It's goodbye from him
That Rhodri Morgan stepped on to the stage for his big Welsh night farewell during "the fightback conference" as it was dubbed must have been a bit galling but he'd have to admit it made sense somehow. The irony was there for all to see. The man's personal appeal might not have waned one bit but his party's under his leadership? It's been hitting an all time low.
Let's come out with it: Rhodri Morgan is remarkably popular - not just well known, not just well liked but genuinely respected. He's the First Minister who has a pint down the pub. He's the local Assembly Member who buys his loaf in the farmer's market on a Sunday morning looking like the rest of us on a Sunday morning. He's the man who shows you his garden and the wrens nesting in it with a delight that tells you he'll have a life after all of this is over. He's the man who missed Mwnt so much last month that he went swimming in the sea off Barry Island for the first time since he was a child. "Miss Baywatch Barry Island 2009" who offered to save him clearly thought he was struggling. He revelled in what he thought was his powerful stroke.
He was our lad, put down by the Prime Minister, "shafted" as Rhodri Morgan was to put it years later by Tony Blair. He lost the election for the Labour leadership first time round to Alun Michael by 52.68% of the vote to 47.32%.
Now you can argue that 5.36% of the vote was the making of him. When he eventually got the job, it came with an enormous amount of goodwill and the feeling that the right man was now in the right job.
Even people who had no intention of voting Labour would answer the door to a canvassing Rhodri Morgan and be pleased to see him. It was "Hyia Rhodri" before - in recent years at least - going out and voting for another party or simply staying at home. His personal approval ratings as a politician caused a psephologist to send me a note saying simply: "With figures like those, Rhodri for Pope I say". Yet his party's approval ratings in Wales? With figures like those, they are, as Mr Morgan himself once said, toast.
On Sunday night in Brighton he was saying goodbye to a party with its back against the wall, a party that was beaten to second place in Wales by the Conservatives back in June and that has happened on his watch. How is it, one colleague and friend after another has said over the past few weeks, that people like Rhodri more than they like most politicians virtually anywhere in the UK but in Wales, in successive elections now, Labour has suffered more in the polls than virtually anywhere in the UK? Why can he no longer endow his party with his own popularity?
We're about to set off to Transport House - Labour's HQ. More irony. There's rebuilding work going on inside but outside the place simply looks under siege, a bit like a bomb site. That is where Mr Morgan will tell the Welsh Executive Committee of the Labour party and his fellow Labour AMs that he intends to stand down, that - as he put in Brighton - he's getting "ready to hand the baton over to the next generation".
That's when we'll learn who really wants to grab that baton and when we start to learn whether the race for the Labour leadershp will be about personal appeal, or a realisation amongst the candidates that that doesn't seem to cut it any more.
I'm Betsan Powys, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on .
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