Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford has accused former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson of a "bully boy Britain" approach to working with leaders of the devolved nations.
Mr Drakeford appeared on The Rest is Politics podcast this week for an indepth conversation with former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell and former Tory minister Rory Stewart. When it was suggested that Mr Drakeford's relationship with Mr Johnson had appeared "very, very difficult", the Welsh Labour leader replied: "I worked with a series of different Prime Ministers, including Conservative Prime Ministers, and I think there was a very big contrast between relations with Theresa May when she was Prime Minister and with her successor.
"I disagreed with Mrs May on almost anything you'd like to say and was terribly frustrated by what I thought was her fundamental mistake in regarding Brexit as a 'winner takes all' sort of referendum. But I would describe her as an instinctive democrat. If you were in a room with her and she was Prime Minister, she would make a conscious effort to make sure that anybody in the room... had an opportunity to contribute their view."
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He added that relationships between politicians in different parties cannot be constructive unless they are founded on "a basic sense of respect". Mr Campbell then asked if he felt Mr Johnson had not treated him with respect.
Mr Drakeford replied: "On an individual level, on the rare occasions that I had direct conversations with Mr Johnson, he was courteous. He wasn't disrespectful in that way. But his approach to the future of the United Kingdom was very different.
"Theresa May, in her final lecture in Edinburgh, described the United Kingdom as a voluntary association of four nations, and I think that was the end of quite a long journey, probably, for her. Boris Johnson believed the way to save the United Kingdom was to assert muscular unionism — bully boy Britain, as you might more pejoratively put it — in which the way to secure the future of the United Kingdom was to show who was boss. And actually that is completely counterproductive and contributes to the fragility of the United Kingdom rather than helping it be something people choose to belong to, and want to belong to."
Later in the podcast, Mr Campbell asked about Wales' future in the union if Scotland and Northern Ireland were to leave. Mr Drakeford said: "I think the risk the United Kingdom will not continue is greater today than at any time in my political lifetime. I certainly don't think it's inevitable.
"I think there is an offer about the United Kingdom. It is a Labour offer, in my view, that people would wish to buy into. They would see the advantages the United Kingdom can bring. We are desperately short of an articulation by any other party of a positive case for a voluntary union."
Mr Drakeford spoke about the Welsh government's recent decision to set up the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, chaired by ex-Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams and Cardiff University politics expert Prof Laura McAllister. The First Minister said: “It’s asked to look at two questions. First of all, if the United Kingdom stays together, how can we better organise ourselves to make sure that it goes on being a success?
“But then it has a second question, which is that if the United Kingdom starts not to stay together, what are the options for Wales? Because the idea that Scotland leaves and everything else continues as though that hadn’t happened is clearly not plausible at all.
“We’ve never needed to do serious thinking about what the choices for Wales would be and the commission will help us to do that, but we’re having to map out that territory with a seriousness that I think just reflects the risks that we currently face.”
Mr Drakeford described calls for Welsh independence as "very much a minority view". He added: “There is a growing interest in independence because of the risks to the future of the United Kingdom, that’s inevitable. But it would still be... not a small minority, but no more than 20% or so.”
You can listen to the full podcast on Spotify. And you can find more of the latest Welsh politics news here.
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