Today is Rhodri’s day

Labour leadership race — By Daran Hill on October 1, 2009 8:31 am

Older people often move more slowly. That is certainly the case with Rhodri Morgan who has seemingly taken an age to reach the point at lunchtime today when he will tender his resignation as Leader of the Welsh Labour group in the Assembly and de facto Leader of Welsh Labour. The biggest fish in the Assembly pond – indeed, the biggest fish caught the whirlpool that is Welsh politics – will signal his desire to swim away.

Today is Rhodri’s day. His possible successors know that, as do politicians and commentators from across the political spectrum. The political obituaries are generous and reflective and that is as it should be. We may all have our views on what he should and shouldn’t have done at different times but let’s not forget how much of a survivor he has been. Rhodri Morgan emerged as the natural choice – “the only choice” as Ron Davies just described him on Radio Wales – when Alun Michael vacated the Welsh Labour leadership in February 2000. Since then he has taken his party through two Assembly elections and a variety of other contests and battles. He has kept Labour in power in the Assembly during not just periods of minority government when every vote counted, but by fashioning two different coalitions with two different parties.

Plenty will be written and said about Rhodri, his achievements and his legacy. A short blog post cannot do it justice and doesn’t attempt to. But I think that any politician who can announce his resignation four years before going and actually succeed in keeping to his plan is a political giant. As a sentimental old sod, there will be a little tear in my eye at 12.45 when he hands in his resignation at Transport House. It is the start of the ending, if not the absolute end, of an era.

I may have been a little cheeky in the way that I started this post. But it occurs to me that today has also been designated the day of older people in Wales, an occasion when we celebrate their collective contribution to society and look anew at what they still can give. How fitting. Our most famous septugenarian may always have timed his long departure to coincide with such a day.

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2 Comments

  1. Lee Waters says:
    October 1, 2009 at 9:35 am

    No doubt he has performed a great service. His likes we’ll ne’re see again, as Max Boyce would say. He’s had a dammned difficult job to do. But lets not put him on a pedestal. He has many failings, as do we all. Lets hope he uses his popular image to good effect in the referendum campaign.

  2. valleysmam says:
    October 1, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    He has held possible successors back for four years too; he has kept Wales as a pipe and slippers country, when we needed to be vibrant and chancy.
    He is affable, is that enough? We are not exactly prosperous and cutting edge are we
    I just hope who ever takes over can shake of the semi torpor we are in, get some good advisors and get us moving.
    I think he has done more for Welsh labour than Wales.
    I am still amazed that he has been allowed to hang around this long. Best he can do now is move out of the way quickly and let the election for his successor get going. I am looking at the possibles and hope that there may be a dark horse that will emerge apart from the three amigos.
    This may seem harsh, but as I am more out of Wales than in it, the comments that I have from the other side of Offa’s Dyke are not as cosy as in Wales

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