Alun Davies joins Welsh Labour leadership race, calling Brexit a disaster

Wales
Welsh Labour
Alun Davies
South Wales
Friday 10 August 2018 at 6:00am

Public Services Secretary Alun Davies will this morning launch his campaign to become Welsh Labour leader and First Minister. Like most of the other candidates to succeed Carwyn Jones, he does not yet have sufficient backing from his fellow AMs. Only Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford has so far secured enough nominations to be sure of getting onto the ballot paper.

Mr Davies has chosen an iconic location, the Aneurin Bevan memorial stones in his Blaenau Gwent constituency, for his campaign launch. He will claim that Brexit "is the greatest disaster facing Wales today and is the biggest economic risk facing our most deprived communities". He will acknowledge that his own constituents, in one of the most deprived parts of Wales, voted heavily for Brexit but argue that the referendum was as much a verdict on the state of politics as on membership of the European Union.

Fundamentally I believe that our politics is broken and that our democracy is facing areal existential crisis. And whilst too many people in Cardiff believe that devolution and the Assembly are immune from the international crises facing democratic politics across the West I believe that democratic government in Wales is facing a real crisis of confidence and one which may even lead to a crisis of legitimacy unless it is urgently addressed. To me leadership is plural and not singular. It is a verb and not a noun. I did not begin by seeking support for this campaign. I sought to promote a wider debate and discussion about the future of our politics. But it is clear to me now that our debate is far too limited and far too narrow. It is not addressing those issues that will dominate and shape the political landscape in the coming years. I am therefore seeking support for a different approach and a different sort of leadership campaign. And this is not about incremental or gradual change or a difference in emphasis. It is about asking hard and sometimes uncomfortable questions. I do not seek easy slogans or lazy populism - telling people what I think they want to hear - this is a radical campaign which is about challenging ourselves so that we are better able to serve and to reinvent ourselves for new challenges in the future.

Mr Davies returned to the cabinet in November last year. His previous spell as a cabinet minister ended in 2014, when First Minister Carwyn Jones sacked him for asking a civil servant to provide him with information about political opponents. He's 54 and has been AM for Blaenau Gwent since 2011. He was a regional AM for Mid & West Wales for four years before that. In the 1990s he twice stood for Westminster as a Plaid Cymru candidate.