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UK Local Elections 2026
22OCT

Welsh Labour: fourth leader in 26 months

2 min read
16:26UTC

Ken Skates took over as interim Welsh Labour leader on Saturday 9 May, the day after Eluned Morgan resigned having lost her Ceredigion Penfro seat. Morgan is the first sitting head of a UK devolved government to lose her own constituency.

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PoliticsDeveloping
Key takeaway

Cardiff and Westminster fight parallel Labour selections through summer; the same NEC handles both.

Ken Skates took over as interim Welsh Labour leader on Saturday 9 May 2026, the day after Eluned Morgan resigned the leadership having lost her Ceredigion Penfro seat at the 7 May 2026 Senedd election. Skates is the party's fourth leader in just over two years, following Mark Drakeford, Vaughan Gething, and Morgan herself. No formal candidates have declared.

Morgan, a sitting head of a UK devolved government, lost her own constituency, an outcome with no devolution-era precedent. The mechanism is the same closed-list PR system that delivered Plaid's plurality next door (event 4): under closed-list proportional rules in May 2026, a party falling below threshold in a region forfeits seats regardless of how senior the candidate on the list is. Welsh Labour fell from 30 of 60 Senedd seats in 2021 to 9 of 96 in 2026, the party's worst result since 1906. The system Morgan herself signed off on did exactly what it was designed to do.

The turnover compounds. Drakeford left voluntarily in March 2024. Gething went after the Dauson Environmental donor scandal in summer 2024. Morgan inherited in August 2024 and lost the seat nine months later. Skates is therefore the fourth caretaker-or-elected leader in a 26-month span. No obvious successor currently holds a Senedd seat large enough to anchor a Cardiff Bay candidacy.

The Westminster timing compounds the Cardiff problem. A Welsh Labour leadership contest runs through summer regardless of who wins it, and the UK party is simultaneously fighting the Streeting-and-Burnham crisis at Westminster. Two parallel internal contests will compete for the same pool of party officers, donors, and trade-union backers. The 81-nomination question (event 3, and the Cardiff Bay nominations will move through the same NEC offices on the same calendar.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Welsh Labour has had four different leaders in just over two years. Before the 7 May election, Eluned Morgan was the First Minister and the Welsh Labour leader. On election night, she lost her own seat, meaning she was no longer even an MS. She resigned the leadership the next morning. Ken Skates, another Labour MS, stepped in as interim leader the following day. But no one has yet formally put their name forward to replace Morgan in a proper leadership election. The reason this matters: Welsh Labour has to fight an opposition campaign in the Welsh Parliament with nine seats, rebuilding its identity from scratch, at the same time as the UK Labour party is fighting its own leadership crisis in London. The two contests will use the same pool of party officials and trade union backers.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Morgan's seat loss in Ceredigion Penfro was the direct mechanical output of closed-list PR. Under the D'Hondt method, each of the 16 six-member Welsh constituencies allocates seats by successive division of party vote totals; a party that falls below the implied threshold in a region receives zero seats from that region regardless of how prominent the list candidate is.

Morgan was first on Labour's Ceredigion Penfro list, which in the old system would have meant she kept her seat regardless of the vote share. Under the new system, zero threshold means zero seats, and the First Minister's name at the top of the list gave no protection.

The leadership churn has a compounding cause beyond the seat loss. Vaughan Gething resigned in summer 2024 after the Dauson Environmental donor scandal, in which his 2024 leadership campaign received £200,000 from a company whose director had previous convictions for environmental offences.

The resignation came five months after his election as First Minister, leaving Morgan to inherit a leadership without a mandate and a party without stability. The 2026 collapse is therefore the fourth in a sequence: Drakeford's planned exit, Gething's forced exit, Morgan's electoral exit, and now Skates' inherited caretaker.

What could happen next?
  • Risk

    A Welsh Labour leadership election running in parallel with a Westminster Labour contest will compete for the same NEC officers, trade union general secretaries, and party donor attention, stretching the Labour organisation's capacity.

  • Consequence

    With nine seats and no declared candidates, Welsh Labour cannot function as a credible official opposition in the Senedd; scrutiny of the ap Iorwerth government defaults to Plaid's own backbenchers and the Reform group.

Sources:Welsh Government
Mentions:Eluned Morgan →Welsh Labour →Scottish Labour →Senedd →Mark Drakeford →Vaughan Gething →Westminster →Parliament →Ceredigion Penfro →Cardiff Bay →Liberal Democrats →Labour National Executive Committee →Scottish National Party (SNP) →Wes Streeting →Andy Burnham →Ken Skates →D'Hondt method →
First Reported In

Update #8 · Mutiny in week one

Welsh Government· 14 May 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
Welsh Labour collapses to nine seats
Morgan's seat loss on 7 May triggered her resignation and the succession of Skates as interim leader on 8-9 May.
Occurred 7 May 2026
Read story →
This Event
Welsh Labour: fourth leader in 26 months
Welsh Labour's fourth leadership turnover in just over two years runs in parallel with the Westminster crisis; Morgan's seat loss is the institutional fact that triggered both the resignation and a fourth selection that no formal candidate has yet declared for.
Different Perspectives
Scottish National Party / John Swinney
Scottish National Party / John Swinney
Swinney told the SNP conference in Aberdeen on 17 October that Scotland is ready for independence, but set no referendum date, bill or Section 30 request. He launched a new campaign instead and extended the £2 bus fare cap to the north east from April 2027.
Liberal Democrats / Ed Davey
Liberal Democrats / Ed Davey
Davey ruled out a national partnership with the Greens on 19 October after their Brighton conference passed a "Zionism is racism" motion, and wrote to two Jewish community bodies. He left untouched the councils the two parties already run together.
Reform UK / Richard Tice
Reform UK / Richard Tice
Tice alleged ITV's reporter used false details to get a press-office job and said ITV had "likely broken the law", telling members not to speak to it until it apologises. Reform also opened investigations into members, with some suspensions, so the party is contesting the broadcaster and disciplining councillors at once.
Rhun ap Iorwerth / Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru)
Rhun ap Iorwerth / Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru)
Ap Iorwerth presented six priorities to the Senedd on 22 September without numeric targets or a named partner party, promising to work across the chamber where there is common ground. He says his government will be judged on results.
Michael Marra / Scottish Labour
Michael Marra / Scottish Labour
Marra won the leadership on 19 September, and three days later his 17 MSPs backed Swinney's right-to-decide motion once their child-poverty amendment was written in. He says Scottish Labour's task is to tell voters what it stands for.
Andy Burnham / Labour Party
Andy Burnham / Labour Party
Burnham told conference in Liverpool on 29 September that Labour's next manifesto will commit to changing the electoral system, and invited every party into a National Commission on Electoral Reform. He has not named a replacement system, and no chair or remit has been published.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.