The Legacy of Eluned Morgan

By Cathy Larkman

Dear Eluned Morgan, First Minister of Wales. I’d like to ask you a very direct and personal question:

“What have you got to lose anymore”?

And I’d like to follow that up with a plea to you:

“Just do it. Implement the Supreme Court judgment now. No more kicking the can down the road. Stand up to the activists and the lobbyists around you. Make this your legacy for the women and girls of Wales. Before it’s too late for you”.

OK. Your Welsh Labour colleagues in the Senedd will likely be very upset. After all, they’ve been pledging allegiance to Stonewall and trans groups for years, announcing that ‘transwomen are women’ and freezing out women who don’t agree with them.  But at least half of those colleagues are standing down at the Senedd elections in 2026 anyway, including your predecessor, Mark Drakeford. And your party are going to lose many seats in Wales in 2026. Welsh Labour are facing bleak electoral times and the recent Caerphilly by-election should have brought that into painful sharp focus. Labour dominance is over in Wales. What have you got to lose anymore?

OK. You could lose your role as First Minister. Let’s be honest though – you are going to lose this role anyway. All polling right now points to the expanded Senedd in the May 2026 elections being dominated by Reform and Plaid Cymru. Even if Labour join with Plaid Cymru (as many anticipate) to form a majority, you will not be First Minister after May 2026. Let’s be brutally frank too, you may even lose your seat. The time between now and then is borrowed time. Borrowed time in which you can still make your mark and do something. What have you got to lose anymore?

Use that time left to you.  Let your legacy be the First Minister who asserted the rights of women and girls in Wales, who swept away all the policies of self-ID from Government, who provided leadership to all the public authorities currently dillying and dallying ‘waiting for the EHRC’, and be the First Minister who said enough is enough, this is the law and we are doing it right now.

That’s going to take a lot of courage and a lot of leadership.

 Senedd Event speakers and organisers

Unfortunately, those important characteristics aren’t on display right now. Earlier this month, WRN Wales along with Merched Cymru arranged an event sponsored by Natasha Asghar MS at the Senedd to educate members and your staff on the implications of the Supreme Court judgment. You had Susan Smith of For Women Scotland, the group that brought the Supreme Court action of April - and a women’s rights shero of our times, actually in the building to educate and inform you, along with brilliant equalities and discrimination barrister Naomi Cunningham.

What a privilege, what an opportunity!

We received your apologies for not attending of course, but not a single one of your Labour MS colleagues or your staffers attended. Not even to pop in momentarily. That’s an incredible failure of leadership.

Of course, not a single Plaid Cymru representative attended either – but they are arguably even more myopic and intransigent on this subject than your own colleagues. That’s yet another important reason YOU need to act NOW. While you have that unique chance.

If you or any of your colleagues had attended, you would have heard that you don’t need to wait for further guidance from the EHRC of course. Perhaps it’s just that you’d rather not hear this uncomfortable truth. That particular excuse, repeatedly trotted out by your Minister Jane Hutt, was declared absolutely null and void at this important event. It was repeated in an incredible public event held later that evening at the New Plaza in Port Talbot, in which we were also joined by Kate Harris, lesbian icon from the LGB Alliance, a group that formed part of the lesbian intervenors in the Supreme Court judgment, and the legendary Olympian and campaigner, Sharron Davies.

Of course, we also saw you all hurrying out of the Siambr when Laura Anne Jones MS introduced a short debate on the Supreme Court judgment last week. You may well have had a reason, but what on earth do you think this all looks like to the women and girls of Wales? The answer of course is that it looks like none of you even care. 

It’s time to put that right Eluned. Before it’s too late. Pull on your big girl pants and speak up for the women and girls of Wales. Ignore those who will call you ‘hateful’ for doing so. After all, the women of WRN Wales and other Welsh women’s groups have faced all this and worse every single day, and we are unbowed.

Speak up for the terrified women in refuges needing space away from men; speak up for the traumatised women in rape crisis needing single sex support; speak up for the vulnerable elderly and disabled women needing same sex intimate care; speak up for the brave women and girls trying to achieve success and fairness in sport that is protected for females only; speak up for the frightened women in hospital wards with a man in the next bed to them; speak up for the fed-up women who cannot associate in lesbian groups now without men calling themselves lesbians and muscling in; speak up for the women and girls who want to undress in changing rooms away from intruding males.

Speak up for women and girls Eluned. And implement the Supreme Court judgment in Wales.

It’s already been 199 days after all. Do it now. Not later. Now.

Take a deep breath and join us on this hill. Let this be your legacy.