Wales needs white collar jobs, Labour's Rhodri Morgan says

Rhodri Morgan says Labour needs to connect with aspirant middle class voters

Wales desperately needs more people in white collar jobs, and Labour needs to learn how to appeal to them, according to former First Minister Rhodri Morgan.

"We've always been top-sliced as a country - the head office was somewhere else while we've always had the factory or the coal mine," he told BBC Wales.

Higher skilled employment gave Wales more spending power, Mr Morgan added.

"Wales needs that as much as those those basic jobs to replace coal and steel jobs," he said.

The nation's industrial history had left Wales with a "very unusual economic structure", the former Labour first minister said, with a lack of design, engineering, science and management jobs.

Rhodri Morgan's election campaign efforts for Labour in Cardiff North proved unsuccessful

Responding to the Conservatives' general election victory, Mr Morgan said Labour allowed the campaign to be played like a rugby match where the pattern "exaggerates the opposition's strengths and enables them to hide their weaknesses".

Labour was made to look as if it was only interested in issues affecting the poorest in society such as food banks and the so-called bedroom tax, he added.

For more on this story, see Sunday Politics Wales on BBC One Wales at 11:00 BST on Sunday, 17 May.