling to assess whether a change in public opinion had really happened on a referendum. I did that very quickly, and he was pleased with that. Of course, during the course of the week Cathy Ashton became the leader of the House of Lords, so that was an interesting development as well, and Rhodri hadn’t really connected them in his head until I explained the connection (They are married). That was quite interesting. But no, he’s been very supportive this week, and I think I’m getting more support from the fifth floor.

Sunday 1 July.

I’ve phoned quite a few people in the Rhondda this week. There’s no question that most of the Rhondda activists are opposed to any deal with Plaid. I think most of them would prefer opposition to us being in Government with Plaid. I have changed my mind on that. To be honest, after the election, I would have preferred opposition to any deal with Plaid, but I think the reality is, as we’ve gone on month by month, it’s impossible to adopt a position which puts us into opposition at this stage now that Rhodri’s been confirmed as First Minister. I think people would not understand why we were essentially walking away from Government. I think they expect us to be “The Government.” But the real issue of course is that there is no deal that is deliverable with the Lib Dems because clearly once we start talking to them, then the rainbow goes back on the table and we’re likely to be stabbed in the back that way, and be out in any case. I think the choice really is a deal with Plaid, or Plaid in Government with the others.

In the constituencies, opinion may have been swinging more in favour of the deal over the last few days, as people get to understand the real options before us. The unions we’re not certain about. I hope we don’t get to a situation where the unions vote one way and the constituency parties vote another. We’ll just have to see how it goes. But, clearly, people are working to try and get constituency support.

5 July

We had a special GC in the Rhondda. I wasn’t very keen on that myself but Chris Bryant was fairly insistent, and I came round in the end. He thinks I needed it because people are so hostile, so we can have a discussion in advance of the conference decision. I think in practice we’ve already had that discussion at the last GC. People were pretty clear then that it would go through the conference. I happen to think it’s the only thing we can do. If we go into opposition, then we’re in difficulties. I’ve done a ring round. Most of the activists I’ve spoken to are hostile. Most of the Councillors are hostile. Some of them say, “It’s got to be your decision. You’re the people facing the challenge down in the Bay.” One activist unfortunately is still of the view that he will resign if we do a deal with Plaid. He said he’s very disappointed in me, having delivered so many leaflets for me, and that’s true. He’s been a terrific activist, a great supporter. I just hope that we can eventually talk him round, but at the moment he’s still very hostile, very angry. There’ll be others as well, but I don’t know how many others. I’m only aware of two that are taking it that far at the moment, but we’ll see.

I had chiropractor treatment again Thursday afternoon, and then drove up to the Rhondda. What should have been a 40 minute journey turned into a horrendous three hour journey, which was just unbelievable. The police had closed the road off, so I doubled back and tried to go through Church Village and Llantwit Fardre and it was just hopeless. We just moved nowhere in two and a half hours really. It took nearly half an hour just to get through Ponty on its own at the end, so I arrived at our GC at quarter past seven, late, people were already there. You could already feel the atmosphere. My decision to say that I supported the document had raised a few hackles with people. I’d done a lot of phoning round in the course of the week with members of the GC. I’ve had three or four letters or e-mails from people, no more than that. But I knew it would be a difficult issue for the Rhondda party, which has been fighting Plaid Cymru intensely for the last ten years, and of course there’s a long history of fighting Plaid going back to the 1960s. It’s a big deal for a lot of people. The atmosphere wasn’t great.

I kicked off the discussion, set out where I thought I was. I was heckled a bit and I dealt with that calmly. Then the questions started and someone said he thought I should be deselected; there should be another Assembly candidate. There was a round of applause at this but from something of a minority. Someone else later on said nobody would have been accepted as Assembly candidate had it been suggested that there would be a coalition with Plaid. This seemed a rather irrelevant suggestion given I was selected as the candidate five years ago, and I certainly couldn’t have conceived of us having any kind of alliance with Plaid, but there we are. Most people spoke against the agreement. I had anticipated there being rather more support there. The ultimate vote was 27 against the coalition and the document, four in favour.

