Profile: Who is the likely next Welsh first minister, Eluned Morgan?

Eluned Morgan is expected to be the next first minister of Wales, after no other contenders entered the race.

Health minister Eluned Morgan (Welsh Government/PA)

After a 30-year career in frontline politics, Eluned Morgan looks set to make history as the first woman to become the first minister of Wales.

Baroness Morgan’s world has been steeped in politics since she was born and brought up in Ely, Cardiff, in 1967.

Both her parents were councillors. Her father, Reverend Canon Bob Morgan, was a Labour politician and leader of South Glamorgan Council.

In a 2018 interview with Wales Online, she said she was out delivering leaflets aged six and her home was like the “headquarters for political activity in the west of Cardiff”, with future first minister Rhodri Morgan a regular guest.

She has also talked about being educated at Ysgol Gyfun Gymrag Glantaf, the only Welsh medium school in Cardiff at the time, where children from other schools would throw rocks at the bus because they objected to there being a Welsh language school.

Before her work in politics, she spent three years as a researcher, including for S4C and the BBC.

She was also a member of the successful Yes for Wales cross-party campaign group, which called for the Welsh assembly, later Welsh Parliament, to be established.

Her involvement in frontline politics goes back three decades, having been first elected to the European Parliament aged 27 in 1994 – the youngest member at the time and only the sixth woman from Wales.

She remained an MEP for 15 years, standing down in 2009.

She was made a life peer in the House of Lords in 2011, where she is currently listed as being on leave.

Since 2016 she has been the Senedd member for Mid and West Wales.

This is the second time she has had leadership ambitions, having come third in the 2018 Welsh Labour leadership race, won by Mark Drakeford.

That bid struggled out of the gate, with few Labour members of the Senedd offering to back her.

She only succeeded in getting her candidacy through after former first minister Carwyn Jones gave her his nomination to ensure there was not an all-male ballot.

Mr Drakeford appointed her to his cabinet, where she became health secretary, a position she continued to hold under the outgoing First Minister Vaughan Gething.

Her time in the Senedd has not been without incident, including having been disqualified from driving for six months in 2022, after speeding on a 30mph road in Wrexham, to which she pleaded guilty.

She has also been known to be blunt and to the point, apologising to the Covid Inquiry for her “fruity language” in text messages to colleagues about the Omicron variant, including one which read, “we are all f*****”.