The people of Bridgend have been just great, says Carwyn
CARWYN Jones has revealed his decision to stand down as First Minister was as a result of a promise he made to his wife and children last September.
Speaking for the first time since telling the Welsh Labour Party conference he would step aside later this year, Mr Jones spoke about his future plans and the reality of being First Minister – as well as his thoughts about his successor.
But he repeated that he would not be commenting on speculation about events leading up to former Cabinet member Carl Sargeant’s death, again urging people to wait “until they knew the full facts”.
Mr Jones denied his decision to step away from the top job in Welsh Government was due to criticism he has faced since Mr Sargeant’s death in November – saying it was a choice he had already made two months before.
The Carwyn Jones who opened the front door of his Bridgend home in his navy moccasin slippers and offering a cup of tea was – possibly deliberately – projecting a very different image to the one who was shouting at opposition AMs in the Senedd Siambr less than two weeks ago.
At Welsh Labour’s conference last weekend Mr Jones told party members he had faced some of his “darkest days” after the death of his colleague Mr Sargeant, who is believed to have taken his own life days after being axed from Mr Jones’ cabinet.
But Mr Jones said his announcement was a long-planned one and had “delighted” his wife Lisa and his teenage children.
Mr Jones, who took office in 2009, said he had initially been planning to serve a decade as leader.
“I decided back in September that the time had come.
“I came back from summer recess last year and I knew, all of a sudden, two years seemed a long way away.
“Once you start thinking that way it’s time to start thinking about handing the baton over.”
He said his children have only ever known him as a government minister.
“I’ve been there for so long it’s all they’ve ever known.
“I’d made them a promise in September – I was going to keep that promise regardless.
“It’s a big moment for us all.”
He said the realities of his role meant he had not been fair to his family.
“They’re very proud – they’ve said that to me.
“But what you find is you mean to go places but you can’t.
“You plan to go somewhere you can’t. If you’re on holiday the phone rings constantly.
“I have to carry my mobile with me at all times in all places. There’s no escaping from it.
“It’s true of all ministers but particularly true if you’re First Minister.
“I’ve had conversations on the top of mountains, I’ve had conversations standing on a beach – you can’t get away from it.
“I’ve not had a single holiday without something, whether it’s an urgent email or something having to be dealt with.
“From their perspective it annoys them but it’s been part of the job.
“Part of me says it will be nice to be in a position where you can go somewhere and not constantly think ‘OK, what’s going to happen, is my phone going to ring, will there be an email?’
“You live with that as part of the job but it will be kind of nice to be in a position where that doesn’t happen in the future.”
Those close to him said that after he made his conference speech in Llandudno Mr Jones looked visibly relieved.
“I don’t want anyone to think that the job of First Minister is some sort of living hell – it’s not,” he said.
“It’s burdensome, it takes almost all your time.
“I had three free weekends last year – the fact I even know that is a sign it’s time to start thinking about other things.
“But you get a lot out of it. There’s a lot of satisfaction – there are very low times and very good times.
“Everything is magnified in the job.
“I don’t want people to get the impression that somehow it’s a job someone should seek to avoid.
“You go into it with your eyes open and it’s something you can do a lot with.”
He joked that the retirement cards he had received were “a little early” but admitted his shoulders have felt lighter in the last week.
“After I gave the speech on Saturday afternoon you do feel this lightness.
“It’s quite odd – Rhodri [Morgan] said the same thing to me.
“The same thing happened to him – you somehow feel the world is a lighter place. And it was true last Saturday as soon as I’d made the speech.”
Mr Jones told conference only his family knew what he had been through in recent months.
“Of course it’s been difficult for many, many people – Carl’s family particularly,” he said.
Asked if he was worried about speaking publicly about the effect on his family just days after he was criticised by the Sargeant family for causing them further distress, Mr Jones said: “The two things are not contradictory – I’ve said many, many times that the peo- ple who have felt things the worst since November obviously are Carl’s family.
