Eluned Morgan: The first minister who couldn't defy gravity

Eluned Morgan made history on Friday, becoming the first leader of a government in the UK to lose her seat while in office, as her administration, and Labour, were emphatically rejected by voters. She resigned as Welsh Labour leader within minutes of her defeat in Ceredigion Penfro. There was a crisis when she began her stint as Wales' first female first minister in the summer of 2024, but even the deepest pessimist would surely not have predicted the electoral disaster that engulfed the party on Friday, She took over as first minister in a blaze of colour. Declaring "grey suits are out", she set out to heal deep wounds inside the Cardiff Bay Labour group after months of damaging infighting. But in a resignation speech on Friday she accepted Labour had suffered a "catastrophic" loss. The party, she said, would need to "take a really hard look at itself". She said: "We need to go back to being the party of the working class. We need the Labour government nationally to change course. "We need the wealth of this nation to be more equally distributed away from the south-east." Being first minister, and the first woman lead Wales had, she said, been the privilege of her life. When her p

May 8, 2026 → May 26, 2026