AMERICAN-style primaries should be held in the race to replace Carwyn Jones as first minister, one of the prospective candidates has said.

Blaenau Gwent's Alun Davies announced last week he would stand in the race for leader of Welsh Labour.

Under the party's current system candidates have to be nominated by a minimum of five other AMs, with members then getting the chance to vote.

But Mr Davies has said instead a series of primaries should be held across Wales, with any candidates getting more than 15 per cent of the total vote making it onto the ballot paper.

This, he said, would put power back in the hands of ordinary members.

In a blog the Labour AM said: "The purpose of this is to remove the power of patronage and appointment from professional politicians and return that power to party members as a whole."

He added: "The immediate impact of that will be two-fold.

"Firstly any prospective candidate has to do more than appeal to their friends and colleagues in (Cardiff) Bay.

"They will need to reach out across the whole country and the whole movement and speak to members about the sort of party and the sort of choice that they want to see.

"Secondly it would mean that potential candidates have to speak about those issues that matter to people and not politicians.

"The debate would be more about policy and politics and less about the potential for deals over jobs, roles, the process of governing and the politics of the group in the National Assembly.

"In this way a system of primaries would be more open, more democratic and more empowering. By removing the sense of an internal narrow selection the party and the group would be strengthened and the election when it takes place would be the election that the party has chosen rather an election where the candidates are, in effect, imposed upon the party."

He concluded: "This is the radical and democratising way in which Welsh Labour can not only avoid some of the narrow debate that we’ve seen over the process or structure of nominations over the summer and can demonstrate how democracy can enliven and open up politics."

Mark Drakeford, Vaughan Gething, Eluned Morgan and Huw Irranca-Davies are also running for the role. But so far only Mr Drakeford and Mr Gething had secured the necessary five nominations to make it onto the ballot paper.

The party currently runs an electoral college system, through which the vote is split into thirds, with one third allocated to AMs, MPs and MEPs, another third to regular members and the final third to affiliated bodies such as trade unions.

But a special conference is due to be held next month to determine whether this is changed to a one-member-one-vote system before the new leader is elected.