← Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
'A bad start even before he starts' - Welsh First Minister on why trouble's brewing with Burnham
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Rhun ap Iorwerth MS, Plaid Cymru First Minister of Wales.
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Thank you very much, Nick. It's good to be here.
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You have experienced the whirlwind of going from opposition from not having power to having it. We'll talk about what that means for
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you, but you got any tips for Andy Burnham plan? And I think we planned very, very carefully for coming into office and that's standing us in good stead. Now, we weren't taking anything for granted, but if things did go in a direction, we were ready to go, and that's been proved true. Maybe he hasn't had much time to prepare, or maybe he has.
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But without a plan, what's the danger?
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Well, there's a real danger of not being focused. Not just yourself not being focused, but the people who will be holding you to account. So we produced a days planned for ourselves, so we knew the order in which we thought we needed to get things done in order to get the wheels of government moving on, the policies and the ideas that were important to us. But it's also important that you tell people, right, this is what we're going to do. Hold us to account for it. I want my government to be a very open one. We have to be providing people the tools by which they can hold us to account.
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We'll talk more about what you're trying to do and the problems you're facing, as well as some of the joy I imagine that you're still enjoying as well. But let's talk about that personal joy, first of all. When you got. I mean, for you, it must have been a hugely emotional moment. As we've talked before on political thinking, you know, you grew up with this belief in more power for Wales.
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And it's not just that I have always believed that, but there are hundreds of thousands of people who believe in Wales and wanted Wales to spread its wings and who felt constrained by being led by political parties that ultimately had their bosses in London and could never really say no, we're focused on you. We represent you. And when Plyde company did get that victory, which was a clearer victory than most of us could have imagined, even there was a sense of relief, of feeling we were right. We were right that we could unite Wales behind this kind of vision, which we did. Every part of Wales, half of all our capitals. Senate members applied. Cymru Senate members. The same for Swansea, the southeast, the northeast. This is Wales united. But of course, there's a. The plurality of voices there too. It's a minority government and I recognise that in all I do.
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What was striking that moment. You're on the steps of the Senate in Cardiff the morning after. The result is suddenly they will break into song.
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Yeah.
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Do you have any idea that was going to happen, that the Welsh national anthem would ring out as you're meant to be taking questions from journalists?
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No, I had no idea. And to be honest with you, I didn't have an appreciation of the likelihood that that kind of event would take place on the steps of the sened. We had asked all our. A good result or a bad one to be in Cardiff by that Saturday morning so that we could potentially regroup and think what went wrong, or hopefully, as we thought, the weather was blowing in that direction, to have a bit of a moment on the steps of the Senate. What I hadn't appreciated was quite how many people would want to be there to share that moment. I'd spoken with a crowd and then I asked them, can I have a little bit of hush, please, Because I'm going to do some interviews with colleagues from the press. And I was doing those interviews when the anthem started. And I had to politely say, you know what, I'm gonna have to go and sing here. It was a moment, and it was spontaneous and it was organic and it
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was beautiful and a moment for you as a human being because your dad was there now. He wasn't just there to support you. He wasn't just there to sing the anthem. He come with the keys to your flat.
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He had.
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What was going on?
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Well, I had gone straight from the counts and driven down to Cardiff via. Just popping in very quickly to a mate's house and put my bag down by the front door, back in the car and quite a long way for
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people who don't know down 200 miles away.
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Yeah, 200 miles. And I was just on the outskirts of Cardiff and I realized, o, no keys to my flat are in the back. And I said, how am I going to get the keys? We booked into a hotel, became a story. New first minister to be checks into a budget hotel chain. I'm not sure what's wrong with checking into budget hotel chains. I do it all the time. But what I did was, okay, well, dads might want to come down. In fact, we've got this photo up on the steps of the center. He might want to see that. So I phoned him and said, dad, would you like to come down and see that photo op? Yeah, why not? By the way, could you bring my keys down with me? So somebody took him the keys. And the beauty of it to me is had the key gates not happened, he would have missed that moment on the steps of the sened, which was a moment of joy for so many people who were there. And the point I made there, too, for the families of those who were not there to witness that moment when Plyde Cymru was able to bring Wales together in forming a government and taught a lot of the people who've.