Chris spoke against the agreement. He spoke articulately and firmly, reflecting the views of Members of Parliament that we’ve heard over the last few weeks. MPs had started to grow in their opposition; a letter circulated by Kim to his constituency had been leaked to the Western Mail.   One MP came out and said it was suicidal. Others in a rather more restrained and balanced way said they were opposed to it. Four Assembly members, who are not Ministers obviously, Irene James, Karen Sinclair, Ann Jones, Lynne Neagle, had all made their opposition clear in the last 48 hours. Anyway, Chris made his case against the document at the GC. His argument was that we were giving credibility to Plaid, that there was no basis to have a referendum now when we’d only just got the powers, that there was a danger of a split between the Labour MPs at Westminster and Assembly members in the Bay, and we didn’t meet often enough together, which I agreed with.

I did my summing up. I argued at the end of the day, look, that I didn’t have a vote at the GC, I didn’t have a vote at the Special Conference. The only vote I’d been involved in was to recommend the document to the Executive which had taken the decision to hold the conference, to put the document forward. I had campaigned to get a Special Conference, and I had been looking for six weeks for a deal with the Liberal Democrats rather than with Plaid, but it had become apparent in the previous couple of weeks that there was no deal available with the Lib Dems, and at the end of the day, I believed it was in the interests of the Rhondda and Wales that Labour did not go into opposition. The only choice facing us was a vote between coalition and opposition and I could not vote to go into opposition. I didn’t expect to convince people, but after the attack on me by one person who called for my reselection, there’d been a moan from the floor as it were, and most speakers who then contributed said they supported me even though they disagreed with me, so that was helpful, in a sense that it was better to have that expression of anger and for it to be put down, rather than for it to endure.

The reports from the constituencies are that more are swinging behind the deal. It may be that people are starting to face up to the reality that is facing us.

6 July

At Labour’s special party conference, the coalition with Plaid was approved. I had made my views clear in my Rhondda Leader column a couple of days before:

The Assembly election result in May left Labour without an overall majority. Over the last eight weeks, attempts have been made to put together some form of coalition government in Cardiff Bay.

I would myself obviously have preferred a majority Labour government – or failing that, for Labour to govern as a minority, winning support from the other parties issue by issue.

Unfortunately, those options are not available. We don’t have a majority, and if we try and go it alone, we will be voted down by the other parties.

We therefore have to agree a programme in co-operation with another party. My preference would have been for Labour to form an alliance with the Liberal Democrats. However, the Liberals placed themselves in such an impossible negotiating position that that option does not exist.

The only choice facing Labour therefore is to agree a joint programme with Plaid Cymru, or go into Opposition and see Wales run by a coalition of Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

I believe such a coalition would be a disaster for the Rhondda and a disaster for Wales. It would mean the Valleys losing out. In recent years we have seen major investments in the Rhondda from the Assembly, like the new hospital currently being built in Llwynypia and the Porth Rhondda Fach Relief Road.

I believe that the people of Wales expect Labour, as the largest party, to lead the government in the Assembly. I do not believe that they want us to go into opposition and see Tory ministers running public services in Wales.

Reluctantly, therefore, I think the only option before us at the present time is a coalition in the Assembly with Plaid Cymru.

I am not a nationalist and I am opposed to nationalism and to the idea of ‘independence’ for Wales. We will have no truck with independence in the coalition government.

The agreement which will go to Labour’s conference on Friday means that the new government will implement Labour’s commitments to reduce hospital waiting times and invest in affordable housing and childcare.

As the Labour candidate who won the Rhondda Assembly seat back from Plaid Cymru in 2003, I can promise the people of the Rhondda that Labour will focus on the issues that matter.

