The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 114. The future of Wales (Eluned Morgan)

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

How did Morgan’s upbringing as the daughter of a priest set her off on a path to become Welsh First Minister? What does a former member of the European Parliament think happened with Brexit? How has the devolved parliament tackled the NHS?  Rory and Alastair are joined by the first minister of Wales, Eluned Morgan, to discuss all this and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Assistant Producer: India Dunkley + Alice Horrell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispoletics.com. Welcome to the Restis Politics leading with me, Roy Stewart. And me, Anastair Campbell. And we are delighted to have with us the First Minister of Wales, in Leonard Morgan, who I have known for many years, who is a Welsh speaker from Cardiff, who is somebody who's had several ministerial posts before this one in the Welsh government, and before that was a member of the European Parliament,

which I think was when I first got to know you, largely through our mutual friends, the Kinnocks. And we've also been involved in mental health campaigns together, because it is a great mental health campaigner. and something of a reluctant First Minister. Is that fair? Yes, a little bit. I did put my name in before, but I didn't put my name in the second time. So, yeah, it was an unexpected pleasure to become First Minister in the summer after a little bit of a turmoil within our party. And for International British listeners, tell us a little bit about the role of First Minister and the powers that Wales has independent to the United Kingdom. So we've had a devolved government now for 25 years.

Initially, they were actually quite few powers, but over the years, we now have lawmaking powers. We have a big budget. We have a power to vary taxation. And we have responsibility for things like health, education, aspects of the economy, transport. So actually quite a lot of areas that touch people's lives on top of obviously having an overview on what happens, a local government level. Do you think some of those powers should return to Westminster or you should take more powers from Westminster or do you think the balance is about right?

I certainly don't think there's a need to take anything back because I've always been a believer in try and get politics as close as you can to the people. So subsidiarity, that's the big European approach, isn't that? I've always believed in that. And what's important is you don't just do subsidiarity from the UK to Wales. You should be doing it within Wales as well, making sure that you can. get power decision-making as close as you can to people. So in terms of where we're at now, I think the balance, I certainly wouldn't be given any powers back, but I think there are little

areas around the edges, things like youth justice, for example, where we have lots of the powers to make the difference because the infrastructure for, you know, apprenticeships and education and all of those things that are so important to getting people back on the right track, we've got the power over those and there's a disconnect with the home office and things so that is a problem that I think there's a few areas like that

that need to be ironed out Now can we go right back to the beginning in 1967 when you were born in Ely and Cardiff and your dad was a vicar and so think about that we've had Theresa May on the podcast Angela Merkel

then you think about Gordon Brown you think about Douglas Alexander What do you think your upbringing in that kind of household gave to you that may have contributed to you becoming a politician? I remember reading a book, Jeremy Paxford wrote a book a few years ago and said, you know, what kind of people go into politics? And he identified Vickers' kids as a group. So, you know, we're obviously brought up with that sense of service. That's the example we're given in our communities. But often people rebel.

They do. And I think it's kind of which past you tread, really. And I've got to say, I was a little bit more naughty than Theresa May, who kind of ran through a field of wheat. Go on then you've set yourself up for that. What's the naughtiest thing? I'm not telling you. There is no way I'm going there on this programme. But what I did have was an upbringing, you know, is a council housing estate.

It was the largest council housing estate in Europe. There's been a couple of riots there. That's what has drawn attention to it. My dad, our vicarage, was right in the middle of the estate, and most of the things in the community were centered around the church. It was the church that held a lot of it together. So he ran a disco, one of the first discos in South Wales, 800 people coming in every week, way before health and safety laws came in. He ran it, yeah? And is that not a bit embarrassing, like the trendy vicar and the disco?

It was a bit. Can you imagine him rocking up in his collar? but he was a real working class bloke and he used to love bouncing he'd get in there and grab people by their hair if they were messing about he wouldn't take any messing and he was really respected

Shaking Stevenson people used to turn up to the disco you know we all had to muck in so we had bingo every Tuesday and you had to go into the bingo and we all had to set it all up and you'd had to clear up at the end of the night and you know you couldn't see your hand in front of your face because of all the smoke

that everybody was smoking and it was just an amazing upbringing. But crucially, it was a really poor area. There were a lot of people who were in trouble. And we had an open house. I mean, literally all times the day and night. We had people from, you know, I remember there's a lad who walked from the other side of Cardiff.

