Stephen Kinnock is now Welsh Secretary. His father is Lord Kinnock, former Labour leader. His mother is Glenys Kinnock, former MEP. The meritocracy has spoken, and it sounds exactly like a family group chat.
Lord Kinnock is thrilled to bits—his actual words—that his son has landed one of the top jobs in Welsh politics. This is the same Lord Kinnock who spent decades lecturing the British public about opportunity and hard work. Turns out the real opportunity was being born to him.
The appointment arrives at a moment when Labour is supposedly the party of fresh thinking and breaking with the old guard. Stephen Kinnock’s entire career has been a masterclass in inheriting your parents’ network and calling it ambition. He’s been an MEP, an MP, and now he’s running Wales. Each role a rung on a ladder that was already assembled before he was born.
Is this technically nepotism? Only if you believe that having two prominent Labour politicians as parents while rising through Labour ranks counts as family preference. Which it obviously does. The only surprise is that anyone still pretends otherwise.
Lord Kinnock’s delight reveals the actual operating system of British politics: it’s not what you know, it’s whose surname appears on the ballot paper. Stephen didn’t need to prove himself exceptional. He just needed to not catastrophically embarrass the family name, which is a significantly lower bar than the one applied to literally everyone else.
Welsh politics just got a new leader selected by bloodline rather than audition. Democracy marches on.