The man who made Welsh politics matter

Plus who is likely to replace him and the ongoing farce at S4C

Hi everyone,

A particular welcome to all the people that signed up for this newsletter in the last week following my coverage of S4C. Great to have you on board.

We have now reached 500 subscribers for the newsletter in a month and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for all your support. Today we are going to talk about the departure of the only First Minister that most people in Wales have been able to recognise, who is likely to replace him and the unfolding scandal at S4C as evidence emerges that the chairman who sacked someone for bullying was previously found to have bullied one of the women he later sacked. 

The man who made Welsh politics matter 

I first met Mark Drakeford when I was a student in 2015. He was health minister at the time and I was writing for the student website “The Cardiffian”. It actually used to get pretty good traffic though alas about 90% of it was just my mum refreshing the page.

I was interviewing him about plans to change how e-cigs were marketed to stop them targeting children. This policy never came to fruition but given how many kids now vape I think it was probably a needed.

He was a busy guy and he didn’t need to give up his time just so my mum could read an article 10,000 times. But he did. Whether you like the guy or hate him, I feel pretty confident in saying that he is a good person who is in politics, broadly, for the right reasons. Ideally that would be a prerequisite for a politician, but given some of what we have seen in recent years, it may actually be his USP. 

Yesterday I wrote a piece that you can view here, assessing how Covid defined Mark Drakeford’s time as FM. It was both his greatest success and his greatest failure. 

It was the contrast with Boris Johnson that really elevated Mark Drakeford in both profile and popularity. At a time when we were all scared for ourselves, loved ones and jobs, Drakeford felt like the adult in the room. 

Whereas Johnson was blasé (“I shook hands with loads of Covid patients”) Drakeford by contrast was cautious (“think not what you can do but what you should do”).

While Johnson was clearly not across his brief (“will putting a hair dryer up my nose get rid of Covid?”), Drakeford was forensically obsessed with details (he would often quote from random academic papers).

While Johnson had parties in Downing Street (“I was assured they followed the rules”) Drakeford shielded to protect his mother in-law in an out-building at the end of the garden and said “I like cheese”.

There are a lot of reasons that I think it is fallacy to suggest that Wales handled the pandemic well. I have documented them here. The fact that we are not going to get a Welsh inquiry means we will never fully know what went wrong or learn the lessons from it and that is a big black spot of Drakeford’s record that undermines much of his rhetoric about respecting Welsh democracy. 

But perhaps the most defining legacy of Drakeford’s time in power is that he made Welsh politics matter. For the first time people knew who their First Minister was and knew that he was responsible for their schools and hospitals. For two decades the burning desire of the Welsh Government is for people in Wales to know they exist. Almost overnight they got their wish. I believe now some bitterly regret they can no longer govern in near anonymity.

The problem with being the only figure in a government that anyone knows is that it means all of their frustrations will ultimately be aimed at you. When things are going well your personal popularity goes through the roof, when things are going badly it is you that takes the bullet. 

And that is what I think happened here. Recent polling, especially since the 20mph limit, has looked very bad for Drakeford. In a very short period of time he has gone from an unquestionable electoral asset for Welsh Labour to polling well behind Keir Starmer in Cymru and a figure of disliked among many traditional Labour voters. 

With a General Election potentially to be called at any moment, I would imagine that many in the party are glad that they will have a new leader in place who is less divisive - though this probably be because no one has a clue who they are. This leads me on to my next point…

Who does the public want to replace him?

Exclusive polling for WalesOnline by Redfield & Wilton Strategies looked at which of the likely contenders to replace Drakeford would be the most popular. 

They asked if people would prefer the two men considered to be the main front runners, economy minister Vaughan Gething, education minister Jeremy Miles, or health minister Eluned Morgan, who ran last time. They also asked if they would prefer "someone else" or if they didn’t know.

If Welsh Labour have a secret Senedd Member called Mr Don’t Know they should put him forward because he easily out polled everyone else. You can see this here:

For these sort of polls, you can usually assume that when people say “don’t know” it means that they don’t know who any of the candidates are.

Vaughan Gething, who is seen as more popular with the unions, was the highest rated of the three named candidates with 16% of the vote. Eluned Morgan, who has been criticised for the state of the Welsh NHS secured 13%, and education minister Jeremy Miles got just 6%. 

Personally, I think from a Labour perspective, they must have rocks in their heads not to go for Jeremy Miles from a winning elections point of view. He is an inoffensive (potentially even boring) bloke who speaks Welsh. So many people in Wales vote Labour by default. To have someone who is not likely to elicit strong emotions from people either way is likely to lead to them still being the largest party. Vaughan Gething by contrast has had some really high profile gaffes over the last five years. He is prickly when scrutinised and, though more well known than Jeremy, isn’t thought of warmly by a lot of the public. 

There were other interesting insights when you looked at how supporters of different parties voted.

Plaid supporters overwhelmingly support Eluned Morgan. Perhaps the fact she is a Welsh speaker helped with Plaid voters (though Jeremy Miles also speaks Welsh). Labour voters (at the last Senedd election) are the most likely not to recognise any of the candidates despite the fact they are from their own party.

Whoever does take over is facing an uphill struggle. The Welsh NHS is struggling, education results have fallen and the same polling suggests that 56% of people say their financial situation has worsened compared to one year ago.

Man who exhibited bullying behaviour towards a woman sacks someone for bullying

The situation as S4C just gets more and more farcical. I have now seen the independent report into whether S4C chair Rhodri Williams acted in a “threatening, aggressive, intimidating and bullying manner” towards Llinos Griffin-Williams who he later sacked.

The grievance filed by Ms Griffin Williams was found to be substantiated. You can read the full details here. As far as I can tell no action has been taken against Mr Williams. Just months later he sacked Ms Griffin-Williams and then sacked CEO Sian Doyle for bullying. Ms Doyle would later go on to overdose and at time of writing remains in hospital. 

I would love to ask Mr Williams why it is appropriate for him to remain in charge of such a vital Welsh institution, however repeated requests for interviews have been reject. Imagine for a second if this was the BBC. It is unthinkable that, in the middle of the Huw Edwards’ story, that the most senior person in the BBC would go to ground. 

Where is the leadership? And perhaps more importantly, where are the people calling for answers? There has been such an apparent lack of wanting to rock the boat from politicians in both Westminster and Cardiff Bay over this. It is, in my view, one of the big issues with Wales. We are terrible at marking our own homework, keeping our own house in order and at holding people accountable in public roles. It is all very nicey-nice and the people who lose out are the people of Wales who have to see the key institutions in their civic society run like self serving parish councils rather than the valuable public assets that they are.

As always thanks for reading and do give this newsletter a share if you have enjoyed it. 

Take care

Will