| Education Policy, Language Statement, Leadership Change |
A Political Diary |
| A First Minister Falls , Public Life in Wales , August 1, 2024 |
7th July: Hannah Blythyn spoke from the backbenches on her return to the Senedd after her relegation from the Cabinet.“I recently listened to a podcast called Broken Politicians, Broken Politics. I am not broken, but I know now more than I did before that I am breakable, as, actually, we all are, and I don't believe politics is broken, but it certainly could be better. We've talked often in this place of a kinder politics, but we can't have a kinder politics without kinder people, and we won't get better politics without being better people. Our own conduct and character is key to the public having trust in those who serve them and believing that politics can be a force for good.” * * * * 7th July: The Economist looked at the variations in education across the nations in a special report “England's school reforms-are-earning-fans-abroad “England’s schools have been climbing up international league tables. Meanwhile countries that have pressed on with more fashionable approaches have been watching their own scores fall. “Most compelling are the sharply contrasting trajectories of education systems that have taken the opposite approach. The best comparator is Scotland (each of the four parts of the United Kingdom controls its own school system). Scotland’s children share much in common with their peers south of the border. The difference, argues Lindsay Paterson at the University of Edinburgh, is that Scotland’s political class has long viewed conventional approaches as “old-fashioned, out-of-date, alienating and unmotivating”. “...And despite mounting evidence of Scotland’s decline, politicians in Wales have just waived through a waffly curriculum as woolly as that deployed by its northern counterpart.” https://www.economist.com/special-report/2024/07/07/englands-school-reforms-are-earning-fans-abroad * * * * 10th July: Jack Sargeant in the Senedd: As I’ve said before, divestment provides an opportunity, as pension funds can invest significant sums in capital projects. If the work is done to build investor confidence and the pipeline of projects is there, it could be that Welsh projects in social housing, in renewables and in transport infrastructure could grasp this opportunity in front of us. Will the Cabinet Secretary commit to continuing to explore this opportunity with partners and the Wales Pension Partnership? Source: https://record.senedd.wales/Plenary/13984#C606296 * * * * 12th July: Vaughan Gething in the Senedd: “I also think that our democracy is supposed to provide your elected leader the opportunity to do their job. And when people next stand up and try to question my integrity, as has happened in the Chamber of our national Parliament on a number of occasions, without facts to support it, without truth behind it, I hope that some people at least consider where this ends up for all of us. I want to carry on and do the job I've been elected to do; it really is a privilege to lead my country, and that's what I'm committed to doing.” * * * * 14th July: On BBC Wales' Politics Wales not a single Labour Member of the Senedd would appear. * * * * 15th July: Voices on the Language Bill. Jeremy Miles: “we’re committed to building a Wales where the Welsh language thrives in every community.” The Bill provides a statutory basis for the target of having one million Welsh speakers by 2050, as well as other targets relating to the use of the language, including in the workplace and socially. “Annibendod” replied: “We’re in the midst of what is known as the “Latinization” of Cymraeg. The example being that Latin died as a community language but was preserved as a liturgical and academic language. We are losing Cymraeg because we are not building Cymraeg speaking communities. Schooling alone is insufficient. As a wise colleague of mine pointed out, we are adept at turning out young adults with a decent knowledge of our language but it’s a bit of a stretch to describe them as “speakers” in the active sense of the word.” https://nation.cymru/news/welsh-language-and-education-bill-aims-to-give-all-children-in-wales-opportunity-to-speak-welsh/ * * * * 16th July: The politics of Wales ascended to the news of the United Kingdom. Alun Michael appeared on Radio 4 “The World Tonight.” He projected the events as a judicial issue. The interviewer intervened that it was a political process, that the First Minister did not command the confidence of colleagues. “He's been forced out because of a matter of opinion”, said Michael “It's a matter of opinion that has been pursued quite vigorously by some journalists.” * * * * In the Times Tom Peck: “The outgoing Welsh first minister accepted the funds from a twice-convicted criminal during his leadership campaign — but he is just a victim of The Narrative “The outgoing first minister of Wales departs the stage