He was kicked out of his house by his mother at about age 11. He walked the whole, the other side from the city, turned up with his father's house, who said, okay, you can come in with. his new wife, but you've got to leave before we get up in the morning and you've got to be in bed after we've gone to bed. So he literally, you know, my dad found him in the back of the church and he came to our house every day, you know, he came for breakfast and, you know, there were lots of kids like that and that was just part of what we grew up with. Actually, interestingly, we've recently interviewed Nancy Pelosi and Rosa DeLauro, these kind

of big figures of the Democratic Party in the United States and they also grew up in houses with parents who had, in their case, they were sort of local councillors, mayors, had these amazing open houses. In their case, they're older than you running through the 50s and 60s, but I think part of their formation as politicians seems to have been this sense of their family house being an amazing kind of meeting ground for. Your mum and dad were both Labour councillors, weren't they? They were. So my dad just, I think, started off through, you know, being the local vicar. You know, he was always motivated first by his Christianity.

but just praying for people who live in that community wasn't practical enough. So he got into politics and our house became an HQ for the Labour Party. So he became, and it was a solid labour area, you know, and it was a marginal seat. So you can imagine election times, everybody piled in. But our house, I mean, you think back, it was, you know, we had three first ministers who used to turn up all the time. So Alan Michael was a youth worker in the area. Mark Drakeford was a youth worker in the area. And Roder Morgan became the MP. And then we had George Thomas was the MP before.

So the Speaker of the House of Commons. And Mark Drakeford, your predecessor was First Minister. That's right. And George Thomas, for example, so he was the MP before. He was the one who, I think, helped to persuade my dad to go into politics. So you knew some of these people almost from childhood. It was almost like part of a family. Oh, definitely. And you were out on the streets.

leafleting campaign. I was leafing from six years old. We just mucked in. It was just part of what we did. And you were a Christian. Yeah. How does that frame inform your politics? I think it's shaped everything and the thinking and my motivation. You know, I think it's through that example that I saw through my parents. My husband, who has just retired as a GP, is also now a priest in the Anglican Church. So, you know, I'm absolutely surrounded by it. And, you know, for me, it's an important touchstone for me to just kind of check where I am in terms of decision making. It's like a little voice on my shoulder all the time, just making sure I'm in the right place, I guess. Last night I bizarrely found myself speaking to 150 Anglican clergyman at a foundation called for the

Education of London clergy. It's like a 500-year-old thing. And sitting there was Liz Truss's uncle, the Reverend Truss. The Eclutchman? The Eclogman, yeah. And I was thinking. I was thinking. I was thinking about the fact that at the heart of the Christian message is the idea of hope. The idea that when things are very, very dark, despite all the horrors of human nature, there is the possibility of redemption, there's the possibility of hope. Is that something that you feel when you look at all the very difficult, dangerous things that seem to be happening around the world and accelerating around the world? I think if you don't have hope, you're going to lose your motivation to do anything.

So hope for me is fundamental. And hope for everyone, that's the other thing. It's got to be hope that touches the lives of people who currently are in despair and who struggle with their daily lives. Where's the hope that we can offer them as a society? And that certainly for me is something that motivates me and is in that Christian philosophy. What did your experience in the European Parliament teach you about your own relationship with politics and what you felt you could do.

And then I guess related to that, what are your reflections about are leaving the European Union and how we've handled it since? So I went into European Parliament at a really interesting time. It was 1994. So the single market was just being developed, you know, trying to make sure we could all buy and sell goods across the nations.

And, you know, what did that look like in terms of the impact on the social contracts with society, all of those things were really important. Also, the structure of how it worked, the only way you could get things done was by compromising with people who didn't necessarily agree with. So that's approach to politics, which is you've got to compromise. You want to get something done. You might inch ahead rather than march ahead. That's an approach that I understood there. It's certainly something that works, as you know, in the House of Lords. And it's something that we have to practice as well in the Welsh Parliament. We've never had a majority

in the Welsh Parliament. So that compromise to get things done, even if you're not getting to the ideal that you want to get to, I think is fundamental. And it was also almost the glory days of Europe, wasn't it? So this was the Croatian single market. It was also the run-up to the accession of 10 new countries, Lithuanian, Romania's economies being completely transformed. It must have felt a very exciting moment. You were relatively young and you were seeing it through that the 90s, early 2000s when everything seemed to be going very well. It was. It was amazing. And, you know, I was 27 years old, youngest member of the European Parliament. And it was, it was a really exciting time. And then a couple of years later, we

had the Labour government and that shifted the dynamic again. So all of that was really exciting. And, you know, I watched as those new countries came in, first of all, I think Finland and Sweden, you know, the language changed. The language of the corridors when I started was French. And after those three other countries came, it switched to English. So it was really interesting. And then, of course, Eastern Europeans came in and that really switched it entirely again. So it was a really exciting time to be a part of that. But the story came to an end in a really sad way. I'd left the European Parliament by then. But, you know, I was devastated by the vote, particularly in Wales, you know, very, very disappointed after Wales had received massive sums