The Labour Special Conference debate was captured well in a 2016 academic article by Dai Moon, who was present. The abstract reads:

The bitter arguments within the Labour Party in Wales in 2007 preceding its agreement to enter coalition with Plaid Cymru in the National Assembly have faced little substantive analysis, and the specific behind-closed-doors debates at the special conference held to vote on the deal have remained undisclosed. This paper fulfils both tasks, revealing how actors’ arguments tapped into historically resonant traditions in Welsh Labour thought, coalescing around a central ideological conflict over the party’s identity vis-à-vis nationalism. The article thus sheds light upon Welsh Labour’s internal power struggles at an important juncture in its recent history and their continuing ramifications.

My diary continues:

On the Friday then, we had the conference. The atmosphere was very taut. There were impassioned speeches against from Neil Kinnock, Don Touhig, Paul Murphy, the Assembly members who opposed the deal, Albert Owen, Chris Bryant spoke against as well, Dai Havard, all of them spoke against. But, there were speeches in favour from four other Assembly members. Lesley Griffiths, Gwenda Thomas, Sandy Mewies, Jeff Cuthbert. Alun Michael and Kevin Brennan both spoke in favour of the deal as well, and obviously there were trade union speakers in favour of the deal, such as Paul O’Shea and Graham Smith. A lot of people speaking from constituencies too. I felt that, in a sense, it did seem to be the last gasp of the old guard really, in a way, but I think there are major problems. I should add Eluned Morgan also spoke in favour of the document. I want to add as well that Nick Ainger spoke in favour. He was one of the last speakers in favour. I think that was quite courageous given he’d just lost his job in the reshuffle to Huw Irranca, and generous spirited of him to do that too.

We’ve really got to create a united identity for Welsh Labour, and we seem to be in two embattled camps rather than having a coherent position that is intellectually underpinned. Those who are on the Parliamentary side, who have opposed further devolution, some of whom opposed devolution in ’79 actively, certainly don’t have a coherent position of Welsh Labour now. There is a need to bridge really from the middle,a position that takes into account the traditions of Labour, its defence of working class interests, and the recognition of how Wales is changing, Wales as it is now, not Wales as it was, and to develop that sense of unity, that sense of a new radical position for Labour within Wales that is open to constitutional change, but also speaks for all and maintains the commitment to social justice above issues of identity.

I left before the end of the evening because it was our wedding anniversary, but the result was texted through to me. The Unions had gone overwhelmingly, 95%, for the document. The constituency parties had gone by 60% to 40% which was good news. I’d been told by Jane Hutt the night before that she expected 26 constituencies to vote in favour, and that seems to have been roughly what it was. So, overall, it was good that both wings of the party voted in the same direction. A number of the MPs had said after the event, notably Kim and Chris, that they didn’t think there’d be a referendum (on Assembly powers) any time soon, and that was also very much the tone of the MPs in general I think. I don’t think that’s a major issue. I think there’s a lot to be worked on there, but we’ve got to build better relationships between the MPs and the Assembly members. We’ve also got to think coherently about the things that should be devolved and shouldn’t be devolved. Anyway, there we are. We voted in favour.

Saturday 7 July

The next day Plaid voted in favour overwhelmingly. We’re now waiting for Ieuan and Rhodri to decide who will be in the Cabinet and who will be the Junior Ministers. I have a strong sense that, regardless of what people say, I may lose my job. I think Plaid will want the whole area of affordable housing. I don’t think Rhodri, although he can see it’s an issue that Gordon Brown rates, I’m not sure that Rhodri would go to the last ditch to keep that, in order to keep me. I think there is a danger of a degree of triumphalism by some in his camp. However, he’s been more supportive and appreciative of the work I’ve done in the last few weeks so who knows. I will be angry if I lose the job. I think it will be a sign that all the rhetoric that we had about unity at the conference on Friday isn’t really there and that there is still a lot to be done to bring the party together. But, you know, this may just be natural nerves and frustrations and a desire to avoid ultimate disappointment when I’d like to carry on with this job and the policies we’ve started to develop. We expect to see the announcement of the new Government, probably on Tuesday morning, certainly by Wednesday, so we’ll see where we are. It’s going to be a nail-biting period. I just have this sense that he may give the affordable housing job to Alun Ffred Jones, because I think Plaid will want three in the Cabinet, and they’ll probably be Ieuan Wyn, Rhodri Glyn, and either Elin Jones or Jocelyn Davies. Then the most likely person to get a job after that is Alun Ffred, so we’ll just have to see. There’s also quite a lot of rebuilding to do, within the Rhondda Labour party. We’ll see how that goes.

