Rhodri’s succession is the stuff of the silly-season

We all know the Western Mail (otherwise Llais y Sais) is losing readers, and that their reporters sometimes can’t find stories (after all, it is still the “silly season“).

But today’s effort on the future leadership of the Welsh Labour Party in the wake of Rhodri Morgan is peculiarly off-centre.

So peculiarly off-centre that it’s worth examining, for what might be behind it.

Examine first the author. Martin Shipton, chief reporter (never political reporter, although that is where his interest lies) hardly knows the Assembly, apart from over a phone line.

Although a Welshman, he spent some years in north east England, has been close to Labour up there, and sometimes displays the anti-regional assembly bias that seems to have been a bit too common within Labour in both that region and this.

When not much news is around, reporters will often be exceptionally receptive to the musings of their senior colleagues. If that colleague is Mail editor Alan Edmunds, a musing rapidly becomes a story – the pair have been extremely close ever since Edmunds headed Wales on Sunday, and Shipton was his political man.

For a very down-market newspaper, Shipton did an excellent job – and,  indeed, his former paper WoS seems often to outshine the Llais through Mr Shipton’s replacement Matt Withers.

Mr Shipton’s close link with his editor was forged when WoS launched a circulation campaign based on Mr Shipton standing as the paper’s Objective One-cash candidate in the Ceredigion parliamentary by-election.

Mr Edmunds, a Cardiff boy, son of an estate agent in Albany Road and now Fairwater, is never heard knocking the Assembly as an institution; he shows no sign of the extremely strong anti-Assembly views displayed by his predecessor.

But as a person with no public profile in the Assembly (of course, why should he possess any such profile ?), with a chief reporter who very seldom attends the institution, certain things can go wrong.

Phrases such as “a lack of suitable successors among the current crop of AMs” can be given prominence without the journalistic hint of doubt which scribblers learn to deploy when using statements whose verity could  be doubted.

For the benefit of Messrs Shipton and Edmunds, three current AMs are leading the fight for the succession. Counsel general Carwyn Jones could be seen as a carbon-copy of Rhodri – not up to his standards yet, but who could be ?

Health minister Edwina Hart, an ex-president of the bankers’ union, will be a very tough character to beat; her position at the top of perhaps the most influential middle-class union ensures a background and experience that will tell.

Finance minister Andrew Davies has spent a long period within his party’s offices and has learnt many of the whiles and tricks of the political world; including, always be (moderately) friendly to others; you never know when you might need them.

Of course, we should also mention that Assembly-doubter Huw Lewis fancies his chances as tribune of the working class. At least, Mr Lewis occasionally has something to say. But his chance of winning is similar to that of the CP once against taking control of whatever is left of Soviet Union; and both would have use of similar internal party sources.

To mention Leighton Andrews (of the Liberal Democrat tendency) in this context merely emphasises the Western Mail’s weak links with the Assembly (their current Senedd correspondent David Williamson doesn’t attend the institution when it’s not in session – after all, I suppose, the editor would argue there is nothing then going on there !).

And there was no mention of the sharpest ministerial hand in the cabinet who is fully capable of taking on Mr Morgan’s job – but then perhaps the phone line did manage to inform Mr Shipton that environment minister Jane Davidson had ruled herself out. Perhaps of all those mentioned, she would be the best.

Of course, the story may not have originated among doubters within Thomson House about the calibre of Labour AMs. The second obvious source is an MP – he of the class which lacks anyone capable of making any impact within the Westminster cabinet, apart from the Welsh brief.

A “senior Labour source” could indeed by one of these MPs; he uses parliamentary language. Gwenda Thomas is promised a peerage if she steps down in Neath; and Eluned Morgan, the MEP, is offered Clwyd South; which ignores that her father was the enormously respected vicar of Ely and Labour constituency chairman – and Clwyd South doesn’t care a damn for Ely and its people.

Karen Sinclair, whom she would replace, is pushed to death’s door rather than back into the Senedd chamber as her health rapidly improves.

And then both Messrs Carwyn and Andrew might lose their seats because of the “present anti-Labour malaise”. Only the Westminster bubble could fail to understand that the changes could be permanent and terminal.

Indeed, the article’s final words – hoping that Mr Morgan might soldier on until 2011 for “politicians currently outside the Assembly to enter the race” – seems to amount to a death wish for Welsh Labour. Either Labour can win with one of their current three front-runners – or it’s a choice between Nick Bourne and Ieuan Wyn Jones.