Last Thursday voters in Wales gave Labour a clear mandate to form another government in Cardiff Bay.

We always knew this would be a tough election, but our strong local campaigns and our inclusive message meant that we kept all but one of our seats to remain by far the largest party in the assembly.

And, despite David Cameron crowing just a few weeks ago that the Welsh Conservatives would take control of the assembly, his party fell to third behind Plaid Cymru and ended up losing seats.

Central to our success was building a broad coalition of voters, including those who voted Conservative last year. As a party we know that we cannot win government without reaching out beyond our comfort zone. In Wales no collection of Greens, nationalists and non-voters will ever be enough to deliver electoral success without winning over former Tories too.

We need to understand why people may not have voted Labour in the past and work hard to regain their trust. That is how we held on to seats like Gower and Vale of Clwyd, which we lost at last year’s general election and which the Tories had assumed that they would win in this election too.

We ran on a broad platform with six key pledges, including tax cuts for small businesses, free childcare for working parents and a promise to create 100,000 new apprenticeships. And at a time when wages still are not rising fast enough, we categorically ruled out using new powers to raise income tax on working people in Wales.

I am delighted that Welsh Labour remains in government so that we can continue making different choices to the Conservatives in Westminster. Choices like keeping tuition fees down and saving the education maintenance allowance when it was scrapped in England. Keeping our health service in public hands and working with NHS staff instead of provoking them to strike action. And acting to save the steel industry, in the face of lethargy and intransigence from ministers in Whitehall.

Along with our new mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and our leaders in local government, Welsh Labour will continue showing the difference that Labour can make when we are in power.

But we are not complacent. Our share of the vote was down on last time, as it was across the country, and in Wales we polled lower than we did at the general election last year. As Jeremy has said, we are not yet in a position to win in 2020 and we need to do much more to convince voters that we are a credible alternative to the Conservatives.

Although Plaid Cymru ended the night just one seat up, it ran us close in many of our Valleys constituencies. It is clear that if voters feel that Labour is losing touch, they will be quick to coalesce around the most obvious anti-Labour candidate and threaten even the safest of seats. We must be wary of this, not just in Wales but across England too.

And of course we saw United Kingdom Independence party assembly members elected for the first time. Part of the reason for this is the assembly’s electoral system, in which a third of the seats are elected on a regional list basis. This helps parties who cannot win constituency seats and penalises those who do.

But we cannot just blame the system; Ukip poses a real challenge to us in Wales and it now has seven assembly members who will use their elected offices to try and take Britain out of the European Union.

So there is no time for celebration or for complacency. We have to fight the next battle – defending Britain’s place in the EU. We know that Brexit would be a disaster for our communities in Wales and across the country, so our job now is to get back out on the doorstep and convince people to join us in voting to remain.

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Nia Griffith MP is shadow secretary of state for Wales. She tweets @NiaGriffithMP

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Photo: National Assembly for Wales