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.