New leader of Welsh Labour to be announced this afternoon

Mark Drakeford, Vaughan Gething and Eluned Morgan are all running to succeed Carwyn Jones, who announced he would step down as party leader and first minister at the Welsh Labour conference in April.

Party members have been voting over the past month, and the winner will be announced in Cardiff at about 3pm.

For the first time the vote is being run on a one-member-one-vote system - the same system used to twice elect Jeremy Corbyn as Labour's national leader. Previous elections were held using an election college system, through which one third of the vote was allocated to party members, one third to MPs, AMs and sole MEP Derek Vaughan, and the remaining third to affiliated bodies such as trade unions.

But there was controversy after Swansea East MP Carolyn Harris was elected as the party's deputy leader in April, despite winning fewer votes than competitor, Cardiff North AM Julie Morgan.

And in September a special conference was held where the party agreed to instead implement the one-member-one-vote system.

Voters have been able to rank the candidates by preference and, if no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of first-choice votes, the one with the fewest votes will be eliminated, and the second choice votes of those who picked them as their first choice will be picked instead.

Mr Jones will officially step down following First Minister's Questions on Tuesday, December 11, and his successor will officially take up post the following day. Although a vote will be held in the Assembly on who should be the new first minister - with both Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Conservatives understood to be nominating their respective leaders Adam Price and Paul Davies - barring an extremely unlikely rebellion by Labour AMs, the new Labour leader will be elected to the role.

The Argus will be at the scene reporting live from the announcement this afternoon. For the result keep an eye on the Argus website.