Lee Waters MS

Centre of Welsh Politics and Society's and WISERD's 2025 Annual Lecture November 27th - Main Hall, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University Diolch am y croeso, ac y cyfle i dod nol. I don’t come back to Aber very often, so when I do I get the strange sensation of both continuity and change. The prom, the grind of Penglais Hill, and the smell of the books in the Huw Owen Library, are just the same as I remember them. They are fixed points. They have barely changed. What has changed in 30 years is the context. 30 years ago this just wouldn’t be happening. There were no annual lectures on Welsh politics, there were no conversations about Welsh politics. In fact, in the mid 90’s, whilst there was undoubtedly plenty of politics in Wales, there was not what we can properly describe as ‘Welsh politics’. What we had instead was neatly captured by the title of the HTV Wales weekly political programme of the time: Wales in Westminster. A programme that didn’t even ...

To round off the documentary series I gathered an expert panel to discuss raised in the podacst series  Y Pumed Llawr - The Fifth Floor. Dr Hannah White Director of the Institute for Government, Prof. James Mitchell of Edinburgh University, former First Minister Prof. Mark Drakeford and former Education Minister Kirsty Williams joined me in Cardiff on on 13th October 2025 in front of a live audience. The event was hosted by Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre and you watch it all here: The Fifth Floor LIVE: The Operation of Devolved Government in Wales

As eyes turn to Wales in the run-up to an unprecedented Senedd elections I've teamed up with podcast producer Richard Martin, Politics Professor Laura McAllister and former Tory adviser Lauren McEvatt to launch a new show which will try and take an intelligent and lively look at what's going on, and what's behind it. Have a listen, or watch, The Welsh Politics Podcast

Speech in the Senedd on 16th July 2025 Let me start with the obvious: Farming is hard. I am proud to come from a family of farmers, and I understand the vital role that farmers play. We need them, and we value them as key workers. Not only do they feed us, but they are an important part of our cultural mosaic, and at their best are stewards of our environment. I think it's important to re-state this because the debate around farming is in a bad place. It has become dragged into the culture wars. And those divisions are heightened through our political debate. I’ve heard my colleagues make the point that farming contributes less than 1 per cent to the GDP of the country. But that’s a bit like saying a washer contributes less than 1 per cent to the functioning of a tap. It may be true, but it misses the point. On the other hand, it feels like the main farming unions are fixated on a grievance narrative - and the opposition parties in this Senedd compete with each other to amplify it...

Published on LabourList 30th June 2025 The compelling TV series, Succession, is meant to be a satire. But its biting observations of how power and money are wielded are bang-on-the-nose. In a wide-ranging interview with the New Statesman last week its star, Brian Cox, mused on the injustices in the way the UK works.  “Wales gets the tap end of the bath every time”, the actor sagely observed. It’s not the first time a colourful metaphor has been used to describe Welsh vulnerability in the power-stakes. Neil Kinnock in the constitutional debates of the 1970s liked to talk about ‘sore thumb devolution’. He opposed an Assembly for Wales because he worried the extra support we needed would make us stick out like a sore-thumb, and risk an ‘English backlash’.  He didn’t think Welsh interests were best served by separating them from those of other parts of the UK. It is a view that continues to resonate at the ‘Welsh table’ in the Members' tearoom in the House of Commons. The curren...