Sunday 8 July

It became clear that Rhodri is likely to try and start conversations today, with Ieuan, and then to try and get the shape of his Cabinet and Ministers by Tuesday morning, so hopefully we’ll have some finality then. I hope I’m still doing this job. I’ll be very disappointed if I’m not. I feel I’m getting to grips with the policy area and starting to make a difference.

Monday 9 July

You can’t script this to be honest. If this were a novel or a film, nobody would believe you. Monday morning started with popping into a newsagents to buy some papers. They had commercial radio playing with the news that Rhodri had been taken into hospital on the Sunday for tests. It said a gastric illness. There had been nothing on the early news bulletins on Radio Wales on this, that I had heard anyway, so that was somewhat startling. It suggested of course therefore that the meetings with Ieuan Wyn would be deferred, and any discussion of jobs in the Government would take place later. I got to the meeting with Huw Lewis in Merthyr to discuss housing stock transfer and regeneration. As we began our discussions, clearly neither of us were certain if we were going to be Ministers by the end of the week. Neither of us had any particular insights. We’d just heard that Rhodri had been taken ill, and we didn’t know what the implications of that were.

As the day went on, it became clear that Rhodri’s situation was more difficult than had been assumed, and that there needed to be an operation with regard to his arteries to insert stents because there had been furring of the arteries, two of the arteries. This duly delayed all the Ministerial Cabinet discussions between him and Ieuan Wyn.

Wednesday 11 July

Ieuan Wyn’s appointment as Deputy First Minister was confirmed in the Assembly on Wednesday. There was much pointing of fingers, particularly by the Tories, at those who were absent on our side, and included all five of the dissidents. To be fair, two were in committee, although they clearly were in a tea break, so they probably could have come in. Huw apparently had some Ministerial business. I chose to be in for Ieuan’s speech, although I didn’t join in the applause at the end, and certainly not everybody on the Labour benches did join in the applause. I was actively working through my briefing papers on a legislative competence order on affordable housing, trying to produce something that would be more welcome to colleagues in Westminster.

[Rhodri suggested in his posthumous autobiography that the deal owed a lot to the role of Lawrence Conway as Cabinet Secretary. As I have written elsewhere, Lawrence told me he felt he was operating ‘near a line’ on this, but in practice no differently from Gus O’Donnell as Cabinet Secretary following the hung parliament resulting from the 2010 general election. As with Westminster, the Cabinet Secretary role can be central. At the point of the 2007 One Wales Government, Conway recalls dissuading Ieuan Wyn Jones that he should be Finance Minister, as Finance Ministers generally find themselves set against the rest of the Cabinet and the likelihood was that finances were were going to become more tight, making things particularly difficult for a junior coalition partner.]

Ieuan himself has published his memory of his speech:

I do remember that there was panic because you had to have the Queen’s consent to the appointment after 2007. I was appointed Deputy First Minister before any other ministers in the party. That position had to be established first, and then of course I had to make an announcement in the chamber. There was great panic because it wasn’t looking as though the consent to the appointment would come in time from the Palace, so it was quite hair-raising. Eventually it came, so I was able to do it.