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I know having talked to you in the past about the influence of your mother, you would have been thinking at that moment, she can't be here. Yeah, but I wish she was.
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Yes, I certainly thought a lot about her and many other people who were there or who were watching on that wonderful Saturday. People appreciated the fact that I said, let's remember those who didn't Witness this. And it became a thing on social media, people sharing photos of their mothers or fathers who had campaigned and who weren't there to witness this.
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Now, I teased you last time we spoke about the fact that because you've grown up in a family in which they believed in Wales, and particularly more powerful Wales, you'd even played shops, plied Cymru shops, when you were 4, 4 years old. And your dad said to the journalist on that day, I didn't think he'd be playing for so long now. Serious question. You're not playing anymore?
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No.
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You got power.
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Yeah.
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What's different to what you expected, what's better, what's worse than what you planned for?
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I mean, the intensity of it, I guess I was expecting, to a point, but then there's added level of intensity that perhaps you don't quite recognise is going to be there. The sense of leading a machine that is there for you to do your work. That struck me very, very quickly. A private office and civil servants, good civil servants, who had until recently been doing their best for another administration, suddenly making it clear that they would do everything they could to deliver your vision. And I visited one of Welsh government's offices up in the north of Wales, in Llandina Junction, just a few days after becoming First Minister. And I remember asking a group of people there, what are you doing today? And they looked at me and said, well, we're doing what you asked us to do. We're implementing your policy on such and such. And I thought, wow, now.
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And yet there are some critics who say that, unlike perhaps New Labour, when they came into power in 97 and we had that shock of the bank of England independence, they've not yet seen anything that they think, oh, that's what it was all about. That's the big ply Cymru change. Do you worry about that, that there isn't a kind of signature policy that people can see straight away?
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No, and I think it's a t unfair, really. I mean, people can't have it both ways. In saying that our childcare offer, for example, is so outlandishly ambitious that we'll struggle to implement it and say that we've got really nothing that's too ambitious for Wales. I mean, the childcare offer is ambitious. I didn't come to this to do easy things. I came in to try to do things that really push the boundaries of what a government could do, and not just in terms of finding the funding, but getting the people to do it and aligning all the policy Objectives and so on. So I don't think it's a fair criticism. But there's an approach which is very, very different under applied government. There's a set of values from being a party that is focused solely on doing the right thing for Wales.
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It's interesting, the language that, you know, there are plenty of people who loathe that because they just say, we're just as Welsh as you. We just choose not to vote for you.
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Oh, this. This isn't about whether people are Welsh or not at all. You're Welsh if you want to be Welsh and that it's as simple as that. That that's as true for a politician as anybody else. And by the way, I don't for a second doubt the commitment of my predecessors in wanting to do the best for Wales. What I'm saying is that there's an extra impetus, there's an extra bit of motivation when you' have a boss in London, you know, we're doing this for the people of Wales and that is it. And I think that that really has resonated with people the length and breadth of Wales, especially young people.
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Now, the difference, of course, between a first Minister in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and a Prime Minister is you're always having to negotiate. You want more powers from them, you want more money. We'll come to that in a second. I just wonder what you think will be the significance of this change if it is as it looks almost certain to be, that Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister in what, around three weeks time? Do you like what you're hearing? Do you like what you're seeing? Does he seem like a guy you can do more business with than you did with Keir Starmer?
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I have said publicly, if it is him, and it looks likely to be him, I would hope that his experience of working within a devolved structure in Manchester would make him more appreciative of the pitches I would be making to him on the importance of funding, on making sure that we have the right powers in a deliverable way and so on, and that he would recognise the challenges that I face as a leader in Wales that maybe he faced in Manchester. There are some troubling signs, I must say. He is not yet the Prime Minister. Before he's started, he's made a rather bad start in saying, no, I'm not going to be looking at near the funding formula through which Wales fundamentally gets its block of funding from the Treasury. Despite very, very clearly marking himself out on a number of occasions in the past as somebody saying you know what, we've got to get rid of this unfairness of funding. We should be tackling that as a Labour Party. Well, he could be in power.
