Eluned Morgan: Wales' 'colourful' new first minister

Eluned Morgan will be Wales' next first minister after winning the votes of 28 Senedd members in a vote in the Welsh Parliament.

The Senedd was recalled from its summer break to nominate her, after Vaughan Gething resigned. She will become Wales' first female first minister, 25 years after the post was created.

Political prowess

Morgan's world has been "steeped in politics" since she was born and brought up in Ely, Cardiff, in 1967, said the London Evening Standard and "she was out delivering leaflets aged six". As an "idealistic youngster" she picked coffee in Nicaragua alongside the Sandinistas in the 1980s, said The Guardian.

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After university she worked briefly in TV before becoming the youngest member of the European Parliament aged 27, in 1994. She was granted a peerage in 2011, and went to the House of Lords where, as Baroness Morgan of Ely, she was a shadow minister for Wales.

Five years later she moved to the Welsh assembly, where she represented Mid and West Wales region. Following a failed leadership bid she became health minister in 2021, inheriting the "devastating legacy of Covid" and "soaring waiting times", said the BBC.

Big questions

"It is the greatest pleasure and privilege of my life to stand before you as the first woman to become first minister of Wales," Morgan told her fellow Senedd members after today's vote.

She vowed to "add my own distinctive contribution" to the post's "legacy", doing it "perhaps with a vibrant splash of colour" because "the grey suits are out". Her name will need to go to the King for him to confirm, but this is considered a formality.

Morgan has "promised big changes, but there's a fairly limiting factor – there isn't a huge pool of people to pick from, and there are some egos to massage", said WalesOnline.

Among the big questions for her leadership are "who she will give her health role to, and what she will do with Vaughan Gething" added the website. "Will she keep him in the cabinet, and does he even want to be there?"

There may be trouble ahead

Being first minister and unifying Welsh Labour after a "torrid few months" will be an "even more difficult task than the one she leaves behind", said the BBC.

Morgan will be "hoping for a gentler ride than her predecessor enjoyed", said Gareth Lewis, BBC Wales political editor, but with an in-tray of "party unity, NHS waiting lists, steel jobs, farming subsidies" and "support needed from elsewhere to pass a budget", there could be "more twists and turns yet" before the 2026 Senedd election.

Her new job will be "difficult", agreed The Guardian, but she is an "interesting figure", a "passionate champion of the Welsh language", and an "avid internationalist".

Morgan can be "blunt and to the point", said the Evening Standard. At the Covid Inquiry she admitted to using "fruity language" in text messages to colleagues about the Omicron variant, including one which read, "we are all f*****".

There have been other "embarrassments", said The Guardian. In 2022 she apologised in the Senedd when she was banned from driving for speeding and last year she quipped that the late Margaret Thatcher could be next in line for a place in the UK Tory government.