“That will always be the case.
“What I wanted to do when I gave my speech was just to emphasise and just to talk to my family a bit, basically. To thank them for everything they’ve done over the past 18 years.
“I just thought it was right to thank them for their forbearance and their patience and for all the times I said I’d go somewhere and never did.
“It was the right time. When you make a speech like that it’s the right occasion to thank those people who have been closest to you.”
As recently as March Mr Jones said he would remain in post until all inquiries surrounding his former colleague’s death had been concluded.
Now he has said his decision will not affect the sole remaining investigation into the circumstances of Mr Sargeant’s sacking, the inquiry being led by Paul Bowen QC.
Nor, he said, would it impact on the inquest into the death of Mr Sargeant.
“I can’t see why this should affect the timescale of the inquest and the QC investigation.
“Whatever happens I will be there to answer questions anyway.”
Mr Jones said he hoped his legacy would be around “saving” Cardiff Airport and jobs at Tata Steel in Port Talbot, opening schools and protecting the NHS in the face of budget cuts.
But also personally, he said, he hoped people would feel he had been fair.
“That if they disagreed with me or not that I played with a straight hand,” said the 51-yearold former barrister.
Asked whether the Sargeant family would agree with that, Mr Jones said: “All I say to people is wait until you know the full facts and then make your mind up.
“I can’t go beyond that because there’s a time and a place to answer questions. There’s been a lot of speculation and I’m not going to comment on all the speculation we’ve seen out there.
“When all the facts are out there and people understand all the circumstances then they should make their minds up.”
Mr Jones revealed the reshuffle in which Mr Sargeant lost his cabinet role was brought forward as a result of his decision to stand down, so he could promote would-be leadership contenders into Government.
Jeremy Miles and Alun Davies were appointed to the cabinet, with Eluned Morgan and Huw IrrancaDavies getting junior minister roles.
“I took the decision then, ‘right, I need to do a cabinet reshuffle’, earlier than would probably have been the case otherwise, in November, to bring in all the people I think will probably be candidates, to give them all a chance in Government first.
“That’s what the November reshuffle was designed to do,” he said.
Mr Jones added: “Things will move on. There will be someone new in place at the end of the year and the focus will be on them.”
Within two days of Mr Jones announcing he would stand aside colleague Mark Drakeford said he would run to succeed him.
Other AMs including Vaughan Gething, Eluned
Morgan, Jeremy Miles, Alun Davies and Ken Skates are all believed to be considering whether they will also launch leadership bids.
On Tuesday, after Mr Drakeford launched his bid, he was back in meetings with Mr Jones.
There was no tension, the outgoing First Minister said.
“I’ve made it quite clear – first of all any leadership contest can’t disrupt Government. Otherwise action will be taken. I will be pretty hard on that.
“Second, it can’t disrupt the workings of the Labour group.
“We’ve been here before. With Rhodri it was two and a half years to effectively run a shadow leadership contest and it never disrupted the work we did together as a Government and never disrupted anything we did in the way the Labour group operated.
“There is a way of doing that. I will be hard on anybody who I think is straying beyond that.
“I have to do that and I owe it to the party.”
But he said he had not been included in the corridor gossip about who will succeed him.
“I’m an irrelevance because I won’t nominate,” he said. “You soon realise how quickly things move on for the next step.
“I’m sure, because I know it happened with me, as soon as someone makes an announcement, that all of a sudden people scurry off and start talking to each other.
“It’s normal – I was part of that process, I’ve been there.
“The talk now will now be who is next, of course it will be.
“My time is coming to an end – it’s now a question of what happens next.
“I’m not part of those conversations.
“What I have said is that if any potential candidate wants to talk to me confidentially, quietly, about what it’s like and what you do and so forth, then I’ll do that. I’m there to give advice.
