Mr Rhodri Morgan, who will today be installed as the new First Secretary of Wales, says "devolution has got to mean what it says. It is a defined transfer of power". He will have his work cut out to convince the Labour leadership and government in London of this, but has a strong mandate to do so following the precipitate departure from office last week of his predecessor, Mr Alun Michael. Mr Morgan will also test London's tolerance of political alliances in Wales, since he has floated the possibility of reaching agreement with the nationalist Plaid Cymru as well as the Liberal Democrats on a programme to be voted through the Welsh Assembly.
All this cuts right across the lines laid down by the prime minister, Mr Blair, in his dealings with Wales. He campaigned vigorously against Mr Morgan before, during and after the Welsh Assembly elections last year on the grounds that he was not suitable for the job - despite his overwhelming popularity among Welsh Labour activists and voters. Mr Michael was duly installed as Labour leader and First Minister with the help of the party machine, including trade union bloc votes that Mr Blair has excoriated.
Mr Michael was a loyal but lacklustre First Secretary, precisely the characteristics calculated to disenchant Labour activists. And so it proved, as Labour voters swung to Plaid Cymru. His undoing came when he failed to secure matching Treasury funds for the Objective 1 aid Mr Blair won for Wales at the Agenda 2000 EU summit in Berlin last year. The chancellor, Mr Brown, insisted they should be found in the existing budget for Wales. Plaid Cymru and Labour members of the Welsh Assembly sharply disagreed, as a result of which Mr Michael was reduced to resigning before being voted out, in a humiliating denouement.
The change comes at something of a defining moment for Labour's wider devolution programme. Rows with Scottish Labour over education and agriculture coincide with the Welsh arguments. So do the final stages of selecting Labour's candidate for the lord mayoralty election in London - where Mr Blair has been as opposed to Mr Ken Livingstone as he was previously to Mr Morgan in Wales. The recent resignation from the government of Mr Peter Guilfoyle, a Liverpool MP and Blair loyalist who became disenchanted with the government's commitment to his region and traditional working class constituents, underlines a regional dimension within England that is coming steadily up the political agenda. British commentators see suspension of the Northern Ireland institutions in the same perspective. It all underlines Mr Morgan's belief that devolution is a defined transfer of power. Its success depends on London and the Labour leadership being willing to let go control rather than insisting on getting their own way. In Mr Morgan that agenda has found a doughty defender.