Vaughan Gething, the victor in the Welsh Labour leadership contest, will now become Wales’s first black First Minister. It is both a historic moment and a huge personal achievement. Gething, born in Zambia and raised in Dorset, was also the first black person to become a cabinet minister in one of the UK’s devolved governments, and is the first black leader in any European country.
His rise is part and parcel of a wider, equally remarkable, transformation across the political landscape. Once Gething takes up his post (after a formal vote in the Senedd), three of the United Kingdom’s four governments will have non-white leaders. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is a British-born Hindu of Indian heritage; Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, was born to a Pakistani Muslim family in Britain. These are all important and historic firsts worthy of recognition. But there is a problem, one that is not going away any time soon.
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