“I will referee if I have to because, what I found in 2009, the candidates get on really well. We did, Edwina [Hart], Huw [Lewis] and I, really well, and we never fell out but the campaign teams, however, can be a little enthusiastic.
“I have said to everybody ‘you have to look at your campaign teams as well.’
“There are no off-therecord briefings against other candidates, I will crack down hard on that.
“Rhodri did it when he was First Minister and I’ll do exactly the same thing.
“The one piece of advice I will give the candidates is ‘ make sure you keep your campaigners on a tight leash and channel their enthusiasm.’”
There has been talk that the leader cannot be elected using Labour’s current model, which it is claimed returns undemocratic results.
The electoral college splits votes into three camps: unions and affiliates; MPs, AMs and MEPs; and members.
Instead there are calls to ensure every member’s vote is equal through a one-member, one-vote system.
Julie Morgan AM last week lost her bid to become Welsh Labour’s deputy leader to Carolyn Harris MP – despite having the support of more than 1,500 more members than her rival.
Asked about changes to the voting system, Mr Jones said: “There needs to be a debate in the party and it’s hugely important that debate takes people with it.
“I don’t think it would be right to exclude our trade union colleagues. I think it’s hugely important they’re part of the debate.
“They need to feel their views have been heard. They founded our party and that’s hugely important. You can’t say it doesn’t matter about the unions and it’s simply about the party. It just doesn’t work that way.
“Of course there are people with very different views about what onemember one-vote would actually look like.
“It’s not a question of this system or that system. There are different gradations in between.
“It’s not that easy to say we’ll move from this system to that, because there will have to be a debate about if it is one-member one-vote what would that look like, how will the trade unions be represented in that?
“All these things have to be looked at in that detail,” he said.
Asked if a leadership contest for the top job in Welsh politics was right now, given the huge issues facing the country, including Brexit, Mr Jones said: “Brexit is going to go on for years.
“I think you will see many changes of personnel in different Governments in that time.
“I think that’s inevitable. I don’t think this is going to be something that’s resolved by the end of the year or the next year or the year after that.
“This is something that’s going to go on for some time.
“There are plenty of people within the Government who have experience of Brexit in the way it’s worked. The cabinet have been fully involved, and all ministers, in the way Brexit has operated and what we’ve needed to do.
“So I don’t see that as a problem. Whoever picks up the baton will be able do so with full knowledge of what’s been done and what will need to be done with Brexit.”
But what next for only the third man to have the top job?
“It’s not a question of ‘there we are then, it’s just to countdown the time till December and just open a few schools’. “The job isn’t like that. “There’s still work to be done. You have to focus on that.
“What I’ve found is since I made the an- nouncement all of a sudden you get re-energised.
“Because you’ve got this finite period of time you want to get things done in that period of time and that’s something I’ve noticed.”
He said he will miss parts of the job but he has already been overjoyed to book trips to the rugby with his friends without having to check his diary.
His honorary membership of a golf course will finally get some use, too.
“You’re always going to miss part of it – of course you are,” he said.
“If you’d asked me last year ‘ What would your reaction be if you weren’t in your job?’ I’d have thought: ‘Oh, that’s a big thing, I’ve been in it for a long time, it’ll take some time to adapt pretty radically, life will change.’
“But, to be honest, since September and when I made the announcement in conference, it’s the right decision.
“It’s the right decision and you can’t hang on by your fingernails. It’s time to give someone else a chance.
“Nine years is a long time in politics.
“It’s longer than most Prime Ministers, apart from Blair and Thatcher, and that’s a good run.
“Someone else now deserves to come and take over the reins.
“I don’t want to be one of these people who can’t exist without politics.
“It’s a big part of my life – it’s what’s driven me, I suppose, as a person. But there are other things that I would like to do.
“I don’t want to feel my life is totally dependent on having this kind of involvement in politics.
“I’ll always have some involvement, I want to have some involvement, but not at this intensity. “You can’t do it for ever.” But who will take his role?
“I have absolutely no idea,” he said.