Mark Drayford offers more Laissez-faire leadership in Wales.

The third runner in the "Welsh"  Labour is Mark Drayford the Finance Secretary  has been seen as the favourite but as he launched his campaign at the Dusty Forge, a community centre at Ely in his Cardiff West constituency now that he has two contenders , it may be that this race will not be the walkover, that was expected.

The Wasting Mule reports that. 

Asked whether he welcomed the prospect of a reinvigorated Plaid Cymru under its new leader Adam Price, Mr Drakeford said:

 “I certainly welcome having a Plaid Cymru that is vigorous and has ideas and so on."Adam has a long history in Wales of being someone that is interested in ideas. I’ve had lots of interesting discussions with him both on the Assembly floor and behind the scenes about ideas we could use here in Wales, and he will undoubtedly bring that to the debate – and that enriches the debate and I am very keen to engage with him on that.
“He has made a very particular point during the Plaid Cymru leadership election campaign of saying he thinks independence should be front and centre of the offer that Plaid Cymru makes here in Wales and on that point I do undoubtedly differ from him.
"I have always been very committed to devolution, and I think allowing Welsh people to have the maximum say over decisions that matter only in Wales is absolutely the right thing – and that journey is not over. But I also believe that Wales’ future is best secured through a very successful United Kingdom.”

ter a bad Brexit, with Scotland becoming independent and Ireland being reunited, Mr Drakeford said: “In those circumstances, Plaid Cymru’s political mission is to make that happen as fast as they can.

“They are in favour of the break-up of the UK. They’re not responding to a set of circumstances that might happen – it is their explicit policy and if they were to be elected as a government, they would be adding to the pressure to break up the UK, whereas even in that long set of what-ifs that you outlined, what a Labour Party in Wales would be doing would be trying to make a success of the UK – to make sure that those things didn’t happen rather than trying to accelerate the path to them.

“So there would still be a very fundamental difference between Labour and Plaid Cymru – and if I’ve learned anything from Brexit in all the hours I’ve spent up in London and down here is that trying to predict the future in that sort of detail really isn’t worth investing a lot of time in because so many different things will happen, not just over the long term but in the next few weeks that we can’t accurately anticipate.

“Stick to your basic guiding principles. My guiding principle is that Wales is better off in a successful UK and I would want a Labour government here that is focused on getting a Labour government in Westminster; the single most important thing that would matter here in Wales, rather than trying to anticipate what we might do on a series of contingencies that none of us can predict and that Plaid Cymru would like to see happen.

“They would like to break up the UK.”

Mr Drayford of course has every right to oppose Plaid's line on Independence but  what does he mean by

"I have always been very committed to devolution, and I think allowing Welsh people to have the maximum say over decisions that matter only in Wales is absolutely the right thing – and that journey is not over"

Mr Drayford has been "credited " with handing back powers to Westminster which invoked a bitter response from our Scottish friends.

This from the Scottish Newspaper the National

SO is Scotland isolated now that Wales has accepted a Brexit deal withTheresa May? Maybe. But we are where we always are within the Celticsisterhood – leading from the front for a proper not a patsy agreement about the division of powers post Brexit. And since the powers and divvy up are vital for the proper functioning of the Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast parliaments, you could say the Scottish Government is fighting for the future of devolution. Ironic, eh? Wales’ Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford says the deal his government has signed means powers in areas “currently devolved remain devolved”. That’s grand. But unless Cardiff has a guarantee Edinburgh’s not yet seen, the crucial little word “consent” is missing and the deal they’ve agreed with Westminster means Theresa May can dabble in Welsh affairs for the next seven years.....

....And there’s a final point. The man who made the deal with David Davis, Mark Drakeford, has just announced his intention to stand for the job of Welsh Labour leader, days after the veteran Labour leader Carwyn Jones (the architect of the defiant Continuity Bill strategy) said he was going to quit. Drakeford is a man with a mission – to make headlines in Wales. He’s done that – but he may soon regret not taking a tougher stand and a longer view.

There are still a minority of Labour members in Wales still opposed to the whole devolution project and there appears to be very few signs of support for parity with Scotland.

Mark Drakeford has insisted that with Brexit looming there is no time for an inexperienced First Minister to learn what to do on the job. With his rivals promoting themselves as agents of change he may regret giving the impression, that little will change under his stewardship.

But in reality none of the three, offer us anything more than third rate devolution and the Laissez-faire  attitude that has existed in the Assembly since its inception.

An attitude that alas Plaid have somewhat concurred with .


You may not agree with me on Independence but surely, unless we can emulate Scotland in both powers and how we use them.Then we should not really wonder why there is a minority who call for the Assembly's abolition.