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Yeah. Even before he come into power. You're saying that. Something he consistently said. And he was a Chief Secretary of the treasury quite a long time ago, 20 odd years. But he was critical of that funding forum, so called Barnett formula. He's changed his mind.
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So it's a bad start even before he starts. And when you consider the criticism that was levelled so early at Keir Starmer in his premiership, that somehow he'd gone against the values that people had expected of a Labour Prime Minister, there's a real risk for Andy Burnham in being seen to shed some values and beliefs around evolution and funding that people would expect him to put in place. I will say this, though. I have, as I did to Keir Starmer, my offer is genuine, that I want to have a constructive relationship. It's not all about the Barnett formula. I will make the case for that. And it does need changing. But there are other elements too, around funding HS2 rail, the way that we're able to sell taxation powers, the borrowing powers and so on that we have, as well as further powers on policing. So there's lots to talk about, but a warning for him, we're keeping an eye on him. We're not waiting for him to get the keys to number 10 before the holding to account takes place.
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You became pretty frustrated, maybe angry with Kia Starmer pretty quickly.
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Well, we spoke in the early days of my leadership as First Minister and it was the kind of positive conversation that I wanted to have. I made it clear there were things that we needed to talk about and I was really keen to talk about them as quickly as we could. I laid out what my ambitions for Wales were, were that they would be different to his. But there are things that he could do that he should be interested in, around devolution. Of course, we never got to have the meeting, not even a meeting. There's that sense of, well, there are two things going on there, Nick, if we're honest. You know, the instability at the UK level. You know, I get that he had a lot of things on his, on his plate that he was thinking about, but the fact that for week after week after week, he could think, oh, it's okay for me not to meet this new First Minister. I think it speaks to where Wales sits in the pecking order for successive UK Prime Ministers and the UK establishment, as I have made the case for, for Years and years.
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You've got quite a big decision to make, haven't you, which is, how do you form that relationship and in what style? So is it going to be the quiet charm of Renat Yorith, or are you going to go back to your days as a nightclub bouncer and kind of knock him about a bit?
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Oh, no, my days as a nightclub bouncer was using the same quiet charm. If I have any of it.
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Well, it's all right being your high end, having quiet charm. It probably wouldn't work for me.
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There were taller ones than me, I can assure you, which is why I felt comfortable sort of just standing a little step back and being ready to step in with some diplomatic words if needed, to keep the peace. But no, I genuinely want to have a good relationship with the new Prime Minister. I want a respect agenda. But it has to work two ways. And when I hear somebody before coming into power saying, oh, by the way, I'm not going to talk about the way that you're funded. When we have communities living in poverty and inequality is rife within the United Kingdom, it's not great, but early days.
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What's in it for him, then? Because he might think, well, you're the leader of a rival party. You're one of the reasons Keir Starmer got driven out of office, because you got rid of the Welsh Labour Party. If he's to win a general election, he's got to wind you guys back again, hasn't he?
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I'm not sure I mentioned it in interviews with you in the past, Nick, but I've certainly spoken openly about it in that if Labour were to get a thumping in the election, I would say before the election, and since then, I've said, having had a thumping in the election in Wales, they can go one of two ways. They can effectively punish Wales for daring to vote Labour out of office and say, rights, that's it, nothing for Wales anymore. In which case that's definitely the end of Labour in Wales. Or there could be perhaps some reflection on why they lost that election and why the people of Wales had lost faith in Labour. I would say that people have recognised that Wales isn't as important to the UK Labour Party as perhaps they had hoped. Andy Burnham has an opportunity to show, actually, we do care a bit.
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Isn't there a danger when we're talking the day after you were in Dublin on your first foreign visit as First Minister of Wales, is there a danger that the focus is always on what London can give you in Ireland? Different situation of Course, independent country. You'd be the first to point that out. In Ireland, the focus has been how do we make ourselves richer as a nation? Do we cut taxes? Do we get American corporations? What do we do to create what they call the tiger economy?
