Rhodri:Any left-wing party has to be believable to get elected

Former First Minister Rhodri Morgan wrote a hugely popular column for the Western Mail each Saturday between 2010 and 2016. To mark his passing, chief reporter Martin Shipton has chosen a selection which we are running daily this week. Here, Rhodri reflec

WHAT are we really for? That’s the big question that always afflicts and obsesses Labour after losing a general election.

Should we be a party of brilliant dogmatists, argifiers, and protesters or are we meant to be trying to be a party of government? Which obviously means winning elections.

Starting off with the interim leader Harriet Harman “throwing” the four leadership contenders into a tizwas over the vote on the Conservative Welfare Reform Bill, Labour has been collectively very uncollective this week.

Blair attacks Corbyn, Prescott attacks Blair, and so it goes on.

When I was a teenager it was the Gaitskellites versus the Bevanites during the long 13 years of opposition from 1951 to 1964.

If that was long the 18 years from 1979 to 1997 seemed interminable.

After losing power in 1979 to Margaret Thatcher we went through Michael Foot for four years, then Neil Kinnock for nine years, and John Smith for two years until his untimely death in 1994.

Then along came Tony Blair, New Labour, three big election victories but, sadly and badly, including the invasion of Iraq.

How do today’s raft of candidates compare with those past Opposition Leaders?

Jeremy Corbyn as a standard bearer for the left does not actually stand comparison with Nye Bevan or

> ‘You have to be a Party of Protest when in Opposition, but you have to morph into a Party of Potential Power pretty damn quick as the General Election comes closer’ – Rhodri Morgan