Five big challenges facing Wales’ next first minister

Eluned Morgan is poised to become Wales’ next first minister, after being announced as the first female leader of Welsh Labour.

It follows the resignation of Vaughan Gething, who announced he was stepping down last week after a series of controversies.

Ms Morgan will become first minister once she is installed by the Senedd, at a date yet to be set.

Once she does take office, she will face a number of imminent challenges.

One of Ms Morgan’s first big jobs will be to deal with the Welsh government’s finances.

With not enough money to fund everything, decisions on where to make cuts will be looming.

Welsh ministers have often chosen to pump extra cash into the NHS at the expense of other departments.

In the last year they came under fire for cutting back support for the arts.

How they decide to divvy up the pie could be a source of further pain for the new administration.

Labour’s divisions bust out into the open when four senior members of the Welsh government resigned at the same time to force Mr Gething out.

Ms Morgan has promised to unite the group and heal some of the divisions it has faced.

But with numbers tight in the Senedd – Labour have exactly half of the seats in the 60 seat parliament – open dissent can make the party’s hold on power rocky.

Labour cannot govern in the Senedd – or pass its next budget – without opposition help.

Part of what brought down Mr Gething was the unwillingness of Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Liberal Democrat Jane Dodds to work with him.

That will probably change under Ms Morgan. Although, even if they are more willing to engage with her, neither Plaid nor Ms Dodds would want to be taken for granted.

They may want to cut a deal with Ms Morgan. In the past, that has meant projects or ideas supported by Plaid or the Lib Dems getting funding.

Ms Morgan, who has been Wales’ health secretary since 2021, will come under renewed pressure to improve the performance of the Welsh NHS as she steps up to become first minister.

Around a fifth of the Welsh population are currently on a hospital waiting list – a record high.

Surveys consistently show that health is one of the top issues, if not the top priority, for voters in Wales.

In April, Ms Morgan pointed to progress being made on reducing the longest waits for treatment, with 97% of patients waiting less than two years in six out of seven health board areas.

But this figure is substantially higher than in England.

Looming large on the horizon is a Senedd election in 2026, at which the number of Senedd members will increase from 60 to 96.

The voting system will also change, as first-past-the-post is scrapped in favour of a system that reflects the share of the vote each party has received.

Ms Morgan will be aware that Labour’s share of the vote in Wales fell by 4% at the most recent general election, compared to its 2019 result.

A YouGov poll for ITV Wales and Cardiff University in July also suggested that support for Labour in Wales had slipped.

Mr Gething’s opponents within Welsh Labour feared that he was partly to blame.

Ms Morgan will hope that, under her leadership, the party’s approval ratings will begin to improve.