{"id":579941,"date":"2026-05-12T14:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T14:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579941\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T14:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T14:20:09","slug":"wales-election-2026-rhun-ap-iorwerth-becomes-first-plaid-cymru-first-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579941\/","title":{"rendered":"Wales election 2026: Rhun ap Iorwerth becomes first Plaid Cymru first minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Analysis\"We’re on the verge of a firstpublished at 14:05 BST<\/p>\n

14:05 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Gareth Lewis
Wales political editor<\/p>\n

Rhun ap Iorwerth is now on the verge of becoming Plaid Cymru’s first ever first minister – a position previously only held by Labour politicians.<\/p>\n

The vote itself is not without its visual drama even if the result looks certain, as Plaid has the numbers in the Senedd to push its nomination for the top job through.<\/p>\n

Each Member of the Senedd (MS) will be invited in alphabetical turn to call out the name of their preferred candidate to become FM, with both Reform’s expected to vote for their leader Dan Thomas and the Tories for theirs Darren Millar, as is their right to do so. <\/p>\n

It’s not clear yet which way Labour will vote, although there were suggestions at the weekend that its MSs would abstain.<\/p>\n

Before the vote for first minister, the Senedd needs to elect a new presiding officer by secret ballot.<\/p>\n

Labour’s Huw Irranca Davies and Tory Paul Davies have put their names forward.<\/p>\n

There will also be an election for a deputy presiding officer, with a nominee expected to come from Plaid. If there’s only one nominee for it then there will be no need for a ballot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We’re on the verge of a firstpublished at 14:05 BST 14:05 BST Gareth LewisWales political editor Rhun ap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-579941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}