What makes a good Minister & the two Labour Governments

Following the 2024 UK General Election, many Labour MPs are grappling for the first time with the challenge of becoming a government minister. Of the 111 appointments made by the new Prime Minister, only 18 have held ministerial roles before and only 4 are returning to the roles they previously held. Of course our own national government in Wales is currently poised to begin its third (and hopefully final) iteration of 2024 as the "Labour’s first female head of state in the UK” will reshuffle the government once she is confirmed as new First Minister. With some new members of the government such as Sarah Murphy and Jack Sargeant barely months into their roles, they too will be trying to learn quickly. So what does it take to become a good minister, whether at national or union level? Well, thankfully Prof Leighton Andrews has just written a book on this very subject and we are delighted to be joined by him to discuss not only this subject but also the recent events in Cardiff Bay that ultimately led to the resignation of former First Minister Vaughan Gething. We recorded this in the period overlapping the embattled end to Mr Gething’s tenure and ahead of the commencement of Eluned Morgan’s so Leighton has kindly recorded an updated final segment to reflect this. Leighton can be found here: https://x.com/LeightonAndrews Leighton’s Substack is here: https://t.co/AplBOByve3 And his book can be found here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-50008-4 We hope you find this podcast interesting and useful. Please do send feedback, it's always great to hear what our audience thinks. Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you have enjoyed it, please leave us a nice rating or comment on your podcast app or on YouTube and, if you are able to do so, please consider supporting our work from just £3/month on Patreon: www.patreon.com/hiraethpod