On Tuesday this week, after just 118 controversy-ridden days in office as Welsh First Minister, Vaughan Gething stepped down from his post.
In the end, the scandals permeating Gething’s short-lived tenure proved too much, forcing the Welsh Labour leader to give up his cosy position in the Senedd.
Dodgy dealings, sly favours, and suspiciously-deleted messages painted a picture of blatant corruption that four of his close aides considered bad enough to warrant their resignation – and Gething’s too.
Crooks and careerists
Right-winger and consummate careerist Vaughan Gething became Welsh First Minister with the full support of the trade unions and Sir Kid Starver himself.
He was trumpeted as the first black government leader in Europe – following in the footsteps of other trailblazers of equality like Margaret Thatcher and Rishi Sunak.
Wrangles rocked Gething’s leadership from the very start, however, with questions raised about a £200,000 donation to his campaign from a businessman found guilty of dumping waste into the Gwent Levels.
To make matters worse, it seemed that Gething had previously lobbied on behalf of this same crooked character about easing environmental restrictions on one of his firms.
This is an embarrassingly clear example of the ties between the capitalist class and their political lackeys.
Despite being the former president of the Welsh Trades Union Congress (TUC), Gething made no mention in his manifesto of the jobs massacre taking place in Port Talbot. Nor did he say anything about striking junior doctors or binmen in Wales.
Gething’s allegiances have always been clear. He embodies the spirit of Starmer’s Labour and the conservative trade union bureaucracy – representing the interests of the establishment, and not of the working class.
And yet, despite being a willing servant of the capitalists, his tarnished reputation and blatant misdemeanours were enough to eventually lose him the support of his ‘respectable’ peers.
Bad omen
This is an ominous warning for Starmer.
Labour is now the ‘safe pair of hands’ that the British ruling class wants and needs to ‘steady the ship’. But already, one of Starmer’s own has had to be thrown overboard – jettisoned to prevent a mutiny.
Starmer has barely been in Number 10 for a fortnight. Yet he now finds his man in the Senedd buried by an avalanche of sleaze and scandal. And the same fate awaits any politician who seeks to uphold this stinking system.
Gething’s political demise, in this respect, is an omen of what lies in store for Starmer’s Labour government, which will be a government of crisis.
The defenestration of Starmerite Gething shows how rapidly these sullied servants of capitalism will become discredited and hated, on the basis of the hammer blow of events.
Given Starmer’s tight control over the Labour Party currently, we can only assume that he supported this putsch against Gething.
The Labour leader may have given his Welsh counterpart his full backing as recently as last month, but this means nothing. With his history of broken promises, the words of this hypocrite and liar are devalued currency.
Starmer must be aware of how fragile Labour’s support base is. And with the cuts and attacks that are coming, it’s likely to weaken even further.
Replacing the Welsh Labour leader was therefore a case of cauterising the wound: eliminating a source of public discontent that – left untreated – could otherwise lead to a haemorrhaging of votes down the line.
Other members of the Senedd also had a reason to want to see the back of Gething.
Labour don’t have a majority in the Welsh Parliament. And smelling blood, in early June, opposition leaders successfully passed a vote of no confidence. This left the Senedd effectively paralysed, unable to pass budgets.
One down…
Gething has hardly taken his downfall with grace.
In May, he sacked a Labour colleague suspected of leaking confidential information which revealed that he had deleted WhatsApp when he was health minister, in order to avoid these being ‘captured in a FOI’ (freedom of information request).
One can only wonder what the ex-First Minister was trying to hide.
In a statement announcing his resignation, Gething tried to distract attention from his record, saying: “To those in Wales who look like me – many of whom I know feel personally bruised and worried by this moment – I know that our country can be better.”
Workers, black and white, will be rightfully disgusted with this cynical statement. They have nothing in common with this careerist shill, and will respond to this development with the thought: “One down – now let’s get rid of the rest of them.”
