The Welsh first minister has told the Labour party in Wales to be prepared for a general election in the new year, believing the UK government could be months away from sudden collapse.
Mark Drakeford claimed the Conservative government in Westminster was “staggering”, and that at any moment it could be “overwhelmed” and forced to call a snap UK election.
In an interview with the Guardian, the first minister said the UK government had tarnished the reputation of the union but added that he believed the international community was clearer about the differences between the four countries, with the image of Wales enhanced by its football team reaching the World Cup finals.
Although Welsh Labour is on a general election footing, Drakeford said his government would continue to push its “radical” agenda rather than waiting for the UK Labour leader, Keir Starmer, to win at the polls.
However, he conceded that Labour, which has been in power in Wales since the first devolved assembly in 1999, might have done more to help the most vulnerable in the first decade of devolution, when budgets were not as tight.
“You look back and wonder if there is more we could have done, particularly in that first decade of devolution when our budgets were growing every year,” Drakeford said. “But at the time we didn’t anticipate the way in which all of that would go so starkly into reverse.
“Devolution has been a game of two halves. The first decade, every single year our budgets were worth more in real terms. Since then, we’ve had a decade of exactly the opposite, where our budgets have shrunk year on year.
“That’s why the challenge at the moment is so much more difficult than it was in 2010-11. When the George Osborne austerity struck, it was after a decade of growth. Now we’re back in an era of austerity after a decade of budget-shrinking. That’s a completely different proposition.”
Drakeford argued that a “fresh start” was needed at the UK level. “We do not need 18 months of an exhausted government that has lost credibility and cannot command even the support of its own MPs, staggering on,” he said.
Asked if he was preparing for a UK election, Drakeford said: “Absolutely. A general election could come at any time.” He pointed out that Rishi Sunak had not been able to rely on the backing of his backbench MPs over two “relatively modest” domestic policies: compulsory housebuilding targets and the moratorium on new onshore wind projects.
“A bigger issue could come at any moment and completely overwhelm the government,” said Drakeford. “We are pressing ahead, making sure we have candidates in the field. We are working on the policies we would promote in a general election and looking forward to Wales making the maximum contribution we can to having a Labour UK government.”
Drakeford said he felt the UK was at a “low ebb”: “It is no surprise to me we have strikes in our public services when people have experienced a decade of austerity when their wages were held down on the promise that if they lived through that, the sunny uplands were in front of them.
“Here we are 12 years later with people not only finding their wages held down, but the ravages of inflation mean that people are having to manage on a lot less money than they’ve had for a very long time. Taxes are at a 70-year high and the United Kingdom’s reputation around the world is damaged by the political events of the last 12 months.”
Drakeford said the draft budget the Welsh government announced in December had been the hardest to set so far.
However, he said his administration was determined to continue to fund “genuinely radical things” such as a basic income pilot for care leavers, which is being watched by countries around the world.
He said: “It costs us £20m to mount that experiment. Twenty million when you are squeezed in every direction is money you stare at a lot, but the cabinet decided it was a piece of our radical agenda we could not afford to give up on.”
The first minister said the government would reform council tax. “That will be hard work. In any system where you change things, some people gain, some lose out, and that creates a reaction. And we will also press on with the reform of the school day and year.”
He said he could envisage a time when Wales might use the power it has to set its own income tax rate – as it has been urged to do by some opposition politicians in Wales – but not at a time when finances were so difficult for so many.
Drakeford, who is 68, expects to step down in the second half of this Senedd term, which began in 2021 and runs until 2026, but he said: “We’re nowhere near halfway through this term yet. The time will come when this is the right thing to do.”
He said that while he believed the UK’s reputation had been harmed, Wales had been able to “project a distinctive image”. “The World Cup helped with that. There is a genuine interest in the distinctiveness of Wales culturally, linguistically, economically.
“This is going to be a very tough winter for many families in Wales. But there is a better future and Wales is well placed in many ways – our fantastic natural resources, for example; the way in which, in a renewable energy world, we are going to be able to play a part that hasn’t been possible for us maybe for half a century since the end of coalmining and steelmaking.”
He said he remained optimistic. “You have an obligation in the job I do to be hopeful about the future. Even on the worst day, what you shouldn’t do is put your head in your hands and despair.”