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But how were they able to do that? Because they had the independence to take those decisions on their own. And those economic levers that could help us really plough our own furrow are held still by the UK government. That's precisely why we want that power to be able to mould our own future. But it's not in isolation and Ireland has flourished as a member of the European Union. I've come here today from addressing ambassadors of all European member states, talking about why, to my mind, cooperation across Europe is vital to a country like Wales. We'll look after our own nation, we'll look after Wales. But the relations that we have with others when we do that are vital. And that means the relationship that we have with the UK centre. I'd like a redesign of Britain, and it means our relations with individual neighbours like Ireland, but also collectively, the European Union.
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There's a risk here, though, for you, isn't there, as the leader for the first time for Plaid Cymru, is that you spend the next few years saying, well, if only we got more powers from Westminster, only got more money, if only we could get back in the eu, look, it'd all be fine. But it's not, because we're not starting where we want to.
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And hopefully people watching my kind of politics closely will recognize that that's not the way I put forward the case for what we can do as a nation. I am a pragmatist. Sometimes people use that as a compliment, sometimes they don't. But I am a pragmatist. I deal with what we have now. I will seek to do the best for Wales now with the powers that we have, with the funding that we have.
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Interesting. The most immediate task is one that you've kind of alluded to a couple of times, is finding the money within the parameters you've currently got. Now, you don't do a full budget for a while, but you're having some discussions at the moment about what they call a supplementary budget. Since you came to pan. Turns out it's not quite as simple as you thought in opposition, isn't it? Your finance minister said the outlook for the budget was challenging, more challenging than I expected it to be. Are you finding a bit of a struggle?
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It is more challenging in that the. In year pressures on health in particular, are greater than people were, including us, were led to believe. I think that how much more challenging. Hundreds of millions of pounds of practice pressures. But what we have pointedly done is to not say, I'm therefore, you know, all that vision that we talked about, you know, we're going to park that and blame the last lot. We're not going to do that. It's up to the last lot. It's up to the last Labour government to reflect on the state of the public finances in Wales when they left office. But one of the big mistakes, I think, that Keir Starmer made was to come into office and he and Rachel Reeves say there is a black hole in our budget. Well, I had been saying for months that there was a black hole in the budget. Everybody knew there was a black hole in the budget. They decided to pretend that they didn't know there was one and then use that as reason to do things that were contrary to the party's values. What we've said is we'll just roll up our sleeves more and get down to work to make sure that we deliver what we said we would.
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Most of the
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time, Laplaya sounds like this.
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For some, La Playa also sounds like this.
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But no matter what, this is our Playa.
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Corona La Playa awaits.
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Relax.
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Responsibly.
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Corona Extra beer, imported by Crown Import, Chicago, Illinois.
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Now, the big difference between you and Labour in Westminster is they've got a whopping great majority and you don't.
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Yeah.
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In fact, you haven't got majority at all.
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There's never been a majority. History of devolution.
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And it was designed, in part to achieve that. A voting system. You need the support of other parties. And they think, don't they, that you've taken them a bit for granted. They complain that you've not really sat down with them, tried to woo and persuade them and that you sort of expect them to come on board. Have you learned something?
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So I. I mean, anybody who would have watched the initial statements that I made in the Senate and the responses to those first questions from party leaders and others, they. They could, could not have been left under any illusion as to how willing I was to be cooperative with others. I could not have been more Clear. It's a political instinct of mine to seek common ground and to look for ways that we can. But you're going to solve this problem
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because at the moment you've got, haven't you, You've got Labour and the Tories say, without getting into the real weeds here, who are saying that they want more money to go to special needs in Welsh schools. And you're saying, well, that's not actually the way in which that money needs to be spent.
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Yeah.
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Are you going to sit down with them? You're also going to.
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Well, the supp supplementary budget has been published now and it will go to committee now it'll go to Finance Committee where there'll be discussions. And remember what a supplementary budget is. And it's definitely not about taking anybody's vote for granted. It is about aligning the money that we have to spend in Wales with those things that we said we would set out to do in government, aligning our priorities with the money that we have to spend. That's all that's happening. Essentially, other parties will have to think, okay, if somehow they are objecting to the supplementary budget. So they are objecting to putting 145 million pounds into health to make health sustainable for the future. They're objecting to putting £55 million into helping families with the cost of living crisis through childcare. These are the discussions that absolutely need to take place. But there's a responsibility on all of us, whether in government or on opposition, to consider very carefully what the results are of our actions in voting.