from the European Union. And, you know, that was a tragedy, I think, and I think we will pay a big price for years to come. What are your reflections about why it happened, where the debate is now, and what you've learnt from it? Well, I think we were never great at connecting what was happening there with the lives of people in our communities, although ironically in Wales, of everywhere, everywhere you look. The flag was everywhere. I remember straight after the referendum, there's this interview with this guy standing in Leina Gwainzzi,

and they didn't do anything for us. He's standing in front of a college entirely paid for by the European Union, all the course it's paid for by the European Union, a leisure centre next door paid for it. You just think, my God, you know. So we obviously didn't do a very good job at telling people how the European Union was touching their lives. What was interesting for me was at the time I was in the House of Lords

and I was leading for Labour in the House of Lords on the Brexit referendum bill. And, you know, I just remember thinking, God, they're being complacent here. You know, I remember speaking to people from the FCO, there was no sense of panic or preparation. And, you know, I was going home to Wales every weekend and canvassing, and it was bad. It was really bad on the streets and it was that utter disconnect

from the people making policy here in London, cosmopolitan, you know, multicultural from the kind of societies that, you know, I represent mid and west Wales, it's a long way from London. And, you know, even Cardiff,

you know, you've got to get out of Cardiff to get a sense of what people on the streets were thinking and, you know, it wasn't good. Stepping back, one idea might be that this is the result of a fundamental breakdown of the whole liberal market model. 2008 financial crisis, the crises that followed in Europe after it, wages that have been stagnant since the late 1970s, a sense that Western economy is not just Britain, but Europe, United States, facing really fundamental problems with the way that the financial system works, the way that incomes work. Do you feel that? Look, I don't think austerity helps

because, you know, the first place is the cut are the things that touch people's lives and, you know, they've been feeling it and, you know, for that to happen for a couple of years or something, but for it to happen for a decade and more, that is really hurting people and it's affecting people

and, you know, that whole buildup to Brexit, I think where people get their information from, you know, what they're hearing, I think all of that stuff is all come at the same time So I do think we've got a challenge in terms of how we communicate and how we reach into people's lives now. But am I detecting that you're not quite going as far as I am. You're not quite saying there's something fundamentally wrong with this economic system.

No, I don't. I think there was something wrong with the way the conservatives managed the economic system. It's incredible, you know, that people like Liz Truss wanted to go even further. You know, I believe in intervening in the market. I believe that actually we have a responsibility and the market's got to work for the people. It's not got to be the other way around. So I'm very clear that the model is okay.

How you manage the model is the challenge. Are you not frustrated as I am that despite all three of us agree that Brexit has not gone well and it's done fundamental damage to us as a country? There's no real sense of, it's not even just about revisiting the big decision, but even revisiting debate about the consequences we don't seem to be having. And I just wonder if in Wales you've got more freedom maybe to do that. I think as political leaders in Wales, we've always made it clear. We were really disappointed with the result.

You know, the people in our country also voted against. Now, I'm not sure if they would today, but I'm still not sure if they would understand the connection with their lives. And I remember on the day of the referendum itself, you know, finally, you know, going into a shop and asking the guy behind the counter, you know, if you voted, he said, yeah, I voted. And he said, I voted against. And I said, what did you do that for?

And he said, well, it's not going to impact on my life. And it just made me think, it just made me put myself in his position. And I thought, actually, lots of the things we sold the referendum on, you know, freedom of movement, you know, being able to use your mobile phone. He wasn't going to do any of those things. And so it's very difficult. It's a complicated argument to demonstrate to that bloke in the shop how it was going to affect his life. You're looking now at some very significant reforms to the way the electoral system work, to the composition of the Senate.

And one of the possible consequences is that could give space to the Reform Party, the ex-Brexit, Varic Party. Because it's a more proportional system. And Nigel Farage has just been in Wales and seemed to get pretty good turnout at its meeting and things. How do you think about this? Because it's a big thing that Alas and I often talk about, whether more proportional systems are better at dealing with populists or whether they actually provide routes in for populists. Look, if you don't provide a platform for them to at least be able to express their views

and then you can take them apart on it, you finish up with Trump. So, you know, you can't ignore the elephant in the room. I think you've got to take it on. And, you know, we're going to have a change of a system now that means that we'll go from the least well-represented parliament in Britain to being at least middle tier. So what does that mean?

So we're going from 60 members to 96 members because actually we've had all of these additional powers and we just don't have enough people to actually run the Parliament to do the scrutiny and things. There's a really practical issue there. So more people? So we've got more people. But yeah, on the new system, it will be a proportional system. We have a semi-proportional system at the moment.

