What type of community did you grow up in and how did that impact your worldview today?

That’s a good question. I essentially grew up in the Amman Valley, which is a core mining community and has a strong Welsh-speaking tradition. I suppose what you would call close-knit. The impact it had on me was that, on the one hand, it’s a sort of community that celebrates people who are good at rugby and at sport, and I wasn’t. It’s a community that also respects people who achieve things, and that was something that had an impact on me. I put pressure on myself. I was never going to be able to excel at sport, but I did want to do something that the community I grew up in would recognise as an achievement, which is one of the reasons why I went to work in television—because it was the one thing that people would be able to see and identify with having done well. Having achieved that, I then left television, but, thinking back, that probably was one of the motivations that spurred me on.

One thing which has driven me in politics is a saying I used to hear from school teachers, which is: “If you want to get on, you have to get out”. Most of the people I was in school with who had ability [had] left, which is understandable, but also sad. Because community is about balance—it’s about a mix—and if the people who are most able to make a contribution to improving an area no longer have a stake in an area, the people who are least able to make a contribution are left behind and essentially left there to rot—and I felt very uncomfortable about that. I’ve made my career in Wales because I wanted to make a contribution to Wales. Going to London is an easier thing to do in many ways. So yes, you could “achieve more and earn more”, but that’s a path people have been following for hundreds of years, and the more challenging path is to stay in Wales and make a contribution to Wales—because that’s hard. It’s not glamorous, it doesn’t pay as well, but it’s more important. So that’s one of the reasons I went into politics. I wanted to represent the part of Wales I’m from. I didn't want to stand anywhere else, because I wanted to do what I could, in a modest way, to try and make things better. The issues we’re facing are tough and in some cases intractable, so you’re not going to be able to solve them. But making a contribution and trying your best is important, and that’s what I’ve tried to do.

What about sixth form and university? How did those days impact your interest in politics?

Sixth form was probably my happiest time in schooling, because I was able to focus on issues and subjects I was interested in. I was really interested in politics. I was always interested in news as a kid, and developed an interest in politics through my teenage years. I was taught A-level Politics by a teacher, and I was the only one in the class, so sort of a self taught A-level, not a traditional one. And I just absolutely loved it. He was brilliant, because he would challenge my prejudices and pick apart my arguments and force me to sharpen my thinking. That was fantastic. I really loved that. And I’m still in touch with him, a guy called Adrian Phillips who was just a wonderful teacher.

I want to do some tutoring now for A-level Politics myself. I’ve signed up to a voluntary scheme for people who can’t afford private tuition. I’ve always loved talking to students about politics, because I’ve remained at my heart a nerdy, enthusiastic sixth-former interested in studying politics. And one of the reasons I’ve done my job is that I’m fascinated by how it works, trying to understand the different dynamics and how they bounce off each other.

I do find politics fascinating, because it’s about people, and it’s about complexity, and it’s a really intricate puzzle which nobody ever cracks and you’re constantly trying to work at it. The more you understand the complexity, the more complex it becomes because you realise there are no simple solutions to these things. That’s something I’m still as interested in today as I was then.

I went on to study politics at university in Aberystwyth. I wanted to be a journalist, but I worked out pretty quickly that my brain is not good at learning languages and maths, and so the idea of learning shorthand, which you're expected to do, was something I thought I could never do. My wife did it, and I could never do it and I didn’t think I could get onto a training course. So I was going to go into academia, and I had a PhD lined up. And then I was offered a job in politics, which was exciting. But when that fell apart, because the person I worked for resigned, I found a chance to go into journalism—initially freelance, with no promise of any work—in the BBC. I was able to get a job in journalism without doing shorthand, so that was brilliant. I did that for a number of years.

What was the process behind 20mph and why did you want to do it?

I’ve given a number of reforms in transport, and they’ve been overshadowed by 20mph, which is a bit frustrating, because they’re probably much more impactful in the longer term. 20mph was meant to be a popular policy. All the polling was showing it was very popular three years out. All polling showed 80% of people in Wales supported it. And we knew that as you came towards implementation, support was going to drop, because it always does, but we expected fairly soon after it came in for people to get used to it and for support to grow.

