23 July 2024 , 17:30
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Expected to be the only candidate to lead Welsh Labour, she will have to use her experience to unite her party
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 the 30 years Eluned Morgan has spent in frontline politics.
It was a chance to celebrate how Morgan went from an idealistic youngster picking coffee in Nicaragua alongside the Sandinistas in the 1980s to seats in the European parliament, the House of Lords and the Welsh parliament, the Senedd.
A couple of months on, Lady Morgan of Ely looks set to become the first female first minister of Wales after Vaughan Gething’s brief and troubled tenure.
It looks likely that she will be the only candidate to replace Gething as leader of Welsh Labour when the deadline for potential successors to come forward is reached on Wednesday lunchtime.
Morgan is an interesting figure, firmly rooted in Ely, which hit the headlines last year when a riot took place after two teenagers who were being followed by the police died, and the Labour movement. She is a passionate champion of the Welsh language, and an avid internationalist.
But she will need to draw on her deep political experience and softer human skills to reunite a fractured Welsh Labour party, heal divisions in 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 elections in two years’ time.
Morgan was born in 1967, the daughter of the Rev Bob Morgan, a Church of Wales vicar who went on to become the Labour leader of South Glamorgan county council.
She was educated at Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf, then the only Welsh medium secondary school in Cardiff. There were tough times. She once told the Guardian: “I was one of a handful of children from my estate in Cardiff who had my education through the medium of Welsh and distinctly remember having stones thrown at our bus as they objected to having a Welsh-language school in their neighbourhood.”
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 gained a degree in European studies from the University of Hull. After university she worked as a researcher for the Welsh language television channel S4C and the BBC.
She was active in the successful 1997 referendum campaign for a Welsh assembly, telling the former Welsh minister Leighton Andrews for his book Wales Says Yes that the result was the “most emotional time of my own life”.
Andrews, who believes Morgan will make a shrewd and effective first minister, said: “She has a unique background which has given her great insights into how people in Wales in different communities are feeling and experiencing life. Her political experiences are diverse and she has an understanding of Wales and its place in the UK, Europe and the world.”
Morgan’s political career took flight at the age of 27 when she was elected to the European parliament. Her Welsh government biography says she was only the fifth woman elected to a full-time political position in the history of Wales, and the first full-time politician in Wales to have a baby while in office. Morgan was granted a peerage in 2011 and served in shadow minister roles in the House of Lords.
In May 2016 she was elected to the Welsh assembly (as it was then known) and has held responsibility in the Welsh government for international relations, the Welsh language and health.
There have been embarrassments. In 2022 she apologised in the Senedd when she was banned from driving for speeding. Last year she again had to say sorry for joking that the late Margaret Thatcher could be next in line for a place in the UK Tory government.
Morgan apologised for her “fruity language” to the Covid inquiry when it sat in Cardiff after a text message emerged in which she had said at one crisis: “We’re all fucked.” She told the inquiry her husband was a priest and she would be in trouble at home.
In January this year during the last Labour leader election campaign, she gave a candid interview with WalesOnline in which she said she had not stood 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 got Alzheimer’s so I just didn’t think that there was any room for me to take on any more.”
Laura McAllister, a professor of public policy at Cardiff University, said Morgan was extremely bright, capable and good company.
“She’s human and sometimes just being a politician who is able to show some empathy with the lives of ordinary people and some social and emotional intelligence goes a long way.”
Her job will be difficult. McAllister said: “If she can establish some unity in the Senedd Labour group, her bigger task is to then try and convince what looks like an increasingly sceptical Welsh public that Labour should have another period of office from 2026 onwards. Eluned Morgan is going to be tested.”