We’ve had Blairites & Brownites, we had the Milifandom. We certainly had Corbynism and its supporters accordingly dubbed Corbynistas. So, looking to our Labour Leader in Wales, what exactly is Drakefordism? And can I be a Drakefordista or is it Drakefordist? Drakeite? We can make up words all day, but it’s a good question — how does Mark, someone at the helm (if sometimes behind the scenes) of Welsh Labour for nearly two decades, set out his own stall of left-wing principles?
I recently recorded a podcast for Welsh Political Icons, a great series (I strongly recommend dipping in) looking to prominent figures in Wales who have influenced our politics, and I had a go at a short Mark Drakeford biography. Whilst researching it and going over the usual facts and key points of his ascent to First Minister, I ended up being drawn to an old IWA pamphlet from 2008, entitled ‘Unpacking the Progressive Consensus’. Mark had contributed a chapter to it, the whole issue focused on progressive universalism. He outlined six principles that he believed were shared across the Welsh Government’s approach at the time and I thought Hiraeth might want to have a closer look.
1) Government as a force for good
Firstly, we have an optimistic — and increasingly feels nostalgic in this Trumpian era — assumption that government is GOOD, that it’s the best way to do large-scale change. This is hardly surprisingly, the way the state can make people’s lives better is arguably the central plank of Labour, no matter who is leading the party. It’s the opposite of ‘government shouldn’t interfere’ or ‘small government is best’. Mark set out: “governments represent the best vehicle through which social improvement can be achieved” which no individual or organisation could do as well alone. I think in Wales, we can see this through the Social Services & Wellbeing Act, putting the individual’s wellbeing at the centre of social care, and the way that Welsh Government bought Cardiff Airport — on the assumption that business wouldn’t take a country seriously without an international airport — as well as practically nationalising our trains with setting up Transport for Wales. He’s not afraid to use the government’s buying power and legislative power for good.
2) Universal rather than mean-tested services
This is best straight from the horse’s mouth. Mark once said at a Senedd Committee: “I’m a great believer in universal services where we are able to provide them, because universal services provide the glue that pulls together a diverse and disparate society. Universal services mean everybody has a stake in them — the articulate and the well informed, as well as people who struggle to get their voice heard. Services that are exclusively for poor people […] quickly become poor services.” It gets quite philosophical in the pamphlet — again, to quote directly: “the sense that the fate of any one of us affects the fate of all of us remains close to the heart of the Welsh approach to social justice”.
3) Cooperation is better than competition
Not a hard one to decipher. We are citizens, not consumers. We should cooperate, not compete, when it comes to working together for a better quality of life for all; it shouldn’t be a lottery.
4) Improve the collective voice, not individual choice
So good that it rhymes. Mark references devolution itself as the great experiment that, hopefully, increases the leverage of citizens over the government and should serve them better. He prefers collective vehicles that can amplify people’s voices as a community, not just one loud individual.
5) Service users and service providers are engaged in a joint enterprise with high trust, not merely servers and recipients
Mark shows off his Latin degree (if indeed Mark is able to show off) with ‘caveat emptor’, or ‘let the buyer beware’… which is the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase. Mark highlights the ‘collective and cooperative’ approach as one based on high trust relationships and recognises that high quality services depends on reciprocation. He uses the example of community safety partnerships as a community working together on increasing safety, not simply the police suspiciously watching Welsh citizens.
6) And finally, pursuing the equality of outcome rather than the equality of opportunity
Essentially: equal societies do better, and it’s more important that everyone does better than some people doing wildly better than others, to the extent that life expectancy is quite dramatically worse in poorer areas than it is in more affluent areas. Mark has consistently cited children in poverty as his driving force for being in politics, and how he measures whether any good has been done at all. You can be sure that Mark wouldn’t care for how many millionaires Wales could produce, if people were still stuck in poor living conditions.
Mark ends his pamphlet on a prophetic note: that “the environmental dimension of a more equal Wales will have to move more centre stage”. This was back in 2008, before Extinction Rebellion; before the more urgent warnings from the UN; before we accepted — even if scientists had been warning for years — that the nature crisis and the climate crisis will engulf us all unless we do something about it.
Ever the professor, ever the forward-thinker, he is both the architect of clear red water and the inventor of Drakefordism. It’s said that you campaign in poetry but you govern in prose, but I think it’s safe to say that those principles have been consistent throughout Drakeford’s work, in both campaigning and governing.
Liz Silversmith is a political analyst and commentator who works in public affairs.
