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Vaughan Gething is Wales’ new first minister after winning the Welsh Labour leadership election. Gething narrowly beat his opponent, Jeremy Miles, with 51.7% of the vote, and in so doing becomes the first black leader of any European nation.
Gething was voted in by the Senedd (Welsh parliament) and replaces Mark Drakeford who had been first minister since 2018.
The leadership race itself was not one that was lit up by different political visions or ideologically charged debates. Both contenders are solicitors by trade, fairly centrist in terms of their rhetoric and political commitments, and without glaring contrasts in their manifestos.
Gething was born in Zambia in 1974, to a Welsh father and Zambian mother. They moved to the UK when he was four, and he attended university in Aberystwyth and Cardiff before pursuing his legal career. He was first elected to the Senedd in 2011, representing the Cardiff South and Penarth constituency, and rose up the ministerial ladder thereafter.
Gething will be the fifth first minister since Welsh devolution in 1999. He inherits a Labour party which, overall, has won every election in Wales since 1922. There is, nevertheless, a little more to the story, which suggests the future for Welsh Labour may be less straightforward than either Gething or his party would have hoped.
This is in part due to the problems that Welsh Labour have hit upon towards the end of the tenure of Drakeford. There is ongoing controversy over 20mph speed limits in Wales and a UK COVID inquiry that has drawn our attention to the enthusiasm of Welsh Labour for avoiding a Wales-specific investigation.
Meanwhile, farmers are protesting against the Welsh government’s proposed scheme to replace the EU’s common agricultural policy.
While Drakeford has been subject to the most criticism on these matters, Gething was unable to avoid some of the fallout from the pandemic. He recently had a tough time at the COVID inquiry when he admitted all his pandemic WhatsApp messages had disappeared after his official phone was wiped. Gething described it as a “matter of real embarrassment”.
His leadership bid was also hit by scandal when it emerged that he had taken a £200,000 donation for his campaign from a company run by a man twice convicted of environmental offences. In 2016, he had asked Natural Resources Wales (the government body responsible for environmental issues) to ease restrictions on the company in question.
Both Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives have called on Gething to return the money, but he has so far rejected those calls.
Jeremy Miles also criticised the way Wales’ largest union declared its support for Gething during the leadership contest. Unite had deemed Miles ineligible for its 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 them an olive branch as he takes up his new role.
Assuming Gething is able to negotiate these choppy waters as his leadership sets sail, a victory for Labour in the next Westminster general election is unlikely to ease the pressure. Given Gething’s centrism he is likely to be perceived as a willing party in delivering Starmer’s agenda.
There will be other challenges for Gething to negotiate, beyond the immediate need to placate those on the losing side of the contest. In particular his management of internal Welsh Labour difference will be significant. As with many successful parties, there are elements of a coalition that maintain it and Gething must ensure that balance.
He must contend with the cultural boundaries between the more Anglicised and urban south and east, and the more Welsh-speaking and often more rural areas of the west and north. While the latter areas do not deliver the core vote for Labour, their support in those areas helps to maintain their predominance through the partial proportional representation system of the Senedd.
An additional layer of complexity has emerged in the last five years as independence has become a concrete concern in Welsh politics. Somewhat surprisingly for a unionist party, there is more or less a 50-50 split among Labour voters on the question. Drakeford was able to play to both sides of the argument. He was clear in his fundamental unionism but also articulated doubts about its longevity. How Gething negotiates the question may be telling.
For now what is beyond doubt is that the Welsh Labour brand has been damaged. Gething’s actions are not in isolation but rather a function of a party culture of permissiveness. With a light having been shone on its inner workings, they are in danger of losing the moral high ground, so often used to persuade Welsh voters to back them to protect them from the Tories.
In many ways a skilled operator, who has been almost laser-like in surmounting significant barriers and achieving his goal, Gething now faces a very different set of challenges.
Huw L Williams is a member of the Green Party.
