Tony Blair called Rhodri Morgan clear red water speech nonsense

A landmark speech by Rhodri Morgan setting out his political vision for Wales was privately dismissed as “dreadful nonsense” by Tony Blair when he was prime minister.

In a lecture in 2002, Wales’ then first minister rejected some of Blair’s flagship policies and promised to put “clear red water” between them and Welsh Labour.

Newly-released UK government papers from the time reveal a handwritten note by Blair, calling part of the speech “rubbish”.

Morgan and Blair were often at loggerheads, and the prime minister failed to offer him a job in his New Labour government after his landslide victory in 1997.

A memo written by a Downing Street adviser called it “pretty grim stuff” and “the emphasis on ideological differences is worrying”.

In a handwritten note on the margins, Blair said it was “dreadful and a big mistake. But it shows how the wind blows there”.

“Still if it succeeds electorally, we will have to put up with it.”

There is another handwritten comment on the copy of the speech where Morgan criticised the introduction of foundation hospitals in England.

Intended to give NHS patients more choice, Morgan said “the experiment will end, not with patients choosing hospitals, but with hospitals choosing patients”.

“Rubbish. Not true,” Blair wrote.

Morgan was first minister in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats at the time.

Labour suffered poor results in the first assembly elections of 1999, losing ground in its heartlands to Plaid Cymru.

The clear red water strategy has often been cited as part of an election-winning plan that helped Labour bounce back at the next election in 2003.

The lecture was written by Morgan’s top aide, Mark Drakeford, who went on to become first minister in 2018.

Drakeford, now finance secretary in the Welsh government, said: “Rhodri would explain what was happening, what he thought, what he wanted to do and Blair’s reply would in essence be: ‘If it was me I would not do it that way, but you’re the first minister of Wales’.

“He genuinely did get devolution that way. The point of it was things would be done differently, whether he agreed with it or not.

“It didn’t bother them too much what we did in Wales, as long as it stayed in Wales.”

Drakeford said Blair and Morgan had formal meetings twice a year, which he would attend, but he did not remember the speech ever being raised.

“I think the handling of it there [in the memo] was pretty consistent with the way they thought of us altogether,” he said.

“They didn’t agree with us, but if it worked for Wales that was our business more than theirs.”

Years later, Blair said Morgan was “from the more traditional wing of the party” but that he “rated him enormously”.

He told BBC Wales in 2017: “I liked him a lot, I found him great company. I had huge respect for Rhodri, we just had a disagreement.”

Some people in Welsh Labour revere this speech.

They think clear red water was the crucial ingredient in a secret sauce that has kept Labour in power in Wales, unlike in Scotland.

Tony Blair’s handwritten marginalia reminds us just how controversial it was, but his instruction that they will “have to put up with it” is fascinating.

He’s telling the troops if Morgan has found a way to win elections in Wales, better to let him crack on with it than pick a fight.