Rhodri Morgan, 1939–2017

Clear red water, one-legged ducks, reciting Welsh Commonwealth Games records from the 1950s, and understanding the role of coalitions and political conciliation to stabilise our young democracy. These are the things I remember most about Rhodri Morgan (although, who ever needed to use his last name?).

I spoke to Rhodri at the Sports Hall of Fame Dinner last Friday. We talked a bit about the Election, but mostly about the Champions League final next month held for the first time in our proud capital and Rhodri’s birthplace, along with a bit of debate about Geraint Thomas’s chances in the Giro d’Italia thrown in too.

I smile when I remember the times when I have been been chatting to Rhodri about something as technical as changes to our Assembly’s electoral system or the flaws in the Wales Bill and then he’d suddenly ask me about the Welsh women’s football team and when they might qualify for a major tournament. That was Rhodri: as interested in things outside politics as within-a politician with a hinterland who had a far greater appeal than most modern politicians simply because of his charm, his personality and his interest in people. Warm and engaging and always conscious that for most people, politics didn’t consume their every waking hour and nor should it ours. He was that rare thing-an intellectual who was interested in ordinary people’s views too.

Rhodri’s charisma, intelligence, strength of personality and constitutional know-how was the boost for Welsh devolution at a time when it so desperately needed it. It is easy to forget how precarious the early Assembly was, how limited its “legitimacy” felt and how desperately it needed the credibility, profile and trust with which Rhodri infused it. The nonsense of the early devolution model, confined in the strait jacket of the old corporate body with no separation between government and legislature, had to change and Rhodri (along with the Presiding Officer, Dafydd Elis Thomas) were crucial in engineering that change.

The political Rhodri Morgan took no prisoners, but his passion for our small nation shone through all that he did. Less tribal than some of his Labour colleagues, his awareness that stable government for Wales meant deals and compromises (first with the Lib Dems but more significantly the ‘One Wales’ coalition with Plaid Cymru in 2007) helped shift the mood of Welsh politics and definitely for the better.

It is hard to think of Rhodri without thinking of another hugely successful and passionate AM and former MP, his beloved wife Julie. We have all lost a good friend, leader and colleague today but, for a couple as evidently close and loving as the Morgans, Julie’s loss must be unbearable. The nation’s thoughts are with her and the family.