Vaughan Gething won the Welsh Labour Party leadership campaign with 51.7% of the vote and will be the first Black leader of the semi-autonomous government.
“Today, we turn a page in the book of our nation’s history. A history we write together,” Gething said after he won the election.
Gething will succeed Mark Drakeford, who is scheduled to leave on March 19, with the Welsh parliament formally electing the new leader the following day. Gething is the third UK politician to be the son of an immigrant, following British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Scottish First Minister Humza Haroon Yousaf.
Gething was born in Zambia to a Welsh father and a Zambian mother, Sunak is of Indian descent, and Yousaf is from a Pakistani family in the United Kingdom.
There is no disputing that British politics has shifted, and swiftly. Until 2002, the country had never had a non-white Cabinet minister. Sunak likes to point out that his Cabinet is among the most varied in British history.
Home Secretary James Cleverly and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch are both Black, as is Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho, whose parents moved from India.
Sunak stated at last year’s Conservative Party conference that he is “proud to be the first British Asian prime minister,” but “even prouder that it’s just not a big deal.”
The government’s diversity reflects years of effort by the center-right party to shed its “pale, male, and stale” image and encourage people of color to run for Parliament.
According to Sunder Katwala, the head of the equality research group British Future, “ethnic diversity right at the top has become the ‘new normal.'”
