Wales gets a new first minister – and the first Black leader of a European nation

Wales has got a new first minister, and a bit of a fresh start for its Labour administration. Vaughan Gething succeeds Mark Drakeford after a fairly close vote and a mostly uneventful leadership election. Gething beat his only rival, Jeremy Miles, by 51.7 per cent to 48.3 per cent and thus starts off with a less than overwhelming mandate.

Wales is currently the only UK administration controlled by Labour, albeit in a minority administration with the acquiescence of Plaid Cymru under a “cooperation agreement”. Welsh governance has evolved markedly since devolution scraped into existence in an even narrower 1998 referendum, and the limited Welsh Assembly and Executive Committee have grown into a Senedd and government with quite extensive powers. Gething has a familiar set of problems to deal with...

He is 50, and the first Black leader of any nation in Europe, which is worthy of note, though it must be a relief for him that nobody has yet called him “the Welsh Obama”. Gething’s elevation and appointment by the King has been warmly welcomed by progressives, but also provoked some nasty racist conspiracist memes on social media.

He was born in Zambia, the son of a Welsh vet working there, and his mum was a Zambian chicken farmer. He was mostly brought up in Dorset, joined Labour at 17, qualified as a solicitor, then served as a councillor and was elected to what is now the Senedd in 2011.  He had a tilt at the Labour leadership in 2018, scoring a highly respectable 41.4 per cent of the vote, but lost to Drakeford.

He was made health minister and served in that demanding role during the pandemic. In 2021 he became minister for the economy. Like all politicians of colour in the UK, Gething is no stranger to racism, but it doesn’t seem to have been a visible factor in the leadership contest. He told the Senedd: “We can also expect the depressingly familiar pattern to emerge, abuse on social media. Racist tropes disguised with polite language, people questioning my motives and my nationality, whilst others question why I’m ‘playing the race card’. To those people I say – it is very easy not to care about identity when your own has never once been questioned or held you back.”

Some. Like his counterparts in London and Edinburgh he had a tough time during the pandemic and he didn’t impress with his recent testimony at the Covid-19 public inquiry, in which he said he no longer had his WhatsApp messages for the periods in question. He has also been embroiled in a health scandal and faced questions about a problematic donor. During a Zoom call to the Senedd he was caught swearing about another member. All of which might be described as fairly conventional for a British politician in the 2020s.

Centrist, in Labour terms. He was not an enthusiastic Corbynite but, like so many, went along with it and formally campaigned for Corbyn to be prime minister. There won’t be any radical changes of direction from the Drakeford era, but perhaps a less donnish approach to leadership. In his speech to the Senedd on Wednesday, he offered the aspiration for Wales “to thrive in the sunshine that hope and social justice can offer all of us”.

He inherits a traditionally strong Labour base in Wales, and one that has been boosted by the recovering popularity of the party elsewhere in the UK. He is further blessed by a split opposition, with the polls showing 20 per cent support for the official Conservative opposition, with Plaid Cymru and the devolution-sceptic Reform UK on about 12 per cent each, with the Liberal Democrats and Greens trailing in low single figures. So things seem set fair for Gething to soon be working with a Westminster government of like mind; this might see a return to the disused machinery of consultation between London and the devolved administrations after a period of Conservative hostility. The next Senedd elections will be in 2026.

He finds his administration used for party political purposes by the Conservatives, who like to suggest Labour’s record in Wales proves it cannot be trusted to govern. The performance of the Welsh NHS is usually cited as proof of this, though Labour blames underfunding from Whitehall. Gething will also put up with plenty of stick about 20mph speed limits imposed on many Welsh roads. The Tory opposition leader in the Senedd, Andrew RT Davies, welcomed Gething with these words: “Our message to Vaughan is clear: if you are prepared to scrap plans for more politicians, to scrap the 20mph speed limit, and scrap the Sustainable Farming Scheme as it stands in its current form, we will work with you to deliver the people’s priorities.”