WHAT’S THE FORECAST FOR CARWYN JONES?
FROM SHY POLITICIAN TO FIRST MINISTER – WALES’ LEADER REFLECTS ON LIFE IN THE PUBLIC EYE... AND BEING MISTAKEN FOR A TV WEATHERMAN:
THERE were 14 engagements in Carwyn Jones’ diary on the day we spent with him.
Yet what would become the 15th was the most critical and arguably the most telling about the issue that has been one of the main themes of his leadership of the Welsh Government.
November 14 turned into a busy day politically. In Westminster, Theresa May started it by briefing her cabinet on the withdrawal agreement with the EU. By the time the day was out, several cabinet members had resigned, sterling had risen and fallen dramatically on world markets and she had addressed the UK on the steps of No 10.
It was not until just before 10pm that she finally found time to brief the First Minister of Wales on the withdrawal deal, nearly five hours after the time that had originally been scheduled at 5.25pm.
Both publicly and privately that day, he would express his frustration that both he and Wales were so far down the pecking order.
“From their perspective, they think involving us means telling us at the end,” he said.
“It’s in their interests to tell us beforehand what’s going on so that we’re able to make a comment based on what we’ve heard and what we’ve seen.
“At the moment, I’ve no idea. I’ve seen rumours online and in the media but I’ve no idea what the deal actually looks like in detail.
“It’s very difficult for me. I’ve got to do interviews and they’ll say, ‘What’s in the deal?’. I don’t know what the deal looks like yet other than what I’ve read in the news today.
“They can’t understand we have something to contribute. For example, two years ago we produced our white paper on what we thought Brexit would look like and now they’re close to it. We could have done this ages ago.”
If there are other themes to his time leading Wales, it is being a largely popular figure who, at least not until the end, perhaps never had the type of controversy that engraves your name at the front of a nation’s consciousness.
There were always tough questions about education standards and health funding, but Labour remained electorally much more succesful in Wales than elsewhere in the UK.
It was the death of Carl Sargeant that changed things for him and that is what most people think led to his decision to stand down as First Minister.
When I met him for this piece it was before the inquest and he said he hoped what came out would put right “lots of the wild stories” – although that has perhaps not yet transpired as he would have hoped.
But it was a chapter he wants closed and he was at pains to reiterate that it is as much for the family as everyone else.
When we arrive at his Bridgend home, the family cockapoo Ted is the first to greet us, with the First Minister grasping at his collar. We’re invited in and the kettle is filled and tea brought into the “tidiest” room.
The dog was a long-held promise to his family and one of the things he says he is looking forward to doing more of when he is no longer the First Minis- ter. Daughter Seren gives a knowing nod when her dad says he’s looking forward to more family time.
Driver Brad is waiting in the driveway and takes him to his first appointment at Bridgend Ford’s engine plant.
Carwyn, with his advisor to his right, is at the head of a huge walnut table as we enter the room. Seated around the table are union reps, workers, managers and Welsh Government staff.
He’s there to see the investment which has been given for the production of a new petrol engine that it’s hoped will secure the future of a plant that has been facing high-profile uncertainty.
Electrician Dick Jenkins is a Ford employee with 29 years under his belt, a constituent of Carwyn Jones and a union rep.
“He does a great job for the people of Bridgend,” he says. “In all the time he’s been First Minister, he’s been here regularly. We hope the next First Minister supports the same relationship.”
The relationship with staff at Ford is clearly close. They are still thankful that he visited them just days after the referendum vote to speak to them. I ask him later if it was planned that way. It was, he says, as he felt they would be hugely concerned and went “as soon as possible”.
After almost a decade of representing Wales, he’s now a familiar face and a familiar name who gets spotted doing the big shop or at a rugby game.
“You can’t hide, you have to accept it and live your normal life. People will come up to you and say, ‘I didn’t know you had a beard, Mr Brockway’.
“When I first started in politics, I was quite shy. Now, I’m the complete opposite. I like going places and talking to people. In the end, you just get used to it. It becomes part of who you are.”
