Wednesday, August 06, 2025
More Welsh Labour control-freakery?
Rhodri Morgan pushed back against this tendency to micro-manage the Welsh Government with his clear red water statement, but throughout his term and those of his successors, Labour Ministers in Westminster continued to put obstacles in the way of the Senedd securing more powers, something that continues to this day.
It took the Liberal Democrats in government to change that approach with reforms to the Barnett formula, the release of key council housing assets and a new Government of Wales bill that better empowered Welsh Ministers. However, there was, and remains plenty more to do, including devolution of railways, justice and the crown estate.
It has come as no surprise therefore that the UK Labour Party continues to try and exercise control by influencing who will sit in the Labour group in the Senedd after next year's elections.
Nation Cymru reports that a senior Labour party figure has alleged that the decision to exclude a highly regarded activist from a shortlist of candidates is part of a strategy aimed at ensuring that the group of Welsh Labour Senedd Members elected in 2026 offers as little challenge as possible to Keir Starmer.
This is a reference to business consultant Owain Williams, who was left off a shortlist of eight would-be MSs on Labour’s “closed list” in the newly created super-constituency of Caerdydd Ffynon Taf, which comprises the two Westminster seats of Cardiff North and Cardiff East:
David Llewellyn Davies, who for a time was former First Minister Mark Drakeford’s senior special adviser, said in a social media post about Mr Williams’ exclusion from the list: “I am speechless. How can @WelshLabour have decided that one of its most gifted and talented members cannot make the top 8 in a shortlist for his own constituency? Wales denied an MS of Cabinet quality who would have made a positive difference to the lives of Welsh people.”
Others praised Mr Williams in similarly glowing terms, and First Minister Eluned Morgan, who appeared with him in an “in conversation” event at the National Eisteddfod in Wrexham on Monday August 4 described herself as a big fan of his.
She said: “Owain is a very talented guy and I’d like to see him as a candidate for the Senedd. I am a big fan of Owain Williams. Let’s see what happens. This is the beginning of a process.
“There are lots of other people in the same position. It’s important that the process is done fairly and I do hope that he will consider putting his name in for perhaps another seat.”
However, a senior Welsh Labour source told Nation.Cymru: “The decision about who was included on the shortlist, and more especially who was excluded, was made by a panel of the party’s Welsh Executive Committee (WEC). In practice, however, the decision was made by David Costa, a former long-serving deputy general secretary of Welsh Labour who has retired as a party employee, but now sits as a member of the WEC.”
Mr Costa acted as Vaughan Gething’s agent during the Welsh Labour leadership campaign last year and was responsible for signing off the donations totalling £200,000 given to the campaign by convicted criminal David Neal, who received two suspended prison sentences after illegally dumping toxic sludge in the Gwent Levels, a protected wetland landscape near Cardiff. The donations, together with other scandals, led to Mr Gething’s resignation as party leader and First Minister after a few months.
The Welsh Labour source told us: “David Costa, together with Welsh Labour’s current general secretary Joe Lock and deputy general secretary Bridie Sedgebeer, the wife of Bridgend MP Chris Elmore, are Starmer loyalists.
“Their aim is to have a weakened Labour Senedd group that will not push for Wales’ interests over matters like the failure to devolve Crown Estate revenues to Wales, the unjust designation of HS2 as an England and Wales project and over other issues like the post-Brexit regional aid programme and welfare cuts.
“Their priority is not next year’s Senedd election, but the general election in 2029, and they want the new Senedd Labour group elected in 2026 to be docile and loyal to Starmer. That’s the reason why Owain Williams was excluded from the shortlist.
“In fact, the ideal outcome for the Starmer loyalists who run the party machine would be to have Labour out of control of the Welsh Government – a scenario that would give Jo Stevens as Welsh Secretary the opportunity to roll back devolution even further and take back control for the UK Labour government.
“They don’t care about devolution or the Welsh language and they certainly don’t want someone of Owain Williams’ calibre coming into the group and shaking things up.”
Anybody else getting a feeling of deja vu?
