Jeremy Miles, who will become First Minister if elected leader of the Welsh Labour Party, shared how he found it difficult growing up as a child in the 1980s and later coming out.
A Labour minister on the verge of becoming the UK’s most senior openly gay politician in history has told how he struggled with his sexuality when he was younger.
Jeremy Miles is running to be leader of the Welsh Labour Party and will be appointed First Minister if elected. In an interview with the Mirror, the 52-year-old shared how he found it difficult growing up as a child in the 1980s.
“I felt very much on the outside, very much that I couldn’t see my place in the world. No part of my life told me it was okay and normal to feel the way I did,” he said. “It was a time when we had a Tory government that was finding new ways of being homophobic and oppressing people from LGBT communities. So as a young person at the time trying to find your place in the world, that’s a hostile environment.”
Mr Miles first came out as gay while studying at Oxford, but admitted: “Life is a process where you’re constantly coming out as gay in my experience”. “Obviously, as you get older, that becomes more familiar and you’re more relaxed and comfortable about it. But it was difficult when I first came out,” he added.