I'm elected as a regional member, proportional basis. And so, you know, we had UKIP members in the Parliament. They fell apart the moment they walked in there. You know, there were three different parties by the end of the five years they were in there. So giving them the space to me, make a fool of themselves. You know, I mean, it's difficult because you don't want them to get in in the first place. But at least between now and then and the election, we're going to have an opportunity to really scrutinise them to look at what are they going to do.

They give simple answers to really complex questions. And I think you've got to take them on. And the fear, of course, is that Alastair and I, after the elections, might be looking at a situation where reform get the second highest number of votes. And then we start. Is that possible? whether that's possible. I think they're not really perceived as a Welsh part. They seem very much as a British, English party. It's pride a bigger threat. I mean... But first of sense, it's not impossible, is it? It's not impossible. It's not impossible. And we've got a lot of

work to do between now and then. Do you think both in relation to Brexit and maybe in relation to the then decline of Scottish labour, that there's a danger that in all those places where labour has been traditionally very, very strong, that there's been an element of taking for granted. I don't think we've ever taken them for granted in Wales. And don't forget, we've been a win and win in Wales for 102 years. A hundred and two years. This is a successful machine. But one of the things I've done since coming in is, the first thing I did was I did this big listening exercise. I just got out on the streets all around Wales and literally just ask people what they wanted. What did they think we should prioritise? And it was raw and it was dirty and it was,

you know, what do you want us to do? And, you know, I've come back. now, before I pointed anybody to the cabinet, I said, you've got to sign up to these priorities because this is what the public told us. What was the message that maybe we wouldn't know? Well, we wouldn't expect. I think the message is not unexpected, is it's focus on the things that matter to us in our lives day in, day out, and don't get distracted by the other stuff. And what are they? What are those?

Well, it's, you know, make sure the health system works properly. You know, they were really upset with us at the time about the introduction of 20 miles an hour in certain places. it's all that kind of stuff that really upsets them day in, day out on their streets. You know, they thought some of our town centres was scruffy. Those kind of bread and butter issues that we're sometimes distracted from. And, you know, when you've been in power for 25 years, you can see that you might get distracted. So I've said, come on, let's get back to bread and better.

And that's what we're doing now. Put those two things together. So number one priority health, you've been in power for 25 years. And I guess that's interesting because West Streeting is now taking over. and he's got these very bold ideas about what he's going to do in health. He's going to go analog to digital. He's going to go hospital to primary. He's going to go from cure to prevention.

And I guess I feel, having been part of a government that's just stepped down, those things are actually more difficult in practice than they seem in theory. And presumably that's what you've found over 25 years, that health reform is not that easy. Can you talk a little bit in a way that the public can understand about why in practice health reform is often less easy and it sounds in theory? Well, we're about seven years into a strategic health plan, which does exactly that. It's shifting the balance from hospitals into the community.

It's getting into the prevention space. It's moving to digital. The real challenge is, you know, at the same time as you're doing that, your waiting lists are going up. Okay? And that's where the public focus. And that's because in moving money from hospitals' primary care, it means there's less money to deal with the waiting list in the hospital. So the slack is always, you know, where's the bit? that you can cut and the bit you can cut is the planned care side of things. But that's what

then leads to a change. But I tell you what, the amount of work that's done in the health service in Wales is quite remarkable. You know, we have two million contacts a month in a population of three million people, a month. It's just quite, quite remarkable. So, you know, the vast majority of people are getting a really good service. But because we've started to do that, shift, then you're waiting this do start to go up. And, you know, it's a balance. But if you don't do it, you're never going to fix the problem. Just on the new political system, you're going to have a lot of politicians in Wales. Is that a problem at a time when people are a bit negative about politics? You're going to have, if you take in Parliament, the Senate, local authorities,

you talk about 300 or not politicians for a population of 3 million. Yeah, look, we've already taken one tier of government out and obviously, you know, we don't have any Euro MPs anymore. We've also just had a number of MPs cut from Wales from 40 to 32. So, you know, and actually the power now, a lot of the power, is in the Senate. So it makes sense for us to make sure that it grows. You're right, we've got real challenges around quite how many local authorities we have. But again, that's very difficult nut to crack. Do you think it's going to change the nature of campaigning this new system? Will you have to campaign in places that maybe you have taken for granted? It's going to change entirely our method of campaigning. And nobody's done this in Britain

in the way. So we're, you know, we're talking to our continental allies about, you know, how does this work? What's the best way to win these elections? Because it's a new system. But I think it should invigorate the party in those communities that are all sent out to the marginal seats in an election. So, you know, I think they're already to. to get going on their own doorsteps for a change. And I think that'll be a great thing. So just honest, why are you doing this? I mean, you already had something that felt a bit less Westminster and a bit more like,

I suppose, Scotland or New Zealand or Australia, a sort of hybrid system, which is the kind of system that tends to appeal to us. Why did you decide to push one stage further? Well, because it was really difficult to get our centre to function properly. You know, you literally had four people on a commission. and they had to serve on three different committees. I'm not talking about changing to a more proportional system. Oh, the system. Oh, well, some of that was about compromise, if we're honest.

