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The political comeback of a Welsh Government (WG) minister who was sacked for allegedly leaking to the media, has highlighted the extraordinary nature of recent events in Welsh politics.
Hannah Blythyn was appointed chair of the Welsh Parliament’s/Senedd’s (WP/S) Standards Committee, but had earlier been fired from her role as Minister for Social Partnership after falling out with the former First Minister of Wales (FMW) Vaughan Gething over the ‘leak’, which she strongly denied.
Ms Blythyn’s committee is important – its duties include having to consider complaints referred to it by the WP/S standards commissioner, as well as review the code of conduct for members.
This marks a vital point, as the new regime (under Labour FMW Eluned Morgan) attempts to turn the page on past events.
The appointment is not technically in the gift of Ms Morgan, but could be a sign of things to come.
It will be remembered that Mr Gething lost a no-confidence vote among his senior Welsh politicians, even after he claimed that he ‘regretted’ the “impact” of his decision to take £200,000 from a company owned by a man convicted of illegally dumping waste – appearing to blame the way this controversy had been reported by the media.
To his critics, Mr Gething was “flailing around”, yet the FMW at the time, admitted there had been “real damage” caused to a “range of people”, and was in tears before the no-confidence ballot was held in the WP/S, with commentators saying they had never seen anything like it.
One political analyst told The Eye: “Gething seems to have been holed below the waterline, and it is obvious that some of his fellow cabinet members want him out”.
The parliament’s rules do not require Mr Gething to quit, and he told reporters afterwards: “I’m going to carry on doing my duty”, although resigned soon afterwards.
Yet it had only been a few weeks earlier that Mr Gething had made history when he became the first black leader of any European country (succeeding Mark Drakeford) as the FMW, but after a succession of scandals, eventually MSs (Members of the Senedd) had had enough.
The main controversy (although certainly not the only one), has been his connection to the man with a dubious past.
There had been months of rows over the donations to Mr Gething’s leadership campaign from the company owned by a man previously convicted of environmental offences.
The company is owned by David John Neal, who was given suspended sentences in 2013 for the illegal dumping of waste, and in 2017 for not cleaning it up.
It emerged during one recent contest that Mr Gething had lobbied on behalf of one of Mr Neal’s companies, before his first leadership run in 2018.
In a separate row, Mr Gething found himself having to defend a message he sent during the pandemic, where the then-health minister told colleagues he was deleting texts from a ministerial group chat.
He later sacked Ms Blythyn, saying that she was the source of the leak to Nation.Cymru (which, perhaps ironically in the circumstances, is partly funded by the Welsh Government [WG] unlike The Eye).
Opposition parties demanded evidence, which Mr Gething declined to provide, and during the no-confidence vote two MSs were ‘off sick’ – this would not have been unhelpful to his opponents.
They were Ms Blythyn herself, and Lee Waters, the former transport minister who had previously called for the donations at the centre of the main scandal to be returned.
Perhaps Ms Blythyn will not make such pronouncements in her new role leading the standards committee.
Or perhaps she will see it as her job to speak to the media, just as long as she doesn’t blame journalists for the way controversies are reported…
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