Where did it all go wrong for Gething?
Vaughan Gething had a tumultuous time as first minster, and his time in charge will be forgotten almost as easily as it will be remembered. His time was so short he didn’t manage to make any meaningful impact on policy decisions, and instead will be remembered for campaign donations, government leaks and general chaos.
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00:00118 days. It's a long time in politics, and that was the full time between Vaughan Gething
00:07taking up his role as First Minister and announcing he was starting the process of stepping down.
00:11He is by far the shortest-lived First Minister in Welsh history. He had plenty of promise
00:16early doors. He's been in the Welsh political sphere for years, held plenty of different
00:19ministerial jobs, and impressed during his campaign for First Minister. But none of that
00:24held up against some of the controversies that happened over the last four months.
00:29When we try and look at where it all went wrong for Vaughan Gething, it all started
00:32before he'd even taken the post. Of course, it was his £200,000 donation from a company
00:37found guilty of illegally dumping waste on a conservation site that unravelled his premiership.
00:42In every single First Minister's questions, the donations came up. Despite him saying
00:47he had so much hope for Wales when he started, he didn't get the opportunity to put any real
00:51plans in place. Whether his entire tenure was fair is up to the people of Wales, but
00:56The opposition didn't have a choice but to question his decision-making, and while he
01:00has consistently denied any wrongdoing, and says he has never abused his position as a
01:05minister, it was clear that people felt incredibly uncomfortable with the choice to keep the
01:09donation. Other controversies followed, including sacking his Minister for Social Partnership,
01:14Hannah Blythyn, for leaking text messages to journalists, which she denied. Gething
01:18was asked to provide evidence for her leak, but he continually refused, which led to a
01:23vote of no confidence against Gething in June, which he then lost after two of his Labour
01:27members were off sick and unable to vote. The Welsh Government have since provided what
01:31they call evidence of Blythyn's leak, which included messages sent from Vaughan Gething
01:35about deleting messages in a group chat, but other sources have said that she was not the
01:40source of the leak. Whichever way you swing it, Vaughan Gething's time as Premier was
01:44turbulent to say the least, and a messy waste of time at most. He will always be remembered
01:50as the first black leader of a European government, but much to the dismay of the people of Wales,
01:55that is the one positive that you can take from the whole ordeal.