How Vaughan Gething’s short period as first minister fell apart – and what it means for Welsh Labour

Huw Lewis, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Aberystwyth University

Vaughan Gething’s short but tumultuous period as first minister of Wales was brought to a dramatic end following the resignation of four key ministers from his cabinet.

Only a fortnight after Keir Starmer entered 10 Downing Street with a three-figure majority, Labour in Wales has been plunged into crisis and faces difficult questions regarding its future direction.

Gething became first minister in March this year following a close Welsh Labour leadership election. He beat Jeremy Miles by only a narrow margin. However, even before securing the leadership, Gething was under intense pressure.

His campaign was marred by controversy over his acceptance of a £200,000 donation – a huge sum in the context of Welsh politics – from a firm owned by a man previously convicted of environmental offences.

Gething insisted that he followed the rules around campaign donations and that he had no questions to answer. However, he never managed to move on from this story and subsequent developments served to compound his political difficulties.

In May, Gething sacked one of his cabinet ministers – Hannah Blythyn – after messages between Welsh ministers during the pandemic were leaked to Nation.Cymru. The messages showed Gething claiming he would delete all correspondence from a message group of Welsh ministers to avoid being “captured by an FOI”.

Blythyn strenuously denied that she was the source of the leak, which was later echoed by Nation.Cymru.

Political consequences

Later in May, Plaid Cymru ended its cooperation deal with Labour in the Senedd, after Plaid’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said he was “deeply concerned” about the donations Gething had accepted during his leadership campaign. With only 30 seats in the 60-member Senedd, this left Labour without a governing majority.

In June, Gething lost a vote of no confidence in the Senedd. The motion was brought forward by the opposition parties but passed because two Labour members failed to attend, claiming that they were unwell. In response, Gething described the vote as a “transparent gimmick” and insisted he would not resign.

Therefore, after only four months as first minister, Gething led a Labour group in the Senedd that was riddled by deep divisions. His minority government lacked any credible partners, which meant that agreeing a budget by the autumn looked like an extremely challenging task.

Adding to these difficulties was the growing evidence that the Welsh public was rapidly losing confidence in Gething’s leadership.

It appeared to be a matter of when, not if, he would stand down. Yet the sudden and acrimonious nature of the endgame was still unexpected.

Lost confidence

In seeking to explain recent events, a lot of emphasis has been placed on Gething’s political judgment.

Clearly, the decision to accept the £200,000 donation and to then refuse to acknowledge (even if no rules were broken) that the episode raised legitimate concerns, was a serious error.

Another error was the style of leadership that Gething chose to adopt after becoming first minister. In sacking Blythyn, his dismissive approach to the cooperation agreement with Plaid Cymru and his defiant response to the vote of no confidence in the Senedd, Gething struck the tone of a leader at the head of a majority administration who enjoyed overwhelming internal support in his party. Neither of these things were true.

An old maxim often attributed to US president Lyndon B. Johnson is that the first rule of politics is to learn how to count. This could certainly have been heeded by Gething and his team in recent weeks.

Gething’s short-lived period as first minister also sheds light on deeper cultural trends that continue to characterise at least some quarters of the Labour party in Wales.

Labour has dominated Welsh politics for over a century. Adjusting to a multiparty devolved politics, where the party cannot assume it will always hold a majority and where it is often forced to cooperate and bargain with opposition parties, has required a significant shift in mindset.

Developments during Carwyn Jones and Mark Drakeford’s periods as the two most recent first ministers seemed to suggest that Labour was becoming more adept at negotiating these challenges. For example, it was Drakeford who negotiated the recently ended cooperation agreement with Plaid Cymru. However, recent months suggest that it is not a style of politics that has been embraced by all sections of the party.

As we look ahead to the next Senedd election in 2026 (which will be fought using a fully proportional electoral system), the multiparty nature of Welsh devolved politics is only likely to increase. How Labour responds to that challenge is a question that the party should consider carefully as it moves to elect its third Welsh leader within a year.

This article was first published on The Conversation