[As I have said elsewhere, the National Assembly for Wales is the only political institution the people of Wales have ever voted to create, and for some this expression of popular sovereignty establishes a new cultural and political context, counterposed to the Westminster Model of parliamentary sovereignty. However, the Welsh system nests within the Westminster system, and indeed has adopted Westminster givernmental norms. What many see as a civic republican project, based on popular sovereignty, actually reproduces and draws strength from aspects of the Westminster Model. From an early point the National Assembly, as the legislature, drew on the halo effect of monarchy for legitimisation at the initial opening ceremony and subsequently—a new ritual—at each opening ceremony following each set of National Assembly elections that have taken place. This had the additional function of situating the creation of the National Assembly in the evolutionary development of British government.]

I also dropped in on a reception being given by Amnesty, Oxfam, and one other organisation, can’t remember which now. I had a bit of a chat with journalists Adrian Masters and Lee Walters, about what was going on. I said to Adrian, I thought that Plaid were angling for my job, so they would make a big show of interest in affordable housing, and indeed Ieuan Wyn had spoken a lot about that in his interview on Good Morning Wales that morning. Of course, on Wednesday during Ieuan Wyn’s statement, Alun Ffred made a little play on affordable housing. I ran into Alun Ffred on Wednesday evening in the Eli Jenkins pub, and said to him jokingly, “I see you’re after my job,” and he said, dead-pan, “Yes, and I hope to get it.” With Alun Ffred you can never tell frankly whether he’s joking or whether he’s just being dour and so on. I don’t know. I think he would genuinely like it.

Obviously it was the last day of the formal Assembly and in the Eli Jenkins ironically the Press were having their annual lobby drinks as well, so we were gossiping with a lot of the journos, but it was all pretty circular. We were all waiting for decisions to be made. Nobody knew anything, talking to the Plaid people like Jocelyn Davies and others. I talked to Rhodri Glyn as well over the course of the evening. Jocelyn confirmed that there’d been no serious discussions between her and Ieuan about things, so we really were waiting for Ieuan and Rhodri to sit down and go through things.

I’d had some fun with BBC Wales during the course of the day because we’d all been sent, as Assembly members, an e-mail about where we were going on holiday. I decided to turn the tables and ask the BBC Wales journalists where they were going on holiday, and put it up on my weblog. There was some reaction to that as to whether it was appropriate for me as a Minister to have done it, but what the hell, it was quite entertaining.

During the course of the day I’d managed to have two conversations with special advisors Jeff Andrews and with Mark Drakeford about the reshuffle. I said to both of them, “Look, I’m sure you’re getting lots of people asserting how indispensable they are. I’m not going to do that. I want to make the point that I don’t believe in a time when the new Prime Minister is majoring on affordable housing we should be giving the affordable housing portfolio to a member of Plaid Cymru.” I think they both appreciated that, and I had a longish chat with Mark about it, and he said he didn’t think Rhodri was, “Minded to give the portfolio to Plaid for those reasons.” He thought it raised quite difficult issues in respect of Plaid and respect of the language, and housing and so on. He confirmed he thought the discussion with Ieuan should be sorted out Monday and Tuesday the following week.

Sunday 16 July

There were quite a few leaks about the (UK) Green Paper on housing on Saturday in The Guardian, and then more in The Observer. Some of it was clearly briefed from Number Ten, and the Department of Communities and Local Government. Affordable housing had been on the agenda all week. It had formed part of Gordon Brown’s statement on legislative priorities on the Wednesday, so there’s been a lot of talk and chatter about it all week, which is great if you hold the Housing portfolio.

Wednesday 18 July

Here we are, early morning Wednesday now, on 18^th July, and well, there were discussions yesterday. They clearly went on a bit longer than people expected. There was meant to be a further meeting this morning, and perhaps we’ll hear the Cabinet later. It’s all very frustrating, bluntly. There’s a UK Housing Green Paper about to be published, there are organisations seeking meetings, local authorities seem to be playing games around the statements in the One Wales document about stock transfer in particular. There’s a lot of action to get on with. There’s a whole agenda that I just want to get my teeth into, if I’m allowed to do that. I guess we’ll know more today, and we can plough on after that.

