Achi news desk-
Vaughan Gething is the new prime minister of Wales after winning the Welsh Labor leadership election. Gething managed to narrowly beat his opponent, Jeremy Miles, with 51.7% of the vote, and in doing so he becomes the first black leader of any European nation.
Gething was voted in by the Senedd (Welsh parliament) and replaces Mark Drakeford who has been prime minister since 2018.
The leadership race itself was not one illuminated by different political visions or ideological debates. Both competitors are lawyers by trade, fairly centrist in terms of their rhetoric and political commitments, and without obvious contrasts in their manifestos.
Gething was born in Zambia in 1974, to a father from Wales and a mother from Zambia. They moved to the UK when he was four, and he attended universities in Aberystwyth and Cardiff before pursuing his legal career. He was elected to the Senedd for the first time in 2011, representing the South Cardiff and Penarth constituency, and subsequently went on to ministerial school.
Gething will be the fifth prime minister since Welsh devolution in 1999. He inherits a Labor party which, on the whole, has won every election in Wales since 1922. There is, however, a bit more to the story, which suggests the future for Welsh Labor may be less simple than Gething or his party would have hoped.
This is partly due to the problems Welsh Labor ran into towards the end of the Drakeford period. There is ongoing controversy over 20mph speed limits in Wales and the UK’s COVID investigation which has drawn our attention to Welsh Labor’s enthusiasm for avoiding an investigation specific to Wales.
Meanwhile, farmers are protesting against the Welsh government’s proposed plan to replace the EU’s common agricultural policy.
Although Drakeford has been the subject of the most criticism on these issues, Gething could not avoid some of the consequences of the pandemic. He recently had a tough time in the COVID investigation when he admitted that all his WhatsApp pandemic messages disappeared after his official phone was wiped. Gething described it as “a real embarrassment”.
His leadership bid was also hit by scandal when it emerged he had taken a £200,000 campaign donation from a company run by a man twice convicted of environmental crimes. In 2016, he had asked Natural Resources Wales (the government body responsible for environmental issues) to ease restrictions on the company in question.
Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives have called on Gething to return the money, but so far he has refused those calls.
Jeremy Miles also criticized the way Wales’ largest union declared its support for Gething during the leadership contest. Unite had deemed Miles ineligible for his support as he had not been a lay union official. This was seen as a “stitch up” among Miles’ supporters and Gething will have to extend an olive branch to them as he begins his new role.
Assuming Gething can navigate these choppy waters as his leadership sails, a Labor victory in the next Westminster general election is unlikely to ease the pressure. Given Gething’s centrism it is likely to be seen as a party ready to carry out Starmer’s agenda.
There will be other challenges for Gething to discuss, beyond the immediate need to appease those on the losing side of the contest. In particular, his management of the internal difference of Welsh Labor will be significant. As with many successful parties, there are elements of a coalition that sustain it and Gething must ensure that balance.
He must contend with the cultural boundaries between the more English and urban south and east, and the more Welsh-speaking and often more rural areas of the west and north. Although the latter areas do not give the core vote to Labour, their support in those areas helps to maintain their dominance through the Senedd’s partial proportional representation system.
An additional layer of complexity has emerged in the last five years as independence has become a definite concern in Welsh politics. Somewhat surprisingly for a unionist party, there is more or less a 50-50 split among Labor voters on the question. Drakeford managed to play both sides of the argument. It was clear in its fundamental unity but also expressed doubts about its longevity. Perhaps how Gething discusses the question is telling.
For now what is beyond doubt is that the Welsh Labor brand has been damaged. Gething’s actions are not isolated but rather a function of a party culture of permissiveness. With light shone on its inner workings, they are in danger of losing the moral high ground, which is so often used to persuade Welsh voters to support them to protect them from the Tories.
In many ways a skilled operator, almost laser-like in overcoming significant obstacles and achieving his goal, Gething now faces a very different set of challenges.
