Party urged by Labour councillors to call for Gething’s resignation

Martin Shipton

Two local councillors have submitted a motion to their constituency Labour party calling for a vote of no confidence to be passed in First Minister Vaughan Gething.

It is thought to be the first such motion to be proposed within Welsh Labour since Nation.Cymru revealed in February that Mr Gething had accepted donations to his party leadership campaign totalling £200,000 from a company owned by businessman David Neal, who received two suspended prison sentences for dumping toxic sludge in the protected wetlands landscape of the Gwent Levels.

Poor judgement

Community councillors Elliot Wigfall, of Ynysybwl and Coed Y Cwm Community Council, and Carol Morgan, of Pontypridd Town Council, have written to officers of Pontypridd Constituency Labour Party (CLP) stating: “We have spoken with other members and we would like to submit this motion for the next all-member meeting of the CLP: ‘Following the recent comments of former Pontypridd MP Kim Howells, and speaking with party members locally, this on the back of week after week with negative headlines relating to the First Minister, many of which he has brought about himself through poor judgment, we have decided to call on Pontypridd CLP to discuss a motion of no confidence in the First Minister and ask that he tenders his resignation to the party.

“This will allow the party to regroup and rebuild, so that we have a Labour government in Wales that can govern with confidence on behalf of the residents of Wales, and a government that can work with the new UK Labour government and start to rebuild after 14 years of Tory chaos.

“We recognise the strain recent months have placed on the First Minister and his family, but we urge Vaughan Gething to do what is right for the party and, most importantly, for Wales. The Senedd cannot continue to limp week to week from negative headline to negative headline.”

‘Damaged goods’

Earlier this month Mr Howells, who was Pontypridd’s MP from 1989 until 2010 and held a succession of ministerial posts under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, told BBC Wales that Mr Gething was “damaged goods” and that he should be replaced as Welsh Labour leader and First Minister “sooner rather than later”.

Dr Howells told BBC Radio Wales’ Sunday Supplement programme: “He is damaged goods and Welsh Labour needs to change its leader sooner rather than later. The problem is, they’ve got to find somebody to replace him, and to do that they’ve got to show some spine and some determination, and they’ve got to get on with it.

“I spoke to other former MPs in the run-up to this election, all of them from Wales. All of them said to me, if this had been the Senedd elections, we’d have lost them.”

Reacting to Dr Howells’ comments at the time, a Labour insider said: “It’s very significant that someone of Kim Howells’ stature, who could by no means be described as on the left of the party, is coming out so strongly about the need to remove Vaughan Gething.

“He’s the sort of person you’d expect in normal circumstances to be supporting Vaughan, because they’re both from the same wing of the party. But quite rightly he has recognised the danger Vaughan Gething poses to the party from an electoral point of view.”

‘Away day’

Last Thursday an acrimonious behind-closed-doors “away day” meeting for members of the Labour group saw a number of MSs calling for Mr Gething’s resignation.

Tensions within the group between Mr Gething’s supporters and his opponents have intensified since he dismissed Delyn MS Hannah Blythyn as a minister and accused her of leaking to Nation.Cymru a screenshot of iMessages sent during the Covid period.

One of the messages, shared on a ministerial group chat, showed Mr Gething admitting that he was going to delete messages because they could be disclosable under freedom of information legislation. All users of Welsh Government phones were told that they would need to preserve messages relating to Welsh Government business because it could be disclosed. Subsequently Mr Gething told the UK Covid Inquiry that he had not deleted messages, but that messages had been deleted when his phone was refitted by the Senedd’s IT department.

Ms Blythyn has vehemently denied leaking the screenshot and Nation.Cymru has taken the unusual step of issuing a statement saying she was not the source.

Over the weekend supporters of Mr Gething sought to divert attention from his misdeeds by encouraging speculation about Ms Blythyn. In addition, former Cardiff council leader Russell Goodway, a current member of the local authority’s cabinet, wrote an inflammatory post suggesting that Nation.Cymru’s coverage of the story could result in an assassination attempt on Mr Gething.

A motion of no confidence in Mr Gething as First Minister was passed last month when two Labour MSs – Ms Blythyn and former Transport Minister Lee Waters – didn’t back him. He refused to resign, accusing the opposition parties of indulging in a “political gimmick”.