I think the way we went about doing it was imperfect—but also the timing. Post-COVID, the public mood shifted. And while they looked to the Welsh government very positively for the cautious measures that were taken on COVID, as soon as we started to come out of COVID, people started to resist and resent anything that could be seen as telling them what to do. And that very quickly soured the public mood and bled into the 20mph policy. It was implemented in a fairly clumsy way, in some circumstances, the councils didn’t use the discretion they had to exempt some roads, which aggravated the underlying trend. I also used to say it needed to pass the sniff test. Unless people understand why they’re being asked to drive slowly on this particular stretch of road, it’s not going to work. And the theory was that councils would take out those stretches of road that didn’t make sense, and that would be a much more streamlined way of doing it. Rather than saying we can apply these rules on each street one at a time, we’ll apply them to a whole area, but we’ll take out the bits that don’t make sense, and that taking out bit didn’t happen—certainly didn't happen consistently—and it didn't happen as much as it should have done. So we’re now having to go back to that, but people’s blood was up by that stage and it became a fashionable cause to oppose it. What’s interesting is that even though it is unpopular with lots of people, people are observing the law. They are driving slower. They’re not driving at 20mph, but they weren’t driving at 30mph before. The average has dropped to around 25mph and, critically, the number of people doing over 30mph has dropped dramatically—and that’s the big road safety win. The figures from the first six months show a 32% fall in casualties, which is brilliant. There are people alive today who wouldn’t be alive otherwise, and I think in time people will get used to it and it’ll be seen as a good policy to have done. But it’s been a really difficult one on a personal level—a very painful one.

What about your other transport policies? Is there anything in particular that you think had a really big impact?

Yes, there’s two. One is the big emphasis we’ve placed on active travel: walking and cycling. That has transformed in the last ten years. And it’s going to take time—it’s a generational project. It takes time to build these networks. But in Cardiff, for example, you now see far more prominent cycle routes, and people use them—they are popular. And that just wasn’t the case before. That has happened through the efforts of lots of people, but I certainly play a role in that, which I’m pleased about. And the second was changing the approach to road-building in Wales, which is being looked at around the world, and others will follow over time. It cancelled lots of road schemes because of climate change, and we’ve set a different range of rules for when roads are the right answer in the future, and I think that’s the right thing to do. But, again, that was a bold step, and very difficult politically, but it’s one which we will look back on and not regret.

Is transport a reserved power?

No, it’s mostly devolved. Rail infrastructure, for example, isn’t devolved and that’s a problem for us. But most of transport is fully devolved or partly devolved.

Do you think that rail infrastructure should be devolved?

I think more money needs to be spent on railways in Wales by the UK government. They have got the responsibility for rail infrastructure, and Wales has been at the end of the queue for too long. That’s the main issue with rail—not where the power lies. We need a greater say in what is built. It’s become a fashionable cause to say that rail powers should be devolved to Wales, and I am not against that—but I think we should be careful in what we wish for because the reality is that rail is really expensive. And when you look at what we know is coming down the road with climate change, and you look at where the railway lines are, a lot of our railway lines are next to the sea, and all the modelling shows that over the next thirty to forty years, they’re going to be severely damaged by rising sea levels and wild weather, and that’s going to cost an awful lot of money. If we simply go along with the fashion of saying “let’s devolve rail to Wales”, that means we’ll have the sole responsibility for paying for it, and we’ll regret it. So there’s a halfway house where the UK government retains responsibility. We pressure them to spend more money on it, and we have a greater say in it, and that means that we can have the best of both worlds.

Do you think that the Barnett formula works or do you think it does not give Wales what it needs?

