The way in which Vaughan Gething secured his victory in the race to become Labour’s leader in Wales – and the nation’s first minister – was bound to store up problems for him and his party. Bad enough was the crude way in which the largest trade unions placed their collective thumb on the scale in his favour. More damaging still was Gething’s decision to fund his leadership campaign through a £200,000 donation from a company controlled by a businessman found guilty of environmental crimes. As a result, the legitimacy of his wafer-thin victory over his rival, Jeremy Miles, was always going to be open to question.
What was in doubt was the extent to which Gething would be able to rebuild the bridges that his leadership campaign had burned, so that he might at least lead his party into the next devolved election due in May 2026. Wednesday’s events in the Senedd suggest that is now unlikely. While Gething and his remaining allies persist in trying to make the frankly absurd case that it matters not if the first minister loses a confidence vote in the Welsh legislature, wiser heads are recognising that his position is becoming untenable.
Two factors have brought the crisis around Labour’s leadership to a head. Most immediately, Gething seems have forgotten the first rule of party management: learn how to count.
Labour won half of the 60 seats in the 2021 Senedd election. Gething subsequently won the support of about a third of his Senedd Labour group colleagues in the race to succeed Mark Drakeford. In these circumstances, one might have thought that conciliating those Labour colleagues who had not supported the new first minister would have been the central preoccupation of his initial period in office. The dangers of failing to do so must surely have been obvious.
Well not, it seems, to Gething. It will be left to future historians to disentangle what exactly happened when the new first minister attempted to assemble his first cabinet. The net result, however, was that he managed to further alienate opponents through his peremptory behaviour, while simultaneously disappointing some supporters who had expected to be rewarded for their loyalty. He ended up, in other words, in the worst of all worlds, with a government that feels disjointed and divided.
Adding further fuel to the fire has been the way in which the Gething administration has attempted to distance itself from some of the more controversial policies associated with Drakeford’s reign. This contributed directly to the end of the Welsh Labour government’s collaboration agreement with Plaid Cymru, an agreement that had acted as a stabilising influence after 2021. Unsurprisingly, this approach has also further strained relationships within the Labour group, especially with those most directly linked to the now-sidelined policies.
These include the Senedd member for Llanelli, Lee Waters, previously a notably progressive transport minister, more latterly a public critic of Gething’s – and absent from Wednesday’s vote due to illness. Even more strikingly, it occasioned a very public spat in the Senedd chamber between the normally mild-mannered Drakeford and the new education secretary, Lynne Neagle – an exchange that prompted a theatrical walkout by a key Gething supporter, who apparently objected to the former first minister’s temerity in challenging the government’s decision to ditch a manifesto commitment.
Throughout, Gething’s attitude appears to have been “my way or the highway”. But while such an approach may work for Sir Keir Starmer – if, indeed, he secures the expected landslide majority on 4 July – in Cardiff, the numbers simply don’t allow for it.
The other challenge for Gething is the mounting evidence that his travails are cutting through with the public and even damaging the Welsh Labour brand. It remains highly unlikely that this will have any material impact on the general election result. As has been the case for a century, Labour is again set to dominate in Wales. It is nonetheless an unwelcome distraction for a UK party leadership at pains to distinguish itself from a jaded Conservative party. More seriously, left unaddressed, Gething’s unpopularity is likely to prove very problematic for Welsh Labour in the next devolved election.
Since news of the controversial donation to his leadership campaign became public, one of the key arguments put forward by the first minister’s defenders is that it is only those people who take a particular interest in Welsh politics who care about the story – denizens of the imagined “Cardiff Bay bubble”. Not so. After polling showing that the electorate disapprove of his decision to accept the money, data from the latest ITV Wales/Cardiff University tracker poll shows that 57% of respondents think that Gething is performing badly as first minister, compared with only 15% who take a positive view. That only Rishi Sunak has worse ratings in Wales than the Welsh Labour leader indicates the extent of the problem. The same poll also shows a significant fall in Labour support at the devolved level.
Having further alienated those party members on whom he is most reliant, and haemorrhaging support among the wider electorate, there is nothing to suggest that Gething’s situation is retrievable. To the contrary, the longer he remains in post, the greater the reputational damage is likely to be – not only to the Welsh Labour party, but even to devolution itself.
Richard Wyn Jones is professor of Welsh politics and director of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre
