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News that disgraced former First Minister of Wales (FMW) Vaughan Gething could be given a peerage, has been further condemned by Welsh Labour (WL) politicians, with one telling The Eye it is a “reward for failure”.
Mr (soon perhaps to be ‘LORD’) Gething is being lined up for a peerage by Sir Keir Starmer, according to a report in The Times, as one of a number of Labour loyalists expected to be drafted in to the House of Lords (HoL) to help stave off defeats in a chamber where the party does not have a majority.
But he was forced out of office in July 2024 following scandals including receiving donations totalling £200,000 to his WL leadership campaign from a company owned by businessman David Neal, who received two suspended prison sentences for dumping toxic sludge in the Gwent Levels.
It was also revealed that Mr Gething had lied on oath to the UK Covid Inquiry, by failing to disclose that he had deleted text messages exchanged with ministerial colleagues during the pandemic when he was Welsh Health Minister.
The news was greeted with outrage within WL, which is already facing possible defeat in next May’s Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC) election, and one party source declared “That will go down like a lead balloon on the doorstep”.
Another said to The Eye: “This is unbelievable. It’s a reward for failure”.
The for now ‘Mr’ Gething, has said he regretted the “impact” of his decision to take the money, but at the same time appeared to blame the way this controversy was reported by the media.
Yet to his critics, Mr Gething was “flailing around”, and the FMW admitted there had been “real damage” caused to a “range of people”.
Mr Gething was in tears before a no-confidence ballot was held in the WP/SC, and commentators said they had never seen anything like it.
The parliament’s rules did not require Mr Gething to quit, and at one point he appeared determined to stay, telling reporters after the ‘crying’ incident: “I’m going to carry on doing my duty”.
However one political analyst told The Eye at the time: “Gething seems to have been holed below the waterline, and it is obvious that some of his fellow cabinet members want him out”.
It had only been a few months earlier that Mr Gething had made history by becoming the first black leader of any European country (succeeding Mark Drakeford) as the FMW).
The main controversy (although certainly not the only one), has been his connection to Mr Neal, and there had been months of rows over the donations to Mr Gething’s leadership campaign from the company owned by him.
It emerged during the leadership contest that Mr Gething had lobbied on behalf of one of Mr Neal’s companies, before his first leadership run in 2018.
He sacked Hannah Blythyn, alleging she was the source of the leak about his message deletion to the Welsh nationalist website Nation.Cymru (which, perhaps ironically in the circumstances, is partly funded by the Labour Welsh Government [WG]).
Opposition parties demanded evidence, which Mr Gething declined to provide.
Two MSs were ‘off sick’ during a no-confidence vote in Me Gething, 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.
This controversy, however, may not have daunted Labour high-ups because they could be about to make ‘Mr’ ‘Lord’ Gething, despite one figure in the party declaring: “It’s a reward for failure”.
The memories of our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry’s decades-long award-winning career in journalism (when commenting on important 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!
Tomorrow h=w during 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, exposing political humbug and double-speak has always been a mainstay of his journalism, and nowhere is this better underlined than in Donald Trump’s confusing defence strategy which was published last week.
