Welsh Labour Leadership Tracker

We love being at the forefront of digital public affairs in Wales, today is the day we launch our newest online gizmo. Our Welsh Labour Leadership Tracker keeps you up to date on who may be standing and who is nominating who. It will also be a portal for news about the campaigns, the policies, the debates and the supporters.

Of course, we are currently in a bit of a strange pre-election period. Carwyn Jones informed the Welsh Labour conference in April that he intends to trigger the election in September, and stand down in December, 9 years after he took over as Welsh Labour Leader, and First Minister, from Rhodri Morgan.

The first hurdle that potential candidates face is that 20% of the Assembly Group needs to nominate them by the deadline in September so that they can get on to the ballot. That means they need to find 5 Assembly Members to back them. The maths means that it is likely that there will only be 3 candidates, as in 2009. There could be 4 if there is some agreed trading of nominations – as when Jeremy Corbyn just made it on to the ballot at a UK level in 2015.

Only Mark Drakeford has so far reached the required number. Eight AMs have already declared their support – and as you can also nominate yourself - he has 9 out of the 29 Labour AMs on board.

Vaughan Gething is nearly over the line, but he knows that many AMs are currently hedging their bets, and won’t have yet decided who to back. And they don’t need to until September.

And that means we have had to make a decision about who to feature on this tracker. We’ve decided to highlight those AMs that are regularly mentioned in the Welsh media as potential candidates. That does not mean that this list is right. With all the friendly behind-the-scenes discussions, we may see another AM galvanising enough support, and we will of course reflect that. We will also edit the tracker when the final nominations are in.

We will also be updating you on the discussions around the election system, who gets to vote, how the votes are sampled, predicted and counted, and the logistics needed to run a campaign,

So if you have any views about what we are sharing or how we are curating the news and social media tracker, just let us know. It’s all part of the debate that will be happening within the Welsh Labour Party over the next few months. And, of course, this is not just about the future direction of the party, but an election for the next First Minister of Wales.