Carwyn Jones was crying for Labour’s slow, horrible death | Jonathan Jones

The party’s leader in Wales broke down after he failed to be re-elected as first minister. It was a refreshingly honest sight – and a foreboding one, too

Welsh assembly leaders do not go gentle into that good night, as Dylan Thomas very nearly wrote, but sob, sob against the dying of the light. The light may not yet be gone for Carwyn Jones, Labour leader in the assembly, but it has certainly dimmed, and suddenly: Cardiff officials appear uncertain how to resolve the deadlock that arose when the election of a new first minister produced a dead heat between Jones and Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood. If party talks fail, there may even have to be a new Welsh assembly election.

In the shock of his unexpected failure to be re-elected by the Welsh assembly as first minister (and in spite of Labour still being the biggest party), Jones was photographed showing an emotion most modern politicians would do anything rather than reveal. He put his head in his hands and wept. The civilised setting of the curved wooden desks, each with its silver computer terminal, inside Richard Rogers’ temple to modern democracy that is the Senedd building on Cardiff Bay, powerfully frames his anguish. Jones hunches down in his dark suit jacket as if trying to vanish behind his workstation. His hair, the same colour as the metal screen casing, is all we can see of his features, for his face is buried in a huge hankie. There is no ambiguity about what we are seeing. Jones is crying his eyes out.

We say we want politicians to be more honest and authentic, yet this display of pure feeling seemed shocking

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