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Just to be clear, you're saying, are you you, that you're not a hypocrite, because there are some people who say, look, you complain Starborn wouldn't meet with you, and yet you're not really meeting with the opponents you now need to deal with.
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Oh, no, the meetings have taken place. I've met all party leaders, my finance ministers, met other finance spokespeople. Oh, no, those. My doors open and the meetings are taking place. So. Absolutely. Let's put that one to bed.
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Now you have to deal with a very different political situation, not just because you're in power, because for the first time in your life, the main opponents to blycomy are not the Labour Party. It is, in fact, Reform uk. It's Nigel Farage's party. Now. I remember when we talked, you were a little bit, I would suggest, dubious that reform could do that well in Wales. Why did they do so well? They ran you a pretty close second. They got almost 30% of the vote. They've got 34 seats in the Welsh Senate. They are a big force.
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Now, I'll have to go back and look at what I said then, but I absolutely thought that all the evidence pointed to reform. Being able to get somewhere in the region of, you know, a quarter to a third of the vote. That's where we were, that's where we had been for a while.
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B
I think what I'm recalling is a conversation I had where I raised the issue of immigration. And you have talked about Wales being a nation that welcomes people, people. You talked about the fact there's no such thing as illegal immigration. You've said. And we. I talked to you about a particular man and you said you could persuade him not to vote reform. You told me, by telling him not to turn against his neighbour.
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Well, I remember your language.
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Not his language, I suspect, or many other people's language, but under your description, that's almost a third of people in Wales have quotes turned against their neighbors.
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I remember that conversation and it was a real moment. And he kind of almost apologized to me and said, you don't need to apologize to me. I don't question what concerns you have about the community around you at all on that. No such thing as illegal immigration. What I mean by that, of course, there's illegality in people outstaying visas, there's illegality in people smuggling, there's all sorts of illegality around immigration, but people moving in itself, people aren't illegal.
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So you accept, because I think even in your constituency, people have been arrested for, quote, illegal migration. You get why people think the system's out of control.
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And as I say, there are people who have broken the rules under which migration is dealt with within the uk, and it's a system that is broken. But the focus has been, hasn't it, in recent years, on people, on individuals, on othering other people or communities somehow suggesting that groups of people, because of where they're from or the colour of their skin, is somehow illegal, or people by fleeing war are illegal. It is not illegal to flee war. That's the kind of question around illegality. But of course, these are complex, complex issues. And one of the challenges that we face globally in politics currently is that the political rights suggest that the answer to those issues are very, very simple. They are not.
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B
Do you have to listen more, though, to those sorts of voters and their concerns? Because one, as you know, of the new members of the Senate, a Reform member made a controversial speech the other day where he asked a question Which I suspect many voters in your constitution agency would ask, which is why are we employing nurses from India rather than training them here in Wales? That was done in a way to be provocative. It's clear. I think it's fair to say that he wanted to get his speech clipped up on social media for saying something controversial, but a lot of the members of your party simply walked out. We're not listening to this. They said, don't you have to listen not just to him, but to people who will share those views?
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The same member made a dreadful speech a few days previously. But I'm putting it in context and it's not our place to walk out and not be a part of political debates. It's to answer back is to make our case for something more positive. But I absolutely understand why people feel a sense of distress around that kind of abrasive political discourse. It is difficult at times in a parliament where there has been a fundamental level of respect in the language used over the years, to have that broken down is difficult for people to see. But our challenge is that because potentially
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because the assembly as it was, the parliament, the Senate as it now is, was in what some people called a Cardiff Bay bubble. Lots of people, and let's be honest, people say of the people who work at the BBC, lots of people who go to the same restaurants, go to the same dinner party as we'll talk later, all know each other, you know, went to the same universities, got the same friends. Also, this is what decent people, Welsh people think. Well, isn't the evidence of the polling and the election that isn't what they think?
