The Welsh Labour leader launched a broadside at Keir Starmer today amid a mounting panic over the Reform threat.
Baroness Morgan used a speech marking a year until Senedd elections to insist she ‘will not stay silent’ when the PM makes ‘decisions that we think will harm Welsh communities’.
She demanded a ‘rethink’ of cuts to winter fuel allowance and benefits, pointing out that many people in Wales were heavily reliant on handouts.
The intervention from the First Minister comes as the main parties try to come up with a response after disastrous local elections. The government are expected to unveil a crackdown on immigration next week.
Tony Blair has waded into the row, cautioning that Labour will be doomed to defeat if they are just the ‘managers of the status quo’.
Labour lost the only council it was defending to Reform last week, plus Runcorn & Helsby in a Commons by-election.
Nigel Farage’s party won control of 10 councils in England, picking up more than 600 seats across the local elections.
Mr Farage has the Welsh and Scottish parliaments in his sights, as he said on Friday that ‘next year we will go for the Welsh and Scottish parliamentary elections, and I believe we can and we will win that next general election’.
Sir Keir has been trying to manage a frantic inquest over the poll drubbing, with winter fuel allowance and welfare reforms among policies criticised by Labour figures.
Wes Streeting refused to rule out a U-turn on the winter fuel allowance this morning.
The Health Secretary admitted axing the payments for millions of pensioners had been an issue with voters on the doorstep.
Touring broadcast studios, he said the government would be ‘reflecting on what the voters told us’.
The comments came despite Downing Street trying to pour cold water on the idea of a rethink following the grim polls last week.
In her speech, Lady Morgan vowed she ‘will not hesitate to challenge from within’ in a message to Sir Keir.
While praising him as a ‘serious’ leader, she added: ‘To be honest, though, it hasn’t all been popular.
‘The cut in winter fuel allowance is something that comes up time and again, and I hope the UK Government will rethink this policy.’
Lady Morgan said proposed welfare reforms were ‘causing serious concern here, where we have a higher number of people dependent on disability benefits than elsewhere’.
She said: ‘In some of our former coalfield communities, over 40 per cent of working-age adults are in receipt of disability benefits.
‘We know that disability cuts are likely to hit Wales more than six times more, proportionally, in some areas in Wales compared to England.’
The peer said: ‘We know that splits and spats make for easy news, but this isn’t drama. This is honesty, this is responsibility. This is what leadership looks like.
‘So when we disagree, we will say it. When we see unfairness, we’ll stand up for it.
‘When Westminster makes decisions that we think will harm the Welsh communities, we will not stay silent.
‘This is not a split. This is grown up, modern government. This is not disloyalty. This is patriotic responsibility.’
The Senedd elections next spring will be Lady Morgan’s first as party leader, having assumed the role last summer.
Polling by Survation in April suggested that voters are split three ways when it comes to the Senedd elections, with Labour on 27 per cent, and Reform and Plaid Cymru both on 24 per cent.
Such numbers would mark a significant downturn in the Labour vote, after the party managed to secure 39.9 per cent in the last elections in 2021.
In the same contest, Plaid Cymru got 20.3 per cent of the vote, while Reform got just 1.6 per cent.
Speaking in Cardiff, Lady Morgan will say: ‘Where we disagree we’ll say it, where we see unfairness we’ll stand up to it.
‘And when Westminster makes decisions that we think will harm Welsh communities, we will not stay silent.’
She will add: ‘I will not hesitate to challenge from within, even when it means shaking things up and disrupting the comfortable.’
In recent weeks, Baroness Morgan has called for Wales to receive a ‘significant share’ of a Government clean steel fund in the wake of ministers intervening in Scunthorpe, telling Senedd members that ‘we do not want to see this funding going on supporting the Scunthorpe plant at the expense of the situation in Welsh steel’.
According to Politico, ex-PM Sir Tony told a conference in California yesterday: ‘If you end up just being the managers of the status quo and the status quo isn’t working for people, they’re going to put you out.’
A Government source has denied claims that Downing Street is rethinking the winter fuel policy.