We wanted to expand the Senate. If you want to make those fundamental constitutional changes, you need two-thirds majority. And we had to do a deal with Playa Cymory. So that was part of the reason why we did that. Practical politics. Can I have one more bite at the NHS Apple? And obviously you're taking a risk as a politician being honest and open about this, this is central to what's happening now in England. This is probably the number one issue that

people are worried about. And I'm so struck that what West Streeting is saying is almost identical to what Rishi Sunak was saying before the election, and it's almost identical to what you've been doing for seven years. In other words, the entire country agrees on what ought to be done. The problem is doing it. Can you just develop a little bit more so people can understand what the next four or five years is likely to feel like in England if you start pursuing those politics? It's because you're seven years ahead of us, right? Yeah. So already things like, for example, we've changed the GP contract.

So it's very difficult in England, I understand, to get a GP appointment. We've changed the contract in Wales. So that 8am bottleneck is largely disappeared because we've changed the contract. Dentists, we've changed the contract for dentists. So, you know, we've already introduced about 380,000 new NHS dental appointments. We've shifted. So optometry, you can go to your local. optometrist and not to get your eyes tested, but they're checked for lots of health conditions.

Pharmacies, so we started on that journey with pharmacies a long time ago. You can get help for 27 different conditions in the community now in your pharmacy. I think it's about seven in England. So all of those things are helping to keep people out of secondary care. So that's brilliant for the long term, but in the short term, waiting this and what are the other, when you're being attacked by other parties in the short term, what are short-term problems that she went through over the last seven years, which people can point to and which is likely in England people will say, hey, this is happening while the long-term improvements

are happening. So part of the problem is you need to ideally run two systems at the same time while you're doing a transition, and for that you need a lot of money. And that's the challenge. And I know health has just had a big uplift, but actually once you take inflation to account, people's pay, 65% of what we spend on health, certainly in Wales, go straight into people's calories, 10% on medicines, price of medicines going through the roof, all of these things. And in Wales, don't forget, you get free prescriptions.

So waiting lists go up. Cancer survival rates can sometimes go in the wrong direction. So that can be, in the short term, you can see indicators that people will say, oi, this is going wrong at the same time as you think you're making them right. Well, that's the challenge is how you get that balance in the right place without the kind of resources that you really need. And the risk is that Labor goes into the next election without quite having had the time. to put all the reforms in with people pointing to the transition? Those reforms are not going to happen overnight.

You know, try and get digital transformation done in the NHS where all the systems talk to each other. You know, there are really practical issues like, are there enough technicians? It's not even about, you know, everybody wants these people, everybody wants digital tech people and there's not enough of them around. So, you know, we're in a competitive market

when it comes to the NHS as well in terms of that transformation needs to happen. and AI as well is potentially transformative. Okay, let's have a quick break. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins.

After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung vacs, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on TracerX, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying faulty cells before cancer develops.

So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year, focusing on people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Zavrick here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter.

and I'm back to tell you about our new series on the rest of history, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say, governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our

Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout.

Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. Just sticking in the health arena, you were health minister during COVID. Yeah. Okay. Where are we going?

And as we now know from the COVID inquiry, WhatsApp messages had to be sort of handed over. And I mean, as you know, I don't swear very much. What did you mean by it? We're fucked. And who was the we? Yeah, I got into trouble with my husband on that one because it was a fruity language and I promised him as a, you know, good Christian girl. I'm sorry about that.

But there we go. I think that was an exchange I had with my counterparts in Northern Ireland. and it's think it's when Omicran hit in December and we thought, oh my God, what's coming at us now? And none of us knew what it meant, what was going to happen. And there was another occasion as well when there was a new variant, I think, in France and nobody knew quite what it was and how it was going to happen.

And at the same time, the Tory government was going, open the borders, let them all in. Our tourism sector is just about to collapse in London. I was just thinking, oh my God. God. When we talk to Mark Drayford here, do you remember he was sort of saying about how hard it was to get any sort of serious interaction with the UK government? At the health minister level, did it work better? Do you know what?

