- Evans gate way - 6th September 2024
- Free words - 5th September 2024
- No access all areas - 4th September 2024
As the fall out continues following yesterday’s extraordinary events when the First Minister of Wales (FMW), Vaughan Gething suddenly announced his resignation after being engulfed in scandal, our Editor (Welshman Phil Parry) who is a seasoned political-watcher examines the views of his constituents, one of whom said “He should have gone before”.
Mr Gething’s decision to quit came soon after four ministers dramatically walked out of the Welsh Government (WG), saying their leader must depart.
Mick Antoniw, Julie James, Lesley Griffiths and Jeremy Miles all resigned their WG positions, citing a lack of confidence in Mr Gething.
I cannot claim to be responsible for his leaving office, because many others were on to the scandals which have swirled around Vaughan Gething.
Nevertheless I have followed these things from the beginning, and the timing is, shall we say, interesting!
As is so often the case it has been ordinary people who have hit the nail on the head, NOT politicians.
In Penarth, which sits in Mr Gething’s constituency, Charlie Ryley declared: “If I’m honest it doesn’t come as much of a surprise. I think with all the controversies with donations from certain individuals… he was under quite a lot of pressure.”
Mike Collins said: “He should have gone before. I think he could have saved his career if he’d been honest and realised he’d made an error in accepting the money and giving it back. He decided not to.”
“I thought he was on borrowed time”, proclaimed Linda Kidby. However she also added that she thought Mr Gething “seemed to do a lot of good”.
Perhaps the good came in (finally) standing down.
These views are in stark contrast to the vacuous ‘tributes’ paid by politicians to Mr Gething yesterday.
For example Huw Irranca-Davies, Climate Change and Rural Affairs minister, said that Mr Gething had made a “brave decision” to step down.
Mr Gething himself told the Welsh Parliament/Senedd (WP/S): “I have worked hard, followed the rules and done really difficult and demanding jobs for my country”.
All of which is COMPLETELY meaningless in the context of what has happened.
He lost a no-confidence vote less than 12 weeks after taking office, following a series of scandals that called into question his judgement and transparency.
This was on June 5, but until yesterday he had clung on, indeed campaigned for Labour in the General Election (GE).
As the resignations of senior ministers showed, it was clear that Mr Gething had lost the backing of some in his own party.
He has said he regrets the “impact”of his decision to take £200,000 from a company owned by a man convicted of illegally dumping waste, but at the same time appeared to blame the way this issue has been reported by the media.
However he has crossed swords with the media before.
In August 2017, Mr Gething walked away in the middle of an interview on ITV Wales, when questioned by journalist James Crichton-Smith over his decision not to hold a public inquiry into Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board (ABMUHB), following allegations that an employee had sexually assaulted vulnerable patients.
He was in tears before the confidence vote was held in the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC) last month, and commentators said they had never seen anything like it.
It was only in March that Mr Gething had made history when he became the first black leader of any European country (succeeding Mark Drakeford) as the FMW, yet after a succession of controversies it seemed that MSs (Members of the Senedd) had had enough.
The main issue (although certainly not the only one), has been his connection to the man with a dubious past.
There have 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 the recent leadership contest that Mr Gething had lobbied on behalf of one of Mr Neal’s companies, before his first 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 Hannah Blythyn, alleging she was the source of a leak to Nation.Cymru (which, perhaps ironically in the circumstances, is partly funded by the Welsh Government [WG] meaning that its journalism is compromised).
Opposition parties demanded evidence, which Mr Gething has declined to provide.
Two MSs were ‘off sick’ during the no-confidence vote, and 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.
Maybe these politicians knew more than they were letting on by not turning up.
For the truth of a situation you have to go to those on the street…
The memories of Phil’s, decades-long award-winning career in journalism (when commenting on major political stories was always paramount), as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – during his career Phil has covered innumerable controversies such as these, and in elections information from surveys was always crucial, but now comes major questions about the effectiveness of polling companies after they over-estimated Labour’s success in the General Election (GE) massively and failed to predict Plaid Cymru’s (Plaid’s) victory in Caerfyddin.
