What did Carwyn Jones do for politics in Wales?
Martin Shipton has known Carwyn Jones since the National Assembly was established in 1999. In the wake of the First Minister’s decision to stand down later in the year, our chief reporter assesses his contribution to Welsh politics and his legacy...
CARWYN Jones’ announcement of his decision to stand down as First Minister and Welsh Labour leader came just a month after his 51st birthday – an authentic case of early retirement, if ever there was one.
His decision to go was simultaneously unexpected and unsurprising.
A long shadow has been cast over Welsh politics since the death of Carl Sargeant last November.
Mr Jones and his team may have thought a new year would see the focus move on, but that hasn’t happened.
With the main inquiry into his treatment of the former Cabinet Minister still to get under way, Mr Jones has chosen to leave the frontline of Welsh politics. While only his closest circle was aware of Saturday’s announcement, everyone assumed it was only a matter of time before he announced his departure
A year really can be an eternity in politics.
When Mr Jones celebrated his 50th birthday last year, my focus was on his impregnability as First Minister, and on how he was in the enviable position for a politician of being able to choose his own moment to depart.
I pointed out at the time how if we judge politicians on the basis of their electoral success, it was easy to argue that he’d done a good job.
His first election as Welsh Labour leader was in 2011, after the party had been in coalition with Plaid Cymru for four years.
The arrangement had been necessary because of Labour’s relatively poor performance in 2007.
The two parties gelled and worked well together, even though some Labour AMs were disgruntled at the attention Plaid ministers received.
They needn’t have worried, as Labour won 30 seats at the next election and were able to govern alone.
As the 2016 election approached, there were doom-mongers who predicted that Labour would lose even more seats, opening up the possibility of some kind of non-Labour administration.
Part of the negativity stemmed from what was at the time perceived as the mess at the top of British Labour, where the unexpected arrival of Jeremy Corbyn as leader apparently threatened to tear the party apart.
But there had been anti-Carwyn mutterings from some elements of Welsh Labour, accusing him of being lazy, of not having a vision and of being unwilling to take tough decisions. Less surprisingly, such accusations – and more – had come from the opposition parties.
But however much his detractors and opponents sought to discredit him, Carwyn Jones had the last laugh when, in defiance of the generally gloomy predictions, Labour came out of the May 2016 election just one seat down.
Yes, it did so after seeing its percentage vote fall back significantly across Wales, but Carwyn Jones had led his party to a second successive victory over a fragmented opposition.
Then, with the masterstroke of bringing Kirsty Williams, the only remaining Lib Dem AM, into the Cabinet, he was able to restore Labour to the same numerical strength it had held previously.
While things were going well for him, Mr Jones was able to fend off withering attacks from Adam Price or rhetorical flourishes from Andrew RT Davies. Whatever his opponents threw at him, Mr Jones deflected criticism, sometimes with a putdown of his own and sometimes, rather less impressively but nevertheless effectively, by simply ignoring it or responding to a point that hadn’t been made.
This was possible because, as an accomplished performer, he was able to deliver either reassurance or the semblance of it in dollops.
It’s no coincidence that his message can be described as quasinationalist or nationalist-light.
There were early indications of this when, as a young Minister, he wrote a pamphlet calling for the National Assembly to get primary lawmaking powers, some years before that became official party policy.
He was shrewd enough, however, not to blot his copybook when it became clear that the party wanted to go rather more slowly.
But once he was comfortably installed as First Minister, he was in a position to move the agenda forward, especially with Plaid as junior partner in a coalition government.
The quasi-nationalist approach was in tune with the national mood, and left Plaid Cymru AMs complaining about Welsh Labour parking its tanks on their lawn.
Carwyn Jones’ approach was effective precisely because it was unthreatening.
His reputation was built on electoral success – something Labour has got used to in Wales over a very long period, and which in reality is a position for them to lose rather than for other parties to supplant.
Welsh Labour – significantly a campaign brand rather than a legal entity – is not a party renowned primarily for the originality of its policy development. It’s rather an electoral machine that is content with its leaders so long as they don’t risk threatening its supremacy. For that reason the party – and in particular Carwyn Jones – was able to withstand the attacks it was subjected to by opposition parties over the Welsh Govern-
‘Carwyn Jones was able to deploy an avuncular manner, came over as being unmistakably Welsh, and wasn’t overly tribal’
ment’s performance.
There are numerous statistics which cast its performance in a less-than-flattering light.
In the three main policy areas of health, education and the economy, a case can be made that the administration could do better.
Hospital and ambulance waiting times are not impressive in comparison with England, although it would be wrong to suggest that everything is fine across the Severn Bridge.
There remain serious concerns about the performance of Welsh teenagers in international Pisa tests on literacy, numeracy and scientific understanding.
Statistics which show that more people are in work than ever disguise the fact that many are in low-paid, part-time jobs, and that many have no alternative but to take zero-hours contracts.
Wales remains the poorest UK nation, despite the “economic powerhouse” that was promised at the dawn of devolution.
When it comes to big infrastructure projects, the Welsh Government is better known for delays than for delivery.
The M4 relief road, a key policy backed by Carwyn Jones, remains seemingly as elusive as ever, while the much-touted Metro public transport system for south-east Wales remains more a subject for hot air at conferences than for the construction industry.
Before the appalling tragedy of last November, it nevertheless appeared that Carwyn Jones was unassailable. Despite their best efforts, the opposition parties seemed unable to persuade voters that they could do any better.
General apathy aside – and that should never be under-estimated – many people looked at Mr Jones and came to the conclusion that he looked and sounded like a First Minister in the way his opponents didn’t.
He was able to deploy an avuncular manner, came over as being unmistakably Welsh, and wasn’t overly tribal.
In recent months, however, many have noticed signs that he was losing his touch.
His responses to opposition politicians during First Minister’s Questions went beyond the usual banter into something more vitriolic.
He was forced to apologise to Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price after falsely accusing him of hypocrisy over his attacks on Hywel Dda University Health Board: Mr Jones’ criticism of Mr Price was based on false information.
Later he sneered at Mr Price for taking a career break in the United States to pursue academic studies at Harvard – the same university once attended by his own predecessor Rhodri Morgan.
When some of your own Cabinet members are briefing against you – as Mr Jones must have realised was happening – the writing was on the wall for him.
Professor Richard Wyn Jones, one of Wales’ foremost political academics, noticed the change in attitude towards the First Minister.
In the immediate aftermath of Carl Sargeant’s death, the academic thought the tragedy posed no threat to Carwyn Jones.
More recently, however, he sensed that the First Minister’s authority was ebbing away from him – a phenomenon that, once begun, is very difficult to reverse.
A year and a month ago I wrote in the context of the positives then prevailing for the First Minister: “Why, in these circumstances, would the party want Mr Jones to stand down? He’s only just reached 50, there is no plot to remove him, and for as long as he’s in post the other parties have a problem.”
The reverse is now the truth. Carwyn Jones’ authority in his party didn’t evaporate when the Brexit vote he campaigned against happened.
It was lost because of the death of a man he called his friend.