New ministers in Wales and Scotland after May’s elections must learn from Labour’s 2024 mistakes

This comment is also available in Welsh, with thanks to our colleagues Megan Bryer and Dan Howes. Mae’r blog ar gael yn y Gymraeg yma.

With just three weeks to go until elections in Wales and Scotland. In Wales, polls suggest that Labour is on track to lose control of the government for the first time since devolution, with Plaid Cymru potentially becoming the largest party and bringing a completely new team into office.  ¹³ YouGov, First YouGov MRP of the 2026 Senedd election shows Plaid Cymru on course to be the largest party, 25 March 2026, https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54394-first-yougov-mrp-of-the-2026-senedd-election-shows-plaid-cymru-on-course-to-be-the-largest-party  The SNP lead the polls in Scotland  ¹⁴ Ipsos, SNP maintain polling lead in Scotland but four in ten say they may change their minds, 4 March 2026, https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/snp-maintain-polling-lead-scotland-four-ten-say-they-may-change-their-minds ,but with several of their ministers not standing at the election a return to government would still bring new faces to the cabinet table.  ¹⁵ The National, All the MSPs quitting Holyrood at 2026 elections – see the full list, 13 March 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/24895651.msps-quitting-holyrood-2026-elections---see-full-list/

All new ministers will face a difficult learning curve, as shown by IfG research, but it will be particularly steep if there is a change of governing party. Would-be future ministers will be focused on the election campaign, but they also need to start preparing for the possibility of being in government. Failing to think now about how they would approach ministerial office risks repeating the mistakes that incoming Labour ministers made following the 2024 UK general election

Party leaders need to know who they want to appoint to which roles

The possibility of coalition governments in both Cardiff and Edinburgh creates extra uncertainty, but party leaders should be planning now for possible ministerial appointments. In 2024, Labour took around a week to appoint the full ministerial team, and much longer to clarify ministers’ remits, while some advisers waited for weeks before finding out if they had a job in the new government. These delays and uncertainty breed resentment among staff, but also mean that the new team take longer to get up and running.  

While the delays were unhelpful, Keir Starmer sensibly took the approach for appointing most of his shadow cabinet to the department they had been scrutinising previously. Relevant expertise can help ministers to quickly grip the complexities of government, and if there is a change of governing party in Wales, as looks likely, then it would be wise to keep people in the same portfolio that they have been shadowing in opposition.

Incoming ministers need to know what they want to achieve

A new team then needs to know what it wants to achieve. Labour had not done much thinking around its five missions, leaving ministers with little sense of what their objectives were for meeting the scale of the challenges faced by the government.  

And, as Labour found out, while the civil service can help ministers to work out how to achieve their goals, it cannot help them define their political mission. At the UK level, the civil service had spent years dealing with the shocks of Brexit, Covid and the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, meaning that large parts of Whitehall had lost the muscle memory of long-term policymaking. There is a similar risk for new ministers in the devolved governments, so they need to have done the thinking on what they want to achieve before entering office.  

New ministers should think about how they want government to work  

A plan is not enough on its own. Ministers need a government that is set up to deliver. At the UK level, Labour came into power with intentions to reset ministerial relations with civil servants. Within months, however, the prime minister and other senior ministers aired their frustrations with the government machine in public and private, and it is only recently that ministers have started to get to grips with changing how the civil service works.  

If potential Plaid Cymru or Reform ministers want to reset government in Wales, then they should enter government with a plan for how to do things differently. Plaid have various ideas in this space,  ¹⁶ Plaid Cymru, 100 days – Better Government, https://www.partyof.wales/100_llywodraeth  including a Welsh ‘Cabinet Office’, a specific minister tasked with reporting on progress on government priorities, and a Welsh National School of Government (akin to an announcement Darren Jones made for the UK government). The SNP has been in office for many years in Scotland, but they may want to think about how they can improve how the machinery of government works in Edinburgh.  

The work of government begins almost as soon as the votes are counted. There is no break, and no second chance to make a first impression. Labour’s first big misstep – freebiegate – was not really about how it governed, but about ministers’ failure to understand, or adjust attitudes towards, the rules around ethics and standards in government. Newly-elected MSs and MSPs will need to quickly get up to so speed with the rules of the job, to avoid repeating the same mistake. But without a plan about who is going to do what job, what they want to achieve, and how they will set up their government to make this happen, new ministers will experience the shortest of post-election honeymoons.  

Mae’r blog ar gael yn y Gymraeg yma