The former Labour first minister of Wales also told the PA news agency he wants to use his new position in the House of Lords – he was sworn in as Lord Jones of Penybont in January – to be a “voice for Wales” and a proponent for devolution in Parliament’s upper chamber.
While he remains a supporter of former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown’s recommendations for the Lords to be reformed into an elected upper chamber, Lord Jones said he accepted a peerage as it is “important to have a voice from Welsh Labour who sat in the devolved parliament”.
Labour needs to talk plainly on the doorstep and reclaim its title as the party of working people to counter the looming threat of Reform in Wales, Carwyn Jones has said.
While he said it would be difficult to predict how polling might shift by next year, the Labour peer said the party should now be asking why it is losing a “slice of our vote” to Reform, and how it takes on the rival party.
In one of his first media appearances since returning to frontline politics, Lord Jones told PA that no party will likely win a majority under the new proportional voting system set to be implemented in the Senedd.
