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The behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings that led to Eluned Morgan becoming First Minister

24 Jul 2024 5 minute read
Vaughan Gething, Jeremy Miles and Eluned Morgan.

Martin Shipton

Eluned Morgan will be elected unopposed as the new leader of Welsh Labour today, following intense activity behind the scenes aimed at removing toxicity from the party.

For the former MEP and member of the House of Lords it will be an astonishing turnaround from 2018, when she struggled to get enough nominations from Senedd colleagues to get on the ballot paper for that year’s leadership election.

In the event, she just made it after outgoing First Minister Carwyn Jones was persuaded to back her so that a woman candidate could go forward. Ironically, not a single female MS nominated Baroness Morgan and in the election she came a distant third behind Mark Drakeford and Vaughan Gething.

When Mr Drakeford announced his departure late last year, Eluned Morgan didn’t even bother to put her name forward, realising she wouldn’t get the required support.

‘Fabulous’

This time, however, she has scooped up support from virtually the entire Senedd group. Many MSs have issued statements of strong support for her, with one female Senedd Member going so far as to describe her as “fabulous”.

So what’s changed? Many will argue that it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her performance as Health Minister – latterly Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care – since waiting times have got worse and NHS Wales has been plagued by a succession of seemingly never-ending scandals. And as we reported earlier this week, campaigners on a variety of health-related issues most definitely aren’t among those who sing her praises.

A week ago, no one was talking of her as a plausible successor to Mr Gething who, after a long period during which he seemed determined to cling on to the First Ministership whatever the cost to the party, had finally succumbed to the inevitable and resigned.

Most assumed that Jeremy Miles, who had been defeated only narrowly by Mr Gething in March, despite the latter’s £200,000 donation from a criminal, would step up and be anointed as the new leader. But as events turned out, that was to misread the situation entirely.

‘Away day’

A group “away day” held in the unglamorous surrounds of an office block between Cardiff city centre and Cardiff Bay demonstrated how poisonous the atmosphere had become in the Labour Senedd group. Most Labour MSs had opposed Mr Gething during the recent leadership election, preferring Mr Miles. They’d watched in mounting concern as negative story after negative story was published about Mr Gething, but hadn’t been prepared to take decisive action against him. They appeared to have been afflicted with inertia.

One opponent of Mr Gething had told NationCymru they would happily move a motion of no confidence against him in the group if they thought it might succeed.

As the weeks went on, allegations of MS-on-MS bullying emerged, with evidence of Labour “comrades” becoming increasingly fraught with each other and the atmosphere becoming increasingly insufferable.

During the “away day”, about half a dozen MSs called on Mr Gething to resign. This infuriated his diehard supporters, who had swallowed whole his narrative that he had done nothing wrong and blamed NationCymru for its negative coverage of his travails.

The “away day” broke up without any resolution, but it became clear that things could not carry on as they were. Four members of the Cabinet – Julie James, Lesley Griffiths, Jeremy Miles and Mick Antoniw – decided to tell Mr Gething he should go. When he refused to do so, they quit the government. This left him in an impossible situation, with a bitterly divided group and the prospect of sniping continuing over the summer and the ultimate certainty that he wouldn’t be able to get a Welsh Government Budget passed by the Senedd because Labour didn’t have a majority and no opposition MSs would vote for it if he was still in charge.

Resign

Mr Gething announced his intention to resign, but Welsh Labour devised a timetable for a leadership election that wouldn’t see a winner until the middle of September. While Mr Miles was quickly seen as the favourite to succeed, Mr Gething’s supporters loudly made it clear that they would not accept him because of his role in precipitating their champion’s downfall. An acrimonious leadership election campaign seemed odds on, with Mr Miles opposed by a candidate from the Gething camp.

Such a prospect was seen as potentially disastrous by some senior Welsh Labour figures who were somewhat detached from the fray. Welsh Labour isn’t all about the Senedd, of course. There’s a sizeable Westminster contingent, as well as grassroots party members across Wales.

It’s difficult to specify who exactly got involved, but it’s understood that senior figures motivated by the need to defuse a potentially disastrous conflict that could cause lasting damage to Welsh Labour decided to seek a resolution to the crisis.

A plan was hatched and Mr Miles and Baroness Morgan were spoken to. Mr Miles, who had already decided to run, was persuaded to withdraw and nominate Baroness Morgan for the leadership in the interests of party unity. Huw Irranca-Davies was drafted in as a candidate for Deputy First Minister to give the ticket greater solidity, even though the constitutional justification for such an arrangement was non-existent. Nevertheless, pragmatism was the order of the day and everyone was expected to fall in line.

Being able to swiftly bury the hatchet in the interests of party unity was seen as paramount and the Senedd group bought the need for it. A contested election would have done the party more damage, with the inevitability of fallings-out, not to mention the bizarre spectacle of a discredited First Minister strutting around Wales in the meantime as if nothing had happened.

The King is dead. Long live the Baroness!


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Nick
Nick
4 months ago

I think that your stellar and high quality journalism throughout this whole ordeal has inadvertently left you slightly compromised in terms of being able to consider the situation objectively. You did a great job of getting high quality material from the source close to Jeremy Miles, and you can rightly take a lot of the credit for keeping the pressure on the story. It is understandable, given how badly VG has handled the situation, that you feel the need to keep reinforcing this point. But it is concerning to me that you seem to be unable to properly appreciate and… Read more »

includemeout
includemeout
4 months ago

Does anyone in Welsh Labour have any ideas other than “let’s carry on doing the same things, but under a different (and hopefully less tainted) leader”? Compare with the other current and recent governing parties in Britain (the SNP in Edinburgh, the Tories and Labour in London). In each case, whatever one thinks, there are at least genuine differences of belief between the various factions. With Welsh Labour, it’s the same fuzzy technocratic progressivism wherever you look. All this toxicity, yet they don’t seem to disagree on anything. The long article published by Lee Waters after Gething’s demise was notable… Read more »

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
4 months ago

Long live the Baroness’ victims in hospitals up and down the country…!

Welsh Labour stinks to high heaven…

Billy James
Billy James
4 months ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

Agree ..

Howie
Howie
4 months ago

The Tories in Senedd will go along with this charade to avoid political oblivion, when a real opportunity to get Labour in a corner in the Senedd is a reality.
Reinforcing that they like Labour have no regard for Wales as a nation.

Welshman28
Welshman28
4 months ago

Your journalism is brilliant, one thing sadly missing is Jo Stevens and the devious work she did in all of this . I’m doing all I can for all my Labour friends to read this and understand that now in a wales we live under a dictatorship. That dictatorship is the Labour Party. It makes you shudder when you think how bad life is for anyone with health problems and NO prospects of it getting any better. The behaviour described in this article shows they don’t give a dam about people just promoting their overpowering organisation with a name of… Read more »

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