Welsh Labour leadership: the latest

I start many of my broadcasts from Cardiff Bay at the moment talking about the intense levels of whatsapp activity behind the scenes between Labour AMs.

That is not in doubt but there have also been plenty of elephant-in-the-room conversations at the assembly about anything but the forthcoming leadership contest.

I am told it was not discussed at the Labour assembly group meeting this week in any depth, and one Labour AM told me he even had a lift conversation with a Ken Skates, a potential candidate, about the colour of ties.

There are lots of permutations at work here and unusually it is the left of the party that has got itself organised.

So as of Wednesday afternoon, here is the status of the runners and riders apart from Mark Drakeford:

Undecided

Eluned Morgan is undecided. If she went for it she would not have any problems getting the sufficient number of nominations because many find it difficult to envisage this contest without a woman, particularly as there are more women than men in the Labour group at the assembly.

Ken Skates is undecided but is coming under pressure to stand as the only candidate from north Wales.

If he gets the required level of support I am told that Vaughan Gething could launch his bid within days.

He has never answered the question but it is a working assumption from most in Welsh Labour that he will try to stand.

Contest

One senior figure in party suggested Mr Gething may struggle to get sufficient support from within the group, although most people I speak to are expecting him to make it to the final contest.

The key stat here is that each candidate needs the support of five AMs other than themselves.

If you take out the nine in the Drakeford camp and Carwyn Jones, who by tradition will not vote, there are 19 nominations to play for.

On paper, there is room for three more to make it but that requires an even split which is not necessarily how the numbers could end up.

Huw Irranca Davies is yet to make up his mind.

Corbyn

There is a clear desire within the group for there to be a contest between at least three but equally there has been concern about whether that will happen because of the apparent ease with which Mark Drakeford hoovered up so many votes.

If any more come out supporting him then the numbers for the rest get squeezed even more.

You then enter the realms of nominations being made in order to allow a wide contest, rather than because they necessarily believe they would be the right leader.

This was the motivation for Huw Irranca Davies nominating Jeremy Corbyn when he stood for the leadership at Westminster, and look what happened there.

Two final thoughts: the one member one vote debate is now in the hands of the Welsh executive committee, and if it moves in that direction then it puts Mark Drakeford in an even stronger position.

Caretaker

And what stuck out for me about the Mark Drakeford candidacy was how explicit he was about how long he plans to stay in the job if he wins it.

He will be anxious to avoid the 'caretaker' tag but that is the risk when he mapped out a time-frame which allows a handover to someone from the new cohort at some point after the next election.

One counter-view is that ten year stints (which we saw with Rhodri Morgan and nearly with Carwyn Jones) are too long and an explicitly defined shorter time-frame injects more urgency into a new set of priorities.

He may have been part of the fabric for a long time but a Welsh Government with Mark Drakeford as First Minister would look and feel very different from one with Carwyn Jones.

I would imagine there will be fewer speeches at think tanks and trade missions with the CBI and far more appearances in food banks from a First Minister looking to focus on areas like social inequality.

But there is a long way to go before that could happen, and as we have learnt in recent years, you cannot take anything for granted in a campaign.