He has consciously tried not to develop what he describes as a “persona” but it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been given one.
Until last year, the most common misconceptions, from his point of view, were that he lived in a fancy home, was always surrounded by security or was a certain BBC weatherman.
But, then, with the death of Carl Sargeant, some sections of the public, and even his party and cabinet, turned against him.
I met with him twice for this piece, both times ahead of Mr Sargeant’s inquest – the second time was just days before.
He says he hasn’t been able to, or wanted to, speak publicly about what happened and not being able to correct those opinions has been “one of the hardest things” of his tenure.
“There’s a time and a place for everything. Of course, you sit and you hear people say things that you know are not true and all manner of wild things and you can’t respond. What I’ve found is
the people who know me, they know what I’m like.
“They’ve been supportive and you get a response from people if you treat them well over the years and I’ve always done that with people.”
In a repeated message over the last year, he has reiterated that it’s the Sargeant family who have, obviously, lost out the most.
“You have to bear in mind that, at the end of the day, there’s someone in a worse position than you and that’s Carl’s family. They’re in a far worse position than I was, regardless of how difficult it was.”
He was at that point confident people would see the situation differently once the evidence had been heard at the inquest.
I asked if he worried his legacy would now always include a footnote or mention of Carl.
“I don’t know. But, at the end of the day, you can’t control events and you have to deal with them as they arise,” he says.
“But that’s for the future and for other people. All I can do is, at the right moment, tell people what happened and not what people think might have happened.”
That is still up in the air as neither the inquiry nor inquest have concluded.
The day we spend with him, most of his busi- ness is carried out behind closed doors. Most of it is meetings, with different ministers coming and going along the corridor to his office.
He later jokes that the day had been planned to keep me out – before correcting himself to say this is the usual format of his day.
His only exit from the office between around 11am and 5pm was to pop down to the canteen for a packaged sandwich. It’s something which hasn’t escaped him.
“There’s no work-life balance in this job at all. You need to look after yourself. I’m not very good at that.
“My diet is awful, lifestyle awful, I don’t do any exercise, it’s a high-pressure job. It’s like being a walking time-bomb. And at some point you’ve got to say, ‘you can’t live this lifestyle forever and think you’ll get away with it’. Especially when you’ve gone past 50.”
He will miss the job, he says, and the people he has met. But he won’t miss the “all-consuming” nature of the job.
“One of the things I’ve been so bad at in this job, and I still don’t do it properly, is being able to create that balance between your work and your home life. I used to bring my work home with me all the time. My family know it. If I’m annoyed or worried about something, I sit quietly, I just brood.”
He plans to stay as a Labour member and “can’t say I’m done with politics”. But he only plans to speak “if it’s asked for”.
“What Rhodri [Morgan] used to do with me, and I’ve missed Rhodri’s counsel hugely over the past year particularly, was only to give advice if he was asked for it and that’s what I’ll do.
“If you offer advice without being asked, you’re interfering and look like you’re trying to be a back- seat driver to your successor, and I’ve no intention of doing that.”
There’s been chatter that his next plan is to aim for a place in the House of Lords. Asked if that was just Senedd rumours, he said: “Would I do it? Yes. Why? Because it’s interesting. We don’t have anybody on the Labour side here who went here to the Lords, Eluned of course went the other way. But these are things we don’t control.”
Asked if he’d follow in the footsteps of Rhodri by writing a book, he quips: “If you could convince me of someone who would read it.”
The legacy he hopes he leaves are bills that have made a difference.
One in particular will be the one he remembers – the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act which meant adults in Wales are presumed to have consented to organ donation unless they have opted out.
“It’s the fact there are actually people alive because of it,” he says. “For me, there have been 35 acts that I’ve sealed as keeper of the Welsh seal – that’s the one I’m proudest of. It led the way.
“Scotland is looking to do it now, the same thing in England, and it’s literally meant people are alive. You can’t ask for more than that.”