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Totally get that. And I guess there was a sense of backlash in this election after 27 years of one party having been in power and the realization, hold on, it doesn't have to be sort of, sort of insular in this kind of way. We can have a bit of variety here. And as I say, I understand why people wanted a change and that is one of the ways that the political right has been able to grow through. Just saying they're different now. As it happens, we in Wales could offer different in another way through Plaid Cymru, a hundred year old party that people respected and liked, but for whatever reason they decided to stick with the establishment in the past. But this was an election where the establishment was gone. Reform took one part of it on the right and the sort of anti, if you like, establishment plightcombery took the other part. So yes, people are right to not want us to live in a bubble and it does mean us having to listen always to real concerns that other people have. But people cross the line, don't they? From having real concerns to betraying other values and views that should be consigned to political history.
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B
Well, arguably that happens on both sides of politics. I mean, you had some candidates in the election, one of whom described Winston Churchill as a genocidal racist who argued for people being jailed for supporting Israel. Extremism doesn't exist on one side of politics, is it?
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Oh, and it's something that I have always maintained we need to rid from our politics all the time, always our strong, strong views in support of the people of Palestine after the horrific genocide. And I do use that word because that's what it was, that genocide in Gaza. But I was very, very careful and am careful and my party's careful to in absolutely no way allow ourselves to be drawn into. What some people would like perhaps is to say that this is an anti Israel thing. It's not, it's absolutely an anti current Israeli government thing. But I feel for the Jewish communities in Wales for the pain that they're going through because of the growth of anti Semitism and so on. I believe in people coming together and finding that common ground and tolerance between us.
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Even that word, you know, genocide provokes, upsets, angers, enrages people who are no supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu. They say there's no court that has shown its genocide. It is potentially up before a court.
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A
We all saw what happened then.
- [29:22]
B
Okay, you think it's plain, but you, you accept that will make some people feel that you are anti Israel in the language.
- [29:29]
A
Oh no, no, no, no, I've just said it's not anti Israel at all.
- [29:32]
B
And no, I'm putting to you that not everybody will accept that point.
- [29:35]
A
But, but no, I, I feel for the people of Israel and you're not
- [29:39]
B
actually responsible for foreign policy. As the Welsh First Minister, you have a stake in presenting Wales. You've just been to see those EU ambassadors here in London. I suspect they'd be a bit surprised, wouldn't they, if you said we in my party don't believe increasing spending on defence. Despite the threat from Russia, we're opposed to increasing the spending on defence. Is that still your view?
- [30:03]
A
No, we haven't said that. We are wide eyed as all of us, us have to be nowadays, in recognizing that the threats that we face are changing, not just changing in nature, but changing in intensity. We are living in a dangerous world and we recognize that in order to address that threat we have to Use, you know, resource well and making sure that we have.
- [30:30]
B
Not long ago, you had a manifesto that said you were opposed to it, though, wasn't it? You used to oppose it. And indeed you don't support membership of.
- [30:36]
A
Not again. The NATO one isn't as straightforward as that. We have never called, for example, for the UK to pull out of NATO. I do believe that we work better together. And that has to mean in defence terms, too. And remember also, Nick, that Plaid Cymru as a party that believes in the future of Wales. Wales is a party that believes in dealing with the realities of today's Wales and the realities of the threats that we face. And we're not somehow frozen in time as a political party and we have to recognize the changing face of the world in which we live. But we're an internationalist party, a party that believes in peace and pursuing that in every possible way that we can. And sometimes that also has to mean defending ourselves, doesn't it?
- [31:28]
B
You've seen stressed that you want to see Wales coming together, you want to represent all Welsh people. Have you listened to my colleagues on Radio 5 live here at the BBC play the game, Cymru Connection?
- [31:42]
A
Yes. Ellis James. It's a wonderful game. The ones that I have heard, he does remarkably well. It doesn't perhaps altogether surprisingly surprise me, knowing how Wales works now.
