The fall of Vaughan Gething

Good morning. Vaughan Gething has announced his resignation as first minster of Wales, bringing an end to a four-month tenure dogged by scandals, defeat in a non-binding vote of no confidence and questions over donations made to him during his leadership campaign.

In some ways, the timing could not be better for Labour both in Wales and nationally: the stories about the party’s divisions in Wales will be subsumed into stories about the King’s Speech later today and, less happily for Labour, by the fact it looks increasingly likely that Donald Trump will win the US presidential election in November. (Do sign up to the FT’s US election countdown newsletter for more on that.)

But the hangover from Gething’s exit may well haunt Labour in both Westminster and Cardiff for rather longer. Some thoughts on that below.

Going, going, Vaughan

One reason why the last Welsh Labour leadership election was particularly bitter and acrimonious was that there was not all that much difference, politically speaking, between Gething and his defeated rival, Jeremy Miles.

This mirrors the battles between the Blairites and the Brownites, where the comparatively minor policy disagreements over whether to join the Euro (Blairites largely pro, Brownites largely anti) and some aspects of the public sector reform agenda (Brownites largely hostile, Blairites largely sympathetic) meant that the actual disagreements were quite personal and vicious.

As it happens, both were solicitors at Thompsons, the employment law specialists. Their boss at the time, Jo Stevens, is the secretary of state for Wales, and she will have a big informal job bringing the fractious “Welsh Labour family”, as it is often called by its members, together. But a measure of how personal the contest became is that I would often hear in the contest that the reason why Miles was the “rightwing” option rested not on his political career, but his career after Thompsons in the world of corporate law.

Gething was the choice of the party establishment in London and Cardiff, and one reason why questions about donations he took in his leadership bid have lingered so long are bad feelings from that contest. The last time the pick of the party establishment in London came unstuck, with Alun Michael in 2000, he was replaced by his defeated rival, Rhodri Morgan, who alongside his two successors as leader of the Welsh government, Carwyn Jones and Mark Drakeford, essentially created the modern Welsh Labour party.

One big difference is that Gething was the pick of the party establishment in both countries, and of the trade unions to boot. The second is that there was a feeling among some of Gething’s allies in the Senedd Labour group that, although Gething was the author of his own demise, Miles essentially fought a campaign to undo the very close result throughout.

The resulting bad feelings mean that, while there are not going to be many stories about the fall of Gething, there is going to be a lot of bad air for a long time. Given that in just two years’ time the party faces a tricky battle in the Senedd to stay in power in Wales, the running sore from Gething’s fall could well endure long after the circumstances of his departure have been forgotten.

Now try this

I’ve just finished A Spy Alone, a gripping spy thriller with a social conscience by Charles Beaumont, a former MI6 operative. In a remarkable bit of serendipity, several of you had recommended that I give this one a whirl shortly before the author very kindly sent me a copy. To pay it forward, the next time we do an Inside Politics quiz I shall buy a copy as a prize, so do make sure to note down every scrap of particularly punishing political trivia when we mention it in the newsletter.

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