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The Welsh first minister will criticise Keir Starmer’s welfare reforms in a major speech on Tuesday, saying she will pursue a leftwing “red Welsh way” and put a clear dividing line between Welsh Labour and the national party.
Eluned Morgan will distance herself from Starmer’s government in a speech on Tuesday billed by allies as a reset moment for Welsh Labour to counter the threats from Reform UK and Plaid Cymru.
Morgan will position the party to the left of UK Labour and criticise Starmer’s decision to cut welfare, especially disability benefits. She will say: “I will not hesitate to challenge from within, even when it means shaking things up and disrupting the comfortable.”
The Welsh Labour leader will compare her party’s relationship with Starmer’s Labour to the unlikely partnership between the TV couple Gavin and Stacey, who hail from Billericay in Essex and Barry on the south Wales coast. She will suggest there are significant cultural differences between the two – and therefore a need for different strategies.
Morgan’s invocation of a “red Welsh way” is intended to draw direct paralells with former FM Rhodri Morgan’s phrase “clear red water” when he described his relationship with Tony Blair’s Labour government.
The speech will make a number of clear requests from the UK government, the Guardian understands, including further funding for rail and removing dangerous coal tips. But the two main demands will be on renewable energy and the steel industry, which she will call her “patriotic responsibility”.
Morgan will say she is aware of the resentment that has been provoked by the nationalisation of British Steel at Scunthorpe, after traditional steelmaking was ended by Tata Steel in Port Talbot. She will call on the government to ensure Wales gets a significant proportion of the £2.5bn steel budget, which had been expected to support Port Talbot but now may be mostly diverted to support the nationalisation of the Scunthorpe site.
The FM will also demand the government considers devolution of the crown estate to Wales, which she will frame as an injustice of the past when coal wealth was taken out of Wales and when valleys were flooded to create reservoirs.
She will say the change would allow Wales to profit from renewable energy in the Celtic Sea. Morgan will say: “We saw them take our coal. We saw them take our water. We will not let them take our wind, not this time, not on my watch.”
Morgan will say the party has worked in partnership with the UK government and will praise some economic achievements, including raising the minimum wage and the biggest increase in the Welsh government’s budget since devolution, which she will say is already having an effect on waiting lists in Wales, which are the longest in the country.
Welsh Labour sources said Morgan had been under political pressure from Plaid Cymru in particular over welfare reforms. There had been a disagreement with the Department for Work and Pensions for not providing a specific impact assessment for Wales on the cuts.
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The number of personal independence payment claimants in Wales is high. Disabled people in Wales are less likely than average to be in employment, with 50.9% having a paid job and more likely to rely on benefits for their entire income, according to the Bevan Foundation. In comparison, 22.4% of adults in the south-east of England are disabled, with 61.7% in employment.
Morgan is understood to have waited to do the speech till after the local elections last week but the party is understood to be extremely concerned about the threat of Reform UK in Wales. The Guardian reported last mont that internal Labour polling suggests Reform could unseat the party in key Senedd seats in 2026.
Labour has led every Welsh government since devolution in 1999, but the new proportional election system makes it easier for Reform to gain a bigger number of seats in Wales than it did in Westminster at the general election. The data circulated within Labour put Reform on 25%, with Labour and Plaid Cymru tied on 21%.
Morgan will also set out her attacks on Reform, saying her party will seek to “walk beside people – we don’t divide them”. She will say that her politics will be about “care, compassion and graft” rather than seeking to disparage.
