Edwina publishes her manifesto today

EDWINA HART becomes the first candidate to launch her election manifesto today, alongside her official campaign launch at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay.

Like Huw Lewis, who followed up an announcement of his candidacy with a more formal launch event, the Hart team is having another bite of the cherry. But what marks this event out is the presence of a manifesto.

We are promised that the policy document will explore the “clear red water” tradition of Welsh socialism and will also highlight her plans to complete the four year programme for government endorsed by the Labour Party in 2007. Of particular interest will be her ideas for developing devolution over the next ten years, including reflections on coalition in Cardiff and relationships between Wales and Westminster.

In a personal message to electors she will say: “When my mother was born, women in Wales had never had the vote. Now less than a century later, I am a candidate to be the first woman to lead our party in Wales. None of this has happened without the Labour movement, and I am proud of the part I have been able to play, both as President of the Wales TUC and as a Minister in Rhodri Morgan’s Assembly Government for the past ten years.”

As ever with the Hart campaign, the personal qualities of the candidate will take centre stage – especially her willingness to roll up her sleeves and get on with the job. She says of her ten years as a Welsh Assembly Government Minister: “During that period I have been responsible for finance, local government, social justice and, over the past two years, for the biggest portfolio, health and social services, with a track record of putting our party’s policies into practice. In the process I have learned that it takes strong leadership and political determination to make the machinery of government work for progressive agendas.”

At the end of last week, Huw Lewis said: “What is clear is that the first phase of the campaign has now come to an end. My call for a serious debate about the future has gone down well with party members and we now need to be actually discussing and examining those ideas that will form our next manifesto and will be the bedrock of our policy platform for the next decade.”

With the publication of her manifesto, Edwina Hart is showing she is ready to engage in that serious debate around ideas.