It works in the sense that it does the job it was set up to do. It’s a simple formula for moving money around. The problem with it is that the world has changed a lot since it was first introduced—and Wales’ position in the world has worsened a lot. What the formula doesn’t do is recognise our need. We have an older population and a sicker population, and that’s not reflected in the formula. We have more people retiring into Wales and they’re not generating tax, so they are costing more to look after, and Wales is having to pay for that extra cost. So the formula doesn’t work in the sense that it doesn’t meet the reality of the pressures the government of Wales has to face to deal with an older and sicker population. In that sense, it’s a long-overdue change.

It’s one of those problems where whenever you change a formula, some people benefit and some people don’t benefit. And those that don’t benefit are going to be the loudest. The particular complication in this regard is that the Scots will suffer the most, because they do very well under the Barnett formula. And I can’t see a UK government wanting to take money off the Scots when they are threatening independence. That’s the brutal political reality of it, but the incoming Labour government is very alert to the need for change. Eluned Morgan is pushing hard for an updating of the funding formula, and I hope that we’re able to reach a point where Wales’ needs are recognised more.

For 14 years now, there's been a Welsh Labour government and a Conservative government in Westminster. That has made it difficult to deal with certain things. Now that UK Labour is in government, has it been easier and do you think it will be easier? Or are there still differences?

There will be differences, and there should be differences. That was the whole point of devolution. I campaigned strongly for a Senedd for Wales precisely because a London parliament is never going to fully understand Wales’ needs. So it’s right that we have our own say over lots of things, but we’re also part of the UK, so there are bound to be tensions, because we’ve got different electorates, different mandates, and different values. It’s already making a difference in that we’ve got a better relationship with the UK government and we’re starting from the same point of view of wanting to do things better from the same set of values.

When I was a minister dealing with a Conservative government, their contempt for Wales was palpable. They treated us as stakeholders, not as an equal fellow government—and that’s changed already, and that will, over time, bring benefits. But there are always going to be points in which we see things differently from them, and we shouldn’t be afraid to fight Wales’ corner, stand up for Wales, and be willing to disagree and fall out with them.

Welsh Labour is said to be the democratic world’s most electorally successful party. Some would argue that if you wanted to make change in Wales, you would have to be Welsh Labour to do that. When a party has been in power for that long, there is a question of accountability.

Being in power for a long time presents huge challenges to a party. One thing competitive elections give you is that they keep you on your toes, and they give you periods out of office where you get to rethink and refresh. When you’re in power for a long time, you don’t have that. So you need to find other ways of making sure you are kept on your toes, and you need to encourage challenge. We’ve seen, this last year, lots of challenge. We’ve had a new First Minister. That shows we are certainly capable of challenging ourselves. But that is something we need to be very alert to, and go out of our way to encourage criticism and challenge—and we're not always great at that. I’ve always been an outspoken and challenging politician on my own side. The first thing I did when I got elected was challenging the decision to build an M4, which my first minister was very set on, and I was deadly opposed to. So there is a way in which you can do both. You can be part of a team and support, but also be willing to take them on from time to time. Not everybody loves you for it.

We are accountable—there are elections. We’ve done well winning elections, in part because the voting system we have has been kind to us. From 2026, we’ve created a voting system that is not going to be kind to us, and I think that’s to our credit for doing that. No one’s giving us any praise for setting up a voting system that is going to act against our own interests, but that’s what we’ve done, and we’re right to do it, because Wales does need greater plurality. But it’s going to create a real political challenge for us, having been in power for 27 years by that point, in the sense that the state of the NHS has not improved. There are all sorts of reasons for that— primarily austerity—but it will take time for the UK government to fix, and it won’t be in time for the next election, so it’s gonna be a very tough set of elections for us. And I think that’s the challenge Eluned Morgan now has. How can we have a refresh in government? And how can we send the signal to people that, yes, it’s still Welsh Labour who’s asking you to return them to office, but it’s a Welsh Labour that is changing, is willing to challenge itself, that’s put itself at the mercy of a new voting system because it believes in improving Welsh democracy, but still has relevant things to say about the future of Wales. And that’s the trick. Politics is as much an art as it is a science, and that’s why it’s so fascinating.