Vaughan Gething, First Minister of Wales, Resigns
Vaughan Gething, the first minister of Wales, announced his resignation on Tuesday after less than four months, amid a controversy over campaign donations that prompted a vote of no confidence in his leadership.
Mr. Gething, a Labour Party politician who became the first Black person to lead a national government in Europe when he was elected the head of the Welsh Parliament in March, denied any wrongdoing as he announced in a written statement that he was stepping down.
“A growing assertion that some kind of wrongdoing has taken place has been pernicious, politically motivated and patently untrue,” said Mr. Gething, as he delivered the same statement later in front of the Welsh Parliament, known as the Senedd, adding that in his 11 years as a lawmaker, he had “never ever made a decision for personal gain.”
Wales, like Scotland and Northern Ireland, is part of the United Kingdom but also has its own devolved government, which makes local laws and enacts national legislation and policies. Mr. Gething became the first minister after the resignation of a long-serving predecessor, Mark Drakeford, winning a tight leadership election within Wales’s governing Labour Party.
But he lost a confidence vote in the Welsh Parliament last month over his acceptance of campaign donations from a company whose owner had twice been convicted of environmental offenses.
That company, Dauson Environmental Group, donated a total of £200,000, or about $259,000, to Mr. Gething’s leadership campaign in two separate payments, one in December last year and another in January. David Neal, the company’s director, was convicted in 2013 after another of his companies, Atlantic Recycling, was found to have illegally dumped waste in protected wetlands. In 2017 he was convicted again for not removing that waste. The company pleaded guilty in court to another offense in January 2024.
The BBC reported in March that Mr. Gething had lobbied Wales’s environmental regulator on behalf of Atlantic Recycling in 2016 and in 2018. A spokesperson for Mr. Gething told the BBC it was “routine practice” for lawmakers to correspond with public bodies regarding constituency issues.
After the details of the donation were made public, some lawmakers said Mr. Gething should not have accepted the funds, including the man running against him for the leadership role, and others urged him to return it. He refused.
Questions over Mr. Gething’s leadership intensified in May after he fired a minister for allegedly leaking a text message from 2020, in which he had announced he was deleting messages from a group chat during the Covid-19 pandemic in case they were later exposed by a Freedom of Information request. In the text, he wrote: “I’m deleting the messages in this group. They can be captured in an FOI and I think we are all in the right place on the choice being made.” The lawmaker denied she had leaked the message.
Mr. Gething chose to remain in his role despite losing the confidence vote in June, but on Tuesday morning, four members of his government announced their resignations in an organized attempt to force his departure.
One of them was Jeremy Miles, the economy secretary, who had run against Mr. Gething in the leadership election.
In his resignation letter to Mr. Gething, Mr. Miles wrote, “We cannot continue like this,” pointing to the loss of the confidence vote as a turning point. “It’s essential that we begin to repair the damage immediately, and I have reached the conclusion very regrettably that this cannot happen under your leadership,” he added.
In Wales, Labour has been the most popular party for over 100 years, and has been the government in the Welsh assembly since 1999.
But the recent turmoil inside the Welsh Labour Party has stood in stark contrast to Labour’s stance at the national level, where Keir Starmer has ruthlessly brought order and unity to the party after the more chaotic leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. That helped Labour cruise to a landslide victory in a general election earlier this month.
Mr. Gething’s forced departure is an embarrassment for Mr. Starmer, who stood alongside the Welsh first minister just eight days ago, praising his work and backing his leadership.
Mr. Starmer on Tuesday thanked Mr. Gething for his service and acknowledged the historic nature of his term in office.
“Vaughan should take enormous pride in being the first Black leader of any country in Europe,” Mr. Starmer said in a written statement, adding, “I know what a difficult decision this has been for him — but I also know that he has made it because he feels it is the best decision now for Wales.”
Some opposition lawmakers called for a snap election. But that is unlikely as the Welsh Labour Party holds a sizeable majority in the Senedd.
Andrew R.T. Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservative Party, which had called the confidence vote last month, described Mr. Gething’s resignation as “long overdue.” He added in a statement that Mr. Gething and the Labour Party across Britain, including Mr. Starmer, were “culpable for the breakdown in governance in Wales.”
Mr. Gething said he would discuss the timing of a new leadership contest within the Welsh Labour Party and would soon put in place a plan to formally stand down as first minister.
“I have always pursued my political career to serve Wales and being able to show underrepresented communities that there is a place for them, for us, is an honor and a privilege that will never diminish,” Mr. Gething said.
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