Gething’s short tenure as Welsh leader was marred by scandal

Vaughan Gething’s short reign as First Minister of Wales ended in scandal.

Questions over a £200,000 donation to his Labour leadership campaign have dogged him since he became prime minister in March.

A row over a leaked phone message that led to the resignation of one of his ministers and Plaid Cymru withdrawing support for his government added to the sense of chaos.

The Prime Minister is under pressure over a donation from Dauson Environmental Group, owned by David Neal, who has been convicted of environmental crimes.

There have also been concerns about a possible conflict of interest in the money coming from a company that received a £400,000 loan from the Welsh government-owned Development Bank of Wales (DBW).

The DBW loan was made to Neal Soil Suppliers – a subsidiary of Dauson – in 2023 to help buy a solar farm, at a time when Mr Gething was economy minister.

Mr Gething has always insisted he cannot make any decisions relating to Dauson – which is based in his constituency – and the DBW is completely independent of ministers.

But Plaid cited the donation as one of the reasons for ending its Senedd cooperation agreement with the Welsh Labour administration.

Labour held 30 of the 60 seats in Cardiff Bay after the 2021 election and struck a deal with Plaid to secure a majority.

Mr Gething’s sacking of social partnership minister Hannah Blythyn after a phone message was leaked to the media was also highlighted by Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth in his decision to end the deal with Labour.

Ms Blythyn vehemently denied leaking anything and said she was “deeply shocked” by her dismissal.

The Prime Minister’s decision followed a report on news website Nation.Cymru which featured a message posted to a ministerial group chat in August 2020 by Mr Gething, stating he was “deleting messages from this group”.

He said the leaked message was from a section of an iMessage group chat with other Labour ministers and related to internal discussions within the Senedd Labour group.

Mr Gething previously told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry that the missing WhatsApp messages were not deleted by him, but by Welsh Parliament IT staff during a security rebuild.

Mr Gething denied the leaked message contradicted evidence he had given to the inquiry, adding it did not relate to decision-making about the pandemic but to “comments colleagues make to each other and about each other”.

Mr Gething said he would step down as Welsh First Minister on Tuesday after four members of his government resigned and demanded he step down.

He said he acknowledged that “rebuilding and renewing” was “not possible” under his leadership, but said allegations of wrongdoing on his part were “pernicious, politically motivated and patently false.”

Mr Gething became Prime Minister after defeating his only rival, Education Minister Jeremy Miles, in the Labour leadership election following Mark Drakeford’s decision to resign.

Mr Miles secured more nominations from his colleagues in Cardiff Bay, but Mr Gething triumphed by securing 51.7% of the votes cast in the election.

Mr Gething became the first black leader of a European country, which he described as “a matter of pride for a modern Wales, but also a daunting responsibility for me – and one I do not take lightly”.

He joined the Labour Party at the age of 17 to help campaign in the 1992 election, has been in the Senedd since 2011 and in cabinet since 2016.

He rose to prominence as health minister during the Covid pandemic, a position he held from 2016 to 2021, before becoming economy minister.

Mr Gething was born in Zambia in 1974, where his father, a Welsh vet from Ogmore-by-Sea in Glamorgan, met his mother, a chicken farmer.

He has spoken openly about his experiences of prejudice and said in his leadership campaign that he did not want anyone in Wales to feel that way.

When he was two, his family moved to Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, where his father was due to start a new job, but the offer was withdrawn when he arrived with a black family.

After his father lost his job in Abergavenny, the family moved to Dorset, England.

Mr Gething later studied law at Aberystwyth University and stood unsuccessfully for the Mid and West Wales seat in the first National Assembly elections in 1999, before becoming a councillor for the Butetown area of ​​Cardiff in 2004.

He stood in the Senedd elections again in 2011, when he successfully won the Cardiff South and Penarth seats.

He previously ran for the Labour leadership and the premiership in 2018, when he lost to Mr Drakeford.