I saw (historian and broadcaster) Dai Smith on Tuesday night at the opening of the Davies Sisters exhibition at the National Museum. We were both being slightly caustic about the failure of the President of the museum, or Lord Davies himself, to refer to where the money came from, i.e. Rhondda Coal. Anyway, Dai was talking about where we were going with the Plaid coalition, and he was saying himself he thought that the whole situation had changed radically. He thought the decision was right tactically, though there were major strategic problems for us, which obviously I agreed with. He himself felt there were divisions widening between the MPs and the Assembly members, but he thought the future of Welsh Labour culturally lay in the Labour group in the Assembly, and he basically said that it was down to us to try and position that and give it some underpinning and direction, which was an interesting statement coming from Dai I thought. But I think broadly speaking he’s identified where we need to be.

It was frustrating waiting. I don’t know what took so long for coalition discussions. I can only assume Plaid were pushing for more than we’d expected and Rhodri wasn’t ready for it, or he was tired, I don’t know. Anyway, he rang me about three, and his Private Secretary came on the line and asked if I could take a call from the First Minister, and I said, “Yes.” He came on the line; I asked how his health was. He gave me his rundown really of his operation, I suppose, how in many ways he’d felt breathless and under pressure last year, and he’d put that down to a series of chest infections. He’d been unable to swim in Mwnt for the first time ever, despite spending three weeks there. Obviously it had been a hugely pressured period of the campaign and everything else. He’d had no inkling really apart from that. Then he was walking on Sunday and got these weird pains and he was hoping it was indigestion, but clearly it wasn’t, and then he had the operation. Then he started talking about the operation, what it meant, that after it he felt ten years younger, but the drugs were kicking in and slowing him down a bit, so it wasn’t entirely true. There was a period now where the arteries had to grow over the stents, and it was something that he would have to grow into as it were. A long description, as you’d expect from Rhodri, of all the detail.

Then he got down to business and said he wanted to offer me another job, which was to be Deputy Minister for Regeneration, but this was not just regeneration within economic development that Huw had had, but also social regeneration. He said, “Obviously you’ve only been doing the housing job for six weeks, but you’ve really made an impact.” He said I’d come ‘at it like a tiger out of the long grass.’ He explained I’d be working to two Ministers, to Ieuan Wyn, who’d be the Minister for Economic Development, and to Brian Gibbons who would be the new Social Justice Minister. I said I was happy to do it. I asked… I said I was sorry to lose Housing because it was obviously an exciting period. He said, yes, it was disappointing, but it was in the context of the negotiations he was having to have with the coalition. I asked where Housing was going, meaning the job, rather than to which person, and he said, ‘I don’t want to talk about who’s getting it’, and I said, ‘No, no. I meant where’, and he said it was going to be part of the Planning and Environment Department under Jane Davidson.

I’m happy to do that, and I’ve accepted that role. I asked about when it would all be confirmed. He said within the next 24 hours. They had primed the Palace to expect the fax this afternoon, but they couldn’t guarantee it would come back, and so on and so forth. So there we are. I agreed to do all of that. Wait and see about the responsibilities when I get involved and sit down with the new Ministers, talk about the balance of work they want me to do. But it’s going to be an interesting period, and it will be quite interesting working with Ieuan Wyn of course.

Anyway, by about five certainly, maybe slightly earlier than that, Huw Lewis told the BBC that he had been sacked, and Adrian Masters was doing commentary on that. Eventually he was being interviewed himself on Wales Today with a clip into Good Evening Wales slightly earlier. Huw handled it, I thought, really well. To be honest, he was doing what I would have done. I would have said myself, ‘Well, I’m disappointed to be losing the job.’ He went on, disappointed, he thought it was political because he was the only Labour Minister losing a job, and he had been the only Minister opposed to the deal, so it was quite clever positioning from that respect. He was asked if he was going to be a thorn in the side, and he said, ‘That would be self-indulgent’. He was more concerned with being focused on ensuring Welsh Labour do well in 2011.

