As Welsh first minister, Vaughan Gething will become the first Black leader of a national government anywhere in Europe. Yet it will be no surprise that this has happened in Britain, where ethnic diversity right at the top has become the “new normal” so quickly as to produce the remarkable coincidence of ethnic minority leadership in Downing Street, Scotland and Wales.
Gething’s race, and the fact that his rival, Jeremy Miles, was gay, were incidental features of this party leadership contest that would not have been possible a quarter of a century ago. So Gething’s election does symbolise how much can change in a lifetime.
