Sam Rowlands is Policy Director for the Welsh Conservatives and Member of the Senedd for North Wales.
It’s been a long, drawn-out contest, but there is a new First Minister of Wales. Mark Drakeford is on the way out, and Vaughan Gething will make the ascent from economy minister to the top job, ahead of his leadership rival Jeremy Miles.
Gething, widely seen as the Starmer candidate, has served in the Cabinet in one way or another since the summer of 2013, including five years as Health Minister which coincided with the Coronavirus pandemic. He is the favorite son of Welsh trade unions, and his path to victory has been a startling example of machine politics at its very worst.
He won endorsements from the so-called Big Six, but his nomination by Unite was shrouded in controversy. Just when it looked like they might give the endorsement to Miles, a senior Union official intervened to disqualify him, allegedly due to a new rule that, in the words of Miles, “no one was aware of”.
So much for comradeship in the ranks of Welsh Labour.
Not only that, but Gething’s £200,000 campaign donation from the owner of a company that has been prosecuted for waste crimes has attracted much opprobrium – especially as Gething also lobbied the regulator, Natural Resources Wales, in favour of that company. As a former Welsh Labour minister said:
“After the donations from law-breaking companies and the union stitch-up, Welsh Labour’s image has been seriously undermined… If Vaughan wins, he will be in the weakest position of any Welsh Labour leader since Alun Michael 25 years ago”.
Even the deepest red Labour man or woman would struggle to argue with that.
In policy terms, the contest was painted by many as Sir Keir Starmer’s man (Gething) versus the warrior for devolution (Miles), but in reality these pair are much of a muchness.
Indeed, despite Gething’s victory I am sure Starmer will be desperate to avoid mentioning the car crash that is the Labour-run Welsh Government. You may remember he once called it a “blueprint” for his premiership; it says a lot that he has refused to repeat that endorsement, even when asked about it.
Gething and Miles both loyally served Drakeford, who notoriously supported Jeremy Corbyn; they have both gone along with the barmy blanket 20mph policy, which has drawn ire from the Welsh public.
They’ve also hastened the decline in education and health services. Wales ranked dead last out of the home nations in the recent PISA education scores. Meanwhile the two-year NHS waiting lists are by far the worst in Britain: the most recent figures from Wales are over 24,000, whilst in England it sits below 400.
In short, Wales is in a worse place thanks to the actions of Drakeford, Gething, Miles, and their comrades in Cardiff Bay.
Gething currently holds the economy portfolio, but he made his name as health minister during the pandemic. Unfortunately for him, the national Covid Inquiry has been in Cardiff this month, looking at decisions made by Welsh Government.
You may think it’s odd that the Welsh Government haven’t implemented an independent inquiry into the pandemic, and I would agree. The Scottish Government, as a devolved administration, have undertaken a Scotland-specific inquiry.
Yet Labour in Wales have refused. I think that tells its own story about Drakeford and Gething’s confidence in their handling of the pandemic. They clearly don’t want to face the consequences of their actions.
Perhaps the most startling fact is that the Welsh Government took almost two weeks longer than Westminster to begin Covid testing patients sent from hospital into care homes. There was a deliberate policy to transfer elderly patients from hospitals to care homes during the pandemic without a test, even when they had Covid symptoms. The incompetence is beyond belief.
Of course, we are talking about the man who had previously admitted he couldn’t be bothered to read pandemic preparation documents, including a major report of a cross-government simulation of a pandemic outbreak.
Then there is the case of the disappearing WhatsApp messages. In textbook Gething fashion, someone else was to blame – in this case, the Welsh Parliament’s tech team!
In his current economy brief, the outcomes haven’t been anything to shout about either. Welsh businesses pay the highest rate of business rates in Great Britain, and our hospitality sector is in crisis: pubs here are set to be £6,000 worse off than their English counterparts.
Welsh workers have, at £32,952, the lowest annual wages of any British nation or region, and apprenticeships in Wales are looking at a cut of over £12m, one of Gething’s final, brutal acts as minister.
Readers will be asking what this means for the United Kingdom and the upcoming general election.
I think it is a pertinent reminder of what Labour do in power, no matter who leads. The prospect of them replicating that on a UK-wide level is deeply worrying. I wish Vaughan well, because I want Wales to do well – but the omens are not good.
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