I genuinely think Huw has huge amounts to offer, and I think his thought, and historical sense, and political nous are important to us, and not just important to us, I think he’s coming from the right direction in many ways on the future of Welsh Labour, apart from on the language where he’s got a bit of a blockage. But his sense of where Welsh Labour is should be part of a British Labour party, his sense of Unionism, his sense of the priorities being social justice rather than identity politics, all of those things are critical, and it’s important we maintain those relationships. It’s important that he has the freedom to start some of the talking in the party without making himself a martyr.

Anyway, it’s been a tense, emotional couple of days. Pressured, irritating, frustrating, all of those things.

Thursday 19 July

I got into the Assembly very early today, probably about half past seven I think it was, maybe quarter to eight, just to work through some constituency stuff, and then went upstairs to check out what was happening with regard to the announcement. I saw Ieuan Wyn who’d moved into Andrew Davies’s office which confused me. He came and said hello, shook hands. He said he thought there’d be an announcement about twelve.

Peter Hain rang me in the afternoon. He asked what I thought about Plaid having affordable housing. I said it wasn’t what I would have recommended; in fact I’d recommended the opposite before the reshuffle. I pointed out though that Jane Davidson had Housing in her title, so maybe she would manage the whole thing. Andrew Bold [long-standing Labour official and sometime special advisor] said to me at the reception that he and Huw Irranca had been chatting about it earlier and hoping that I would have kept responsibility. I think there was some kind of feeling about wanting me to have kept that responsibility. All in all, interesting, busy, complex day really. We’ll see where we go next week.

Sunday 29 July

Had lunch with one of the most devo-sceptic Welsh Labour MPs. His stance now was basically ‘The party has voted on it. We have a line. We follow the line.’

Other Memories

It was straight into action for the new Plaid ministers. Elin Jones told me, and let me use this in my book, how she immediately had to go to the Royal Welsh Show:

I made thirteen speeches in one day, trying to squeeze everything in as a new minister in the one day.

She had a holiday to New Zealand booked, and flew out leaving Ieuan Wyn to cover the rest of the Royal Welsh:

only to have within three days of arriving in New Zealand a phone call from my chief civil servant to say there’s been a foot and mouth outbreak in Surrey and ‘I can’t tell you what to do minister, but there will be pressure on you to return probably to sort this out because we don’t want it to be as bad as 2001’. 

Anyway, I caught the first plane home, so I didn’t spend my holiday in New Zealand; I spent my holiday in Cobra meetings and in the Cathays Park emergency dungeon as I called it, running the whole issue of foot and mouth in Wales at that time

Jocelyn Davies later shared her memory of becoming a minister and also allowed me to use it in the book:

So there was myself and Elin Jones, Ieuan {Wyn Jones] and Rhodri Glyn Thomas at that time and we came up from downstairs by the Chamber up into… I think we were meeting the press or something and believe or not, Maureen Lipman was there.  She was appearing in Cardiff.  She was the only person there actually.  And we came up out of the lift and the four of us walked up together and I went, “Oh hello Maureen” and she went, “Oh hello,” and I said “Oh, welcome to Cardiff” and she said, “Well greetings from Paddington.”  And I told her that I’d just been appointed a minister in the government. …. She said that she was appearing in Cardiff and she hadn’t been to the new Assembly building before so she’d come down to take a look and she just happened to meet us out of the lift.  And then as we walked away Rhodri Glyn said to me, “I didn’t know you knew Maureen Lipman.”  I said, “well I don’t know Maureen Lipman”.

Overview

Within Welsh Labour, in 2007 power had moved down the M4 to Cardiff Bay. Welsh Labour’s historic compromise led to the 2011 referendum on law-making powers. After the referendum, Wales had the essentials of a law-making parliament. Although years of austerity, post-Brexit repatriation of powers to the centre, and muscular unionism have undermined devolution since, the only thing likely to transfer power in Welsh Labour back up the line to Westminster would be a UK Labour Government with a landslide majority.

Oh, wait….