As Rhodri Morgan walks off into the sunset of retirement, what will be his legacy to Wales?Given that his area of expertise was economic development, it is ironic that following his last day in the job, the latest GVA figures for Wales were released by the Office for National Statistics.
As has happened every year since he was elected as First Minister, Wales was again at the bottom of the prosperity league table.
Not surprisingly, the statistics show that during the last ten years, the nation's prosperity relative to the rest of the UK has continued to decline, despite the so-called 'devolution dividend' and billions of pounds of additional European funding.
Since 1999, the GVA in Wales has grown by only 47.5 per cent as compared to 57.6 per cent for the UK as a whole. If the Welsh economy had kept pace with the UK average, then an additional £3.1 billion would have been generated during this period.
In terms of prosperity per head, Wales now stands at 74.3 per cent of the UK average, easily the worst performance of any UK region.
Indeed, the annual growth rate for the Welsh economy of 3.0 per cent is the worse recorded in the period 1989-2008 measured by the Statistics Office.
Personally, I have always liked Rhodri Morgan and wish him well in his retirement. However, the truth of the matter is that on a political level, it is clear that his tenure has done little to help the development of the Welsh economy. And since his decision to abolish the WDA, the Welsh economy has grown at a far slower rate than in the previous five years.
Therefore, after a decade of his leadership at the helm of the Welsh Assembly Government, Wales remains at a record low in terms of relative prosperity with the rest of the UK and with the highest unemployment rate since April 1996.
Is this really the legacy he wanted to leave Wales after a decade as First Minister? I very much doubt it.
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“This supports the conclusion of the Welsh Assembly Government’s commission on funding which said that the budget for Welsh public services should be allocated on a needs based formula.
So the official line is that we need more public sector funding to generate wealth in Wales.
God help us.
The tragedy about all this is that there is no coherent economic strategy regarding the spend of convergence money.
On those occasions when it is not being spent by WAG to shore up their failing business support programmes, then it is a mad scramble to see who can get the rest of the money without a single thought about how it all fits together.
You would have thought that after the mess that was Objective 1, someone would have learnt the lesson.
Sadly, no-one has.