First Minister Resigns

Today it became clear that Vaughan Gething did not have the confidence of enough of his own group to carry on as First Minister. The resignation of four members of the cabinet earlier today was clearly a planned and co-ordinated move to coincide with the last week of term and after the General Election had taken place.

Next Steps

It is still unclear as to the exact next steps. The party will be discussing what to do next, and whether Vaughan Gething remains in place as First Minister and Leader of Welsh Labour over the summer, whilst a possible leadership election takes place.

There may be an interim leader put in place – but that person would also have to be voted in by the Senedd as the First Minister. It may be considered to be more straightforward for Vaughan Gething to remain in place over the summer and allow a contest.

Leadership Election

When Alun Michael resigned, the Labour Group decided not to have an election, and to nominate Rhodri Morgan as First Minister. There was clear support within the group for this step, and that is unlikely to happen in this case.

The acrimony within the group that has become clear in recent months means that there is no obvious candidate to take over, and Jeremy Miles would likely not be installed as First Minister in that way.

It might be that the Group considers one or more candidate who is perhaps one step removed from the internal disputes, or who has at least not contributed to them.

A number of names have been suggested, including Huw Irranca Davies, Eluned Morgan and Rebecca Evans.

Whoever takes over, any First Minister will face the same fundamentals - with considerable work to do in order to repair the internal coalition, whilst working towards a budget deal with the opposition parties.

Senedd Election

Opposition parties will be calling for a Senedd Election, but the Senedd is a fixed term parliament, and there would need to be cross-party agreement to do this. It’s questionable whether there would be appetite amongst the opposition parties too, coming so quickly on the heels of the General Election.

Labour will want to avoid this scenario, and as they won 30 out of 60 seats at the 2021 Senedd Election, they still effectively can choose the First Minister,.

Minority Government

The political crisis within the Welsh Labour Group has several strands, but the overarching one is that Labour is a minority government, and this is a numbers game.

Our Senedd electoral system makes it hard for any party to win a majority, which encourages multi-party and cross-party working. Crucially, this also means managing sensitivities within your own party group.

In multi-party and minority government, it’s imperative to work hard to keep your internal and external coalitions together. This means reaching out, making compromises, and working with people of different views.

In order to pass legislation, a budget, and a stable government, you need to work very differently than if you have a majority, as is often seen in Westminster.

Little credit is given to First Ministers of the last 25 years for working in this way. It has become normalised and not valued as highly as it should be. Welsh politics became more consensual, and it was critiqued for being boring. But it has kept Labour in power, whilst also delivering the priorities of others. Voters like seeing parties work together.