- [31:54]
B
What he does for those people who don't know the game is he has a challenge, doesn't he? Somebody rings in and they've got a minute in which he can ask them questions, and in the space of that minute, he has to prove that he knows someone that they know. It's an extraordinary thing. And he pulls it off a lot of the time, doesn't he?
- [32:12]
A
It does, yeah. It's the sort of, you know, three or whatever four or five degrees of separation that we have from everybody else in the world. And the. And the notion that in Wales, it's just one degree of separation. And it's something that can be frustrating sometimes if you want to live. Bit of peace, of quiet, and to escape, you'll always know somebody nearby in Wales, so there's no escaping. Which is wonderful as well, isn't it? Because there's that sense of common venture that comes from that, too.
- [32:37]
B
Is that a strength or is it also a potential weakness? You know, that it looks, as I was saying before, like a bubble.
- [32:44]
A
I don't think it does it. Maybe the way that you're thinking about it reflects the fact that you come from a different nation to the one that I Do I come from a nation of around 3 million people? And I am putting it to you that most nations of around 3 million people would be the same as Wales, where there's more of a chance than if you're in a nation of 50 million that you will know people. And they say, you know, when you meet somebody on holiday, the question might be between two English people, what do you do? And you look for commonality in what you do as a profession, perhaps in Wales. Where are you from? From. And we know where that's leading. It's right. Oh yeah, I know so and so from there or, you know, I've been there. So that that sense of belonging to your community on one hand, but to that wider community of communities that we know as Wales is something that's very strong.
- [33:39]
B
So I'm going to add a new suggestion for your first hundred days in power, that Cymru connection should become a Welsh national sport.
- [33:47]
A
There we are. Ellis James will be the endowment champion. Would he be allowed to play even? I'm not sure.
- [33:53]
B
Yeah, sure. You can elevate him to that.
- [33:56]
A
He could be the judge of it all.
- [33:57]
B
Now, we talked when we first began this conversation about the fact your diary can be full in this job, just finally, how do you keep yourself sane? How do you keep yourself not constantly looking at papers and whatsapps and what's coming up next.
- [34:14]
A
I am able to switch off, I'm able to sleep well when I am with my wife or with my grown up children when they're at home, you know, I can, I can forget that I'm the first Minister of Wales and you know, pick up the guitar or go out and mow the lawn or go for a spin on my motorbike or whatever it might be and I, and I can switch off. The amazing thing then, especially in these early days, is that then I remember, goodness me, I'm the First Minister of Wales. Every now and then, which kind of hits me like a, you know, it hits me hard. But I believe in switching off and that I have other things in my life that are important to me. But I am so dedicated to this job. I can't tell you're a football fan,
- [34:53]
B
you love Cardiff City. Can you bring yourself to watch the World cup given that Wales are in it?
- [34:57]
A
I feel somewhat detached from the World Cup. I was there watching Wales bow out on penalties again, which was painful, but I love sports and I love the messy story and the Mbappe story and the World cup is the World cup and it's brilliant and I wish everybody's nation well and I hope they get what they want.
- [35:18]
B
Very delicately put. You don't cheer on England. You can't, can you?
- [35:22]
A
No, they're our biggest rivals. Of course I don't cheer on England. But that's, that's just sport, isn't it? But, but no, seriously, I, I hope England fans have a wonderful tournament as well.
- [35:29]
B
You're a diplomat. You were as that nightclub bouncer and apparently you are now as First Minister of Wales. Reading out your thank you for joining me again on Political Thinking.
- [35:37]
A
Thank you, Niktia.
- [35:38]
B
Thanks for listening to Political Thinking. The producers are Hannah Wilkinson and Flora Murray. The editor is Giles Edwards and the studio director this week was Nicola Brough. Hello, I'm David Baddiel and from Radio 4 and the History Podcast, I'm hosting 60 Years of Hurt, a series about football and Englishness in which we try and define what Englishness actually is via the roller coaster history of the England men's football team. It includes contributions from various English gentlemen and Stephen Fry, David Seaman, England sports psychologist, Pippa Grange and many others. England may or may not win the World cup in 2026, but maybe you'll find out why it means so much to us as a country that they might do. Listen to 60 Years of Hurt on BBC Sounds
- [36:27]
C
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