Who is the first minister candidate?

Eluned Morgan is poised to become Welsh Labour’s first female leader, at the second attempt.

The circumstances could not be more different to her previous campaign, which struggled to launch.

Back then, a lack of support from other Labour politicians almost kept her off the ballot paper.

Six years later, and after Vaughan Gething’s brief leadership went badly wrong, would-be rivals are bowing out in her favour.

If she wins it will be the culmination of a political career that started young and has taken her to three parliaments.

During her previous campaign she called herself a “bit of a disruptor” – perhaps, but she has been a politician almost her whole working life.

She had a political upbringing in Ely, Cardiff. Her father, Bob, was a vicar who led South Glamorgan council. Her mother, Elaine, was a councillor too.

Their home “was the headquarters for political activity in the west of Cardiff”, she once said.

Future first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Mark Drakeford were part of their political circle.

She was educated at Cardiff’s Ysgol Glantaf and, with a scholarship, at the independent Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan.

After university in Hull she worked in television before becoming the youngest member of the European Parliament when elected to it, aged 27, in 1994.

Her ministerial biography says she was only the fifth full-time female politician from Wales – and the first from Wales to have a baby while in office.

After standing down as an MEP in 2009 she went to work for the energy company SSE.

Granted a peerage in 2011, she went to the House of Lords where, as Baroness Morgan of Ely, she was a shadow minister for Wales.

In 2016 she swapped Westminster’s parliament for the parliament in Cardiff Bay, then still called the assembly, getting elected for the Mid and West Wales region.

Her first leadership bid only got off the ground because outgoing first minister Carwyn Jones lent her a nomination.

Huw Irranca-Davies, one of the few Labour politicians who backed her then, is her running mate now.

Morgan came last behind eventual winner Drakeford and second-placed Gething.

Drakeford appointed her to his government, before elevating her to the toughest job in the cabinet – health minister – in 2021.

She inherited the devastating legacy of Covid and soaring waiting times.

Her time in the job has seen industrial action and an acrimonious decision to put north Wales’s underperforming health board back into special measures.

Running the NHS on a tight budget would be “hell on earth”, she said in 2022.

It was a characteristically blunt assessment from someone who is known to speak her mind.

The Covid inquiry revealed how she texted colleagues about the Omicron variant, declaring: “We’re all f*****d!”

She apologised for the fruity language saying, it’s “probably not what you want” from the daughter of a vicar whose husband, Rhys Jenkins, is a priest too. He is also a GP, and they have two children.

There was another apology in June 2022 when she was banned from driving for six months for repeatedly speeding. And she apologised again the following year for a joke about the late Margaret Thatcher and a Conservative reshuffle.

Having gone for the top job once, she might have been expected to enter the contest to succeed Drakeford. But she backed her former rival Gething instead.

Asked if she hoped a new FM would keep her in the health job at the time, she told ITV Wales: “Not necessarily. It’s a very, very tough job I must say.”

Despite the hint that she fancied a change, Gething retained her as health secretary – and she defended him when he came under pressure as leader.

She might be on the verge of getting a new job after all.

If she gets it, being first minister and unifying Welsh Labour after a torrid few months will be an even more difficult task than the one she leaves behind.