It was quite good at the health minister level. So Matt Hancock and Sajid Javid were really serious. We met very regularly. It was a good relationship. The moment Sajid left, though, it all fell apart. I don't think I met a health minister for two years after that. And when we did have a brief meeting, he came out and threw me under a bus on a radio program. Not great for developing relationships.

I mean, it fell apart after that. But during the COVID pandemic, it was actually really constructive, yeah. Can I ask you about Welsh language? So where you grow up, were there many people like you fluent in Welsh? So my mum is from West Wales, and I represent West Wales. And my mother time is Welsh. but we were brought up in this really anglicised area. So hardly anyone.

I think there were two or three families out of 30,000 people spoke Welsh on the estate. So I was sent to a Welsh language comp. But the primary school, and this was very unusual at the time, there was only one Welsh language primary school in the Hall of Cardiff at the time. And, you know, I used to take a bus to school. And there were people literally lying in the streets and throwing stones at six years. old kids going into school because they didn't want a Welsh language school in their area. Amazing. Why?

There was a lot of anti-Welish language feeling around at the time. From Welsh people. What was that about? I don't know what it was about. I don't know what it was about. But what's interesting is there's been a transformation in relation to that. And we've gone from one primary school now in Cardiff to about 26. So it's a massive, this huge growth. real transformation when it comes to an understanding that actually this language belongs to us all. Let's all have a little piece of it. I want to launch a campaign where I would like everybody in every nation in the United Kingdom to learn a little bit of each other's languages.

My dream would be that a school child in Dorset or Darlington would get an acquaintance with a little bit of Welsh, a little bit of Scottish Gaelic, because I'm not fluent, but some greetings, a little bit of awareness of the language. Do you think it's worth doing as somebody who's a bilingual person? We're trying to do that in Wales to start. So let's try that to start, shall we? So, you know, even within the civil service,

it's like, come on, guys, answer the phone, say Borodar, you know. So I'd like to just start in Wales, if you don't mind, Rory, and let's look to the rest of the country after that, because we've got an ambition, we've got about, 500,000 people who speak Welsh now. 500,000. 500,000. But we've got an ambition

to get it to a million by 2050. What was it when you were growing up? Well, it was probably about 450,000 or so. What's happened is it's been dying forever. It's been dying for a century. And what's happened now is it's leveled out. And, you know, there's a big push now to get far more into our language schools.

Were you not impressed by the Welsh? I displayed it when we did our show in Cardiff. Very impressive. Araf? That was good. I heard about that. First Minister, again for listeners, because I'm astonished by how many people in England have never actually heard anybody speak Welsh.

Could you say a couple of sentences in Welsh so people get a sense of what a different language it is? Bithwisha Gweig, who but who none one soni ad thir al-dhurtes-eufantos-ben and no one you can no point to a path to see and void poised. Which means? Thanks very much, Rory. That was a great idea, but I think we're going to focus on much more important things. Are you conscious to the fact that so many people in England are barely aware of what Welsh sounds like, have barely encountered it in any way.

You're right. There's a real lack of understanding. But again, you know, my focus is on, come on, let's sort it out in Wales before we go anyone else. So I love your enthusiasm, Rory. I applaud it. I'll focus on Wales. If you want to champion that across England, you be my guest. With some support from you. Of course, give you what you need. But no money. Definitely no money. No resources. You've now, what, 100-something days in, and we've got a Labour government in Westminster, this may sound a ridiculous question because you're such a labour person.

But is the extent to which it's actually quite helpful having a conservative government in Westminster. And what are the special challenges that come from having a Labour government? Well, I mean, there are challenges because, you know, I'm asked in First Minister's questions now on a weekly basis to account for everything Kirstama's doing. So, yeah, in that sense, it's difficult. I mean, I'm trying to give them lessons in how devolution works, which is fascinating, you know, trying to tell Plague Cameron. this is how it works, right? I'm responsible for this and he is responsible for that. And why did they not particularly have to learn that lesson when there was a conservative government in place? Well, good question, Rory. But, you know, my job is to focus on what I need to do, where I focus.

And the answer, presumably, for listeners, is that it's actually quite tempting when there's a conservative government in place to allow the blame to hit London. Yeah, but also, look, actually, we've seen a difference already. So the fact that we were able to give inflation-busting pay rises to, you know, over 100. thousand people in the public sector in Wales, you know, that couldn't have happened without that massive injection of cash that happened over the summer. You know, the Tories, they said that they were going to give a support to Tartar, you know, the steelworks that closed down. And they were trumpeting all of this support that was going to be given 80 million quid. They hadn't accounted for it in their budget. I mean, they just didn't tell the truth on it. And so, again, Labour had to go

fill that one. That's part of the 22 billion pound hole that they kept on saying needed to be filled. So all of those things, it is making a difference. Listen, there's loads of areas where we disagree, you know. Where do you disagree? Oh, HS2 for a start. I mean, it came on the lovely Elizabeth line this morning. Lovely. And I just think, it all comes to London. It all comes to London. The infrastructure projects, you know, I want to see the wealth in terms of infrastructure and rail infrastructure be spread better throughout the country. HS2 was classified as a Wales and England project. It's not an inch of it in Wales. I mean, it's just outrageous and love him. I remind Kirstalma of that every single time I see him. It's got to be sorted. What else? That's certainly one of the things.

