Leadership Quote by Ron Davies

Accountability is doing a lot of rhetorical heavy lifting here, and Ron Davies knows it. By framing the issue as a matter of "responsibilities" rather than preferences, he turns a policy pledge into a moral obligation. The repetition of "live up to" is not elegant, but it is strategic: it hammers the idea that an election is a contract, and contracts come with duties. In a political culture where promises routinely evaporate after polling day, the line tries to make backtracking feel like a breach of trust, not a change of mind.

The crucial move is his pivot from what politicians promised to what "the people of Wales" expected. That shifts the locus of legitimacy away from party maneuvering and toward a collective mandate. It's also a subtle warning to colleagues: opposing or delaying the promise isn't just internal dissent; it's disrespecting Welsh voters. The phrase "in the expectation that we would deliver" paints the electorate as rational customers who bought a product and are now owed delivery. Davies is effectively raising the reputational cost of reneging.

Context matters: as a Welsh politician closely associated with devolution, Davies often had to keep a coalition of skeptics, pragmatists, and enthusiasts aligned behind constitutional change. This sentence is designed to shrink the room for equivocation. It's less an appeal to lofty ideals than a pressure tactic: if you benefited from Welsh votes, you inherit Welsh commitments.