Who is Eluned Morgan, the next First Minister of Wales? | Welsh Politics

Earlier this summer, a party was held at a church hall in Ely, a housing estate a few miles west of Cardiff city centre, to mark Eluned Morgan’s 30 years in frontline politics.

It was an opportunity to celebrate how Morgan rose from a young idealist picking coffee in Nicaragua alongside the Sandinistas in the 1980s to a member of the European Parliament, the House of Lords and the Welsh parliament, the Senedd.

A few months later, Lady Morgan of Ely looks set to become Wales’ first female First Minister after Vaughan Gething’s brief and troubled tenure.

It appears likely that she will be the only candidate to replace Gething as Welsh Labour leader when the deadline for potential successors is reached on Wednesday lunchtime.

Morgan is an interesting figure, with deep roots in Ely, which made headlines last year when two teenagers were rioting and being chased by police, and in the Labour movement. She is a staunch defender of the Welsh language and a fervent internationalist.

But she will need to draw on her deep political experience and softer people skills to unite a fractured Welsh Labour party, heal divisions within the Senedd and then fend off challenges from the right, in the form of Reform UK, and the left, Plaid Cymru, at the next Senedd election in two years’ time.

Morgan was born in 1967, the daughter of the Reverend Bob Morgan, a Church in Wales vicar who became Labour leader of South Glamorgan County Council.

She was educated at Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf, then the only secondary school in Cardiff that offered Welsh language reading. Times were tough. She once told the Guardian: “I was one of the few children in my area of ​​Cardiff who had a Welsh-medium education and I remember very well having stones thrown at our bus because they refused to have a Welsh-medium school in their area.”

Morgan won a scholarship to the United World College of the Atlantic in the Vale of Glamorgan, where she studied for the International Baccalaureate, and graduated with a degree in European Studies from the University of Hull. After university, she worked as a researcher for Welsh-language television channel S4C and the BBC.

She was active in the successful 1997 referendum campaign for a Welsh assembly, telling former Welsh Minister Leighton Andrews for his book Wales Says Yes that the result was “the most emotional moment of my life”.

Andrews, who believes Morgan will be a wise and effective First Minister, said: “She has a unique background which has given her an understanding of how people from different communities in Wales feel and experience life. Her political experiences are diverse and she has a good understanding of Wales and its place in the UK, Europe and the world.”

Morgan’s political career took off at the age of 27 when she was elected to the European Parliament. Her Welsh Government biography states that she was only the fifth woman elected to full-time political office in Welsh history and the first full-time Welsh politician to have a baby while in office. Morgan was knighted in 2011 and has held shadow ministerial positions in the House of Lords.

In May 2016 she was elected to the Welsh Assembly (as it was then known) and held responsibilities within the Welsh Government for international relations, the Welsh language and health.

There have been embarrassing moments. In 2022, she apologised to the Senedd when she was banned from driving for speeding. Last year, she had to apologise again for joking that the late Margaret Thatcher might be next in line to run for a job in Britain’s Conservative government.

Morgan apologised for her “fruity language” to the Covid inquiry when it was sitting in Cardiff after a text message emerged in which she said during a seizure: “We’re all screwed.” She told the inquiry that her husband was a priest and she would be in trouble at home.

In January this year, during the last election campaign for Labour leader, she gave a frank interview to WalesOnline in which she said she did not stand because you had to be “absolutely sure” you wanted the job.

She said: “I currently work about 12 hours a day, six days a week, and on my one day off I look after my mother who has Alzheimer’s, so I didn’t think there was room for me to do more.”

Laura McAllister, professor of public policy at Cardiff University, said Morgan was extremely bright, knowledgeable and good company.

“She is human and sometimes just being a politician who can empathize with the lives of ordinary people and have a certain social and emotional intelligence can go a long way.”

Her task will be difficult. McAllister said: “If she can establish some unity within the Labour group in the Senedd, her most important task will then be to try to convince an increasingly sceptical Welsh population that Labour should retain its position from 2026. Eluned Morgan will be tested.”