We had an issue with coal tips. So removal of coal tips, you'll remember the terrible Abervan tragedy. Climate change is changing. What happened? this, you know, all of those cold tips that, you know, we have thousands of them. And they're very dangerous. Well, some of them could be. And that's the point. So we had a slipper a few years ago and, you know, they need to be secured. All of this was pre-devolution.

So we shouldn't be clearing up the mess that happened from pre-devolution. And to be fair, they put money on the table to help us to clear those cold tips, as indeed they should. So there's a few areas like that where, you know, we are making progress. We've got an issue with the Crown Estate. So we've got massive potential to develop offshore wind in Wales. So in Scotland, it's been devolved. What I don't want to see is the situation when we had with the coal mines where all the wealth is taken out

and the people in those communities are left. What's the issue with the Crown Estates? I don't want to upset Rory here because he's a very big fan of the Crown Estates. Well, in Scotland, the Crown Estate has been devolved. So all of the money that will come as a result of developing offshore wind will go into Scottish government coffers. In Wales, not the case. Not so much.

Westminster Conference. So, yeah, listen, there's a few areas where we need to get a better deal. And for that, presumably, it is better having a government of the same colour. Absolutely. I mean, we couldn't even get through the door before. And is the problem that you alluded to for first minister's questions and they're asking about stuff to do with Keir, is that because you don't want to be, in pointing out, this is how it works, what you don't want to be doing is to sort of being thought to criticise him?

Well, I've got to be careful because on the one hand, of course, he's, you know, same party as me. I'm very proud of what they're managing to do already. But if I have to account every single week for every single thing that Keir does, you know, we're missing the point of devolution. I think I should be able to account for the areas that I have responsibility over. Are you getting a lot of grief over the farming issue? Well, it's a real shame because actually we've just taken a long time to come to a good place for the farmers. We're trying to change as a result of leaving the farming.

European Union, how we finance them. And, you know, it's been quite rocky, but we've actually got to a much better place with them. It's taken a long time. And then the inheritance tax thing came in. And look, from what we've seen, it's not going to affect lots of farmers in Wales at all, but, you know, things are... The politics of it are tough, though. The politics of it is really difficult. I represent a rural area, so I've got to be super sensitive to this stuff as well. So there are areas where it's difficult. Can I finish then, my final question. I know you spent time in Nicaragua picking coffee.

I did. But you don't need to talk about that. Tell me about one part of your life outside politics which inspired you, excited you, formed you, that you think about a lot and that helped change your life in some way. I think my upbringing was the thing that fires me up every time. And I was asked to do a speech a few years ago on, you know, how to become a baroness, which was a really strange title. And I found that 80% of what I talked about

was about that upbringing and what shaped me and what drove me. So that for me is fundamental. But I also left politics to work in the private sector. Now, I went in as a bit of a spy, if I'm honest, just to find out, right, how do they think? Why do they invest? Why don't they invest? And I learned such a lot. I tried to build a wind farm, you know, and what was it? What are the barriers? So all of that is really, really useful for me now coming in to know this is what we need to do. My last question is about friendship in politics. And I said in the introduction that I really got to know you through Neil and Glenys. And I just wondered what you thought about friendship in politics and whether you think when you get to the position that you're now in,

whether it's quite difficult to have really good friends in politics. I think you need people that you can trust who've got your best interests at heart. and politics is a tough game and having people like Neil and Glenys who right from the beginning you could imagine I was in university

when Neil was leader of the Labour Party he was like a god and suddenly I'm kind of hanging out with him it was a real privilege but then getting to know him becoming genuine friends

and particularly with Glenys and Glennis was a real inspiration for me we went to the European Parliament together we were 15 years together we shared an office we shared staff and she was a constant inspiration for me

so that was really important Neil is always there he texts me after he sees me making a comment on anything you know it's really useful it's really useful to just have someone who will also tell you straight

you know if he thinks you're going wrong and there is room it's important to have friends in politics but you're right when you become a leader you've got to just be careful in terms of making sure that people are turning you for the right reasons. Which maybe is part of the lessness to how you got into the job in the first place, but we won't go into all that.

Anyway, lovely to torture you. Good luck with it all. And Rory will doubtless be back to you with demand for Welsh money for his campaign. So Gallic in Wales and Irish in Dover and Welsh in Yorkshire. It's great. Dioch and Varyal. Thank you very much. Come on, guys.

Diok. You can try that way. Diok. Thank you. There we can say diok. Elinid. So, First Minister of Wales, that's our second first minister of Wales. We did Mark Drapeford, but we're going to do Vaughn Getheng.

Now we've done Elinid. Yes. Well, look, I really liked her. One small grumble that I get a little bit occasionally with interviewing Labour Peter, is their tendency to kind of slap down Tories who are trying to be. What, she didn't slap you down? Well, it was my idea on doing Welsh language, exposing people to a bit of Welsh language. I think it would have cost her nothing to say, oh, interesting idea, Rory.

I'm glad that people are taking interest in Welsh culture, Welsh language. It wouldn't cost her anything. Yeah. It's obviously not her budget. Instead of which she chose to kind of make a slide comment in Welsh and make me feel stupid about it. No, she said she wouldn't necessarily see it as a priority. Yeah, it's a fair point. Yeah, that's a bit of skill.

But I thought she came over really nice there. I thought she was, I've known her for a long time. But I was, because I've known her more as a kind of family friend through the Kinnocks. I've mainly seen her when she's been with the Kinnocks. Right. And that's in kind of social settings and occasionally in political settings. And how is she in this setting? Just very nice and very friendly and very warm and what have you.

So I've never really seen her in what you define as a political setting. But I was impressed. You know, she came in, know what we're talking about. No paper sitting there. No aides hovering around saying, don't say this. to that just answered every question. So she's another example of a clergyman's daughter. Yeah.

She, again, a bit like what now is a massive list of people that we've interviewed, learnt about politics and public service at the family dinner table with endless people from the community coming into her home and seeing her parents. And it really did sound like a kind of never-ending thoroughfare of people. Yeah, he had the double whammy. He was both a major Labour Party player and the local priest on a rough housing and States. I thought that was great. On the health thing, I think that is mesmerizing because she is talking quite honestly about the problem that Labor is going to face on health.

In the UK government? Yeah. And in England, particularly, what West Streeting is going to be doing is going off on this journey, which they've been on for seven years. And of course, what happens when you try to go do all this analog to digital hospital to primary stuff is you end up with really bad statistics. So NHS stats in Wales are really terrifying, right? Over two-year wait, 24,000 in Wales, 107 in England, weighting list one in four in Wales, one in nine in England. Seen within A&E within four hours, 76.3% England, 69% Wales.

And what's... Hans the 62-day target, 69% England, 56% Wales. Median weight, 23 weeks, Wales, 14 weeks, England. And what she would say in her defence, unfortunately this is inevitable. If you're going to move resources from hospitals closer to the front line, you will go through a period where waiting lists are going to massively go up in hospitals. But what's the problem?

The problem is Labour has said in England that their number one target is bringing down waiting lists. And this interview basically tells you that if they do that, they're not going to be able to reform the NHS. My other worry about this kind of absolutely relentless focus on waiting lists for perfectly obvious reasons, both politically and the state of the health service, is that some of the other stuff starts to go to the back of the queue. I worry particularly about mental health on that. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because that's another classic example of something,

which is supposed to be about prevention, not cure and community. Final thing, but it's not a criticism of her at all. I really liked her, and I did think there was actually a little bit of the Nancy Pelosi, Rosa DeLoro, Angla Merkel, about the whole feel of her. Was that moment where she said she didn't think the economic system needed fundamental reform? And I was interested in that because a lot of people on the left would say, and I actually increasingly agree with them, that there's something pretty wrong. So much money has moved to a very few people.

Wealth is so poorly distributed. Our financial markets wreaked havoc in 2008. Globalisation is clearly doing very strange things to people's jobs. Median incomes have stagnated since really since the late 19th. And also the risk that kind of AI further technological. revolution increases the inequality rather addresses it. Yeah. Yeah.

So I think that's interesting, isn't it? Because fundamentally, she still seems to be in the place as saying, look, the Tories grossly mismanaged things. Orcertity was unnecessary. But she doesn't really think the fundamental structures of our economy need fixing. I wonder whether in five years' time people won't be like, well, we miss something there. Or whether, given that she's only just taken over, whether she's still in that place where she wasn't. necessarily want to say anything that is very, very far removed from something that Kier-Stalin might say. Gotcha.

I don't know whether that might be part of her thinking, or whether she does think the current economic system works pretty well, which is very arguable. Well, thank you for doing that. That was interesting and fun. Good. See you soon.