with regrets. Not regrets about whether he should have taken a £200,000 donation from a recycling company whose owner had been found in breach of various environmental regulations. He, like so many who have gone before him down this very well-travelled road, doesn’t regret anything he’s done himself. No no, what he regrets is the actions of others — his opponents. “It meant that first minister’s questions in the Senedd began with a “personal statement” from the man himself. “I regret that the burden of proof is no longer an important commodity in our politics,” he said, “and I hope that that can change.” “A growing assertion that some kind of wrongdoing has taken place has been pernicious, politically motivated and patently untrue,” Gething said. “In 11 years as a minister I have never ever made a decision for personal gain. I have never ever misused or abused my ministerial responsibilities. My integrity matters. I have not compromised it.” “Seasoned interpreters of political language may note that nobody has accused him of taking a ministerial decision for personal gain, which is not what the scandal was about. But Gething’s passionate denial, that he has never done what no one has said he has done, is now at least a matter of public record. "Outside the Senedd, his predecessor, Mark Drakeford: “There comes a point that whatever the objective truth of the matter, a story has taken hold.” “Gething’s story is, if nothing else, a particularly short one. He never recovered from taking a donation from a twice-convicted criminal during his leadership campaign. His time at the top was over before it began. He never truly commanded the confidence of his parliament, and then he lost it yet further. "A parliament isn’t a criminal court. There is no “burden of proof”. Nothing has to pass beyond reasonable doubt. There’s no balance of probabilities, just the balance of the parliamentary scales.” * * * * 17th July: Richard Wyn Jones, director of the Wales Governance Centre and dean of public affairs at Cardiff University Jones wrote for the Guardian: “Vaughan Gething’s brief, four-month-long tenure as Wales’s first minister came to an ignominious end on Tuesday morning after four members of the Welsh government resigned their posts, making it clear that they were no longer willing to serve under him. That the four had little option but to adopt what we must now call the Boris Johnson gambit was confirmed by his subsequent resignation statement in which Gething was characteristically defiant and unapologetic. “Given that no rules had been broken – as with Johnson, also Gething’s mantra – there could be no reasonable objection to his decision to fund his successful leadership campaign through a large donation from a company owned by a businessman who had previously been convicted of environmental crimes. Any suggestion to the contrary was politically motivated and thoroughly mendacious. Absent was even a hint of remorse about his own behaviour, let alone any pretence that he was leaving of his own volition. It was a statement that served only to confirm that it was Gething’s obduracy and, yes, hubris that was the ultimate cause of his downfall.” "Jo Stevens – the secretary of state for Wales and, in effect, shop steward for Welsh MPs...the attitude of Stevens would appear to be that, from now on, the Welsh government should be seen and not heard. It’s time for the grown-ups in Whitehall to take the leading role.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/17/vaughan-gethings-welsh-labour-wales-senedd * * * * 17th July: Welsh Patriot “Yes, it is strange BBC Wales “Journalists” don’t seem to do any real journalism, they just print press releases.” https://nation.cymru/news/calls-for-clarity-on-future-of-gething-cabinet/ * * * * 18th July. A headline read “Proof that Vaughan Gething lied to the Senedd” https://nation.cymru/news/proof-that-vaughan-gething-lied-to-the-senedd/ * * * * 21st July: Lee Waters, who did not vote to express confidence in the Leader published a note to members of the Llanelli constituency Labour Party: “..Edrych ymlaen. We’re in a pickle. After 25 years as the largest party in the Senedd, and 102 years as the party of Wales, we have become the establishment. "Our opposition is weak, and so like many political systems where single parties dominate we turn on ourselves from time to time in order to check power and keep ourselves honest. "We are currently in the midst of the biggest schism since 1999, when the ‘pluralist’ section of the party embodied by Rhodri Morgan went ten rounds with the ‘machine politics’ section of the party represented by Alun Michael, and beat ten bells out of the each other. Those bruises took a decade to heal. "The last four months has seen the same happen again, albeit beneath the surface. The inevitable resignation of Vaughan Gething has brought that into the open and now party leaders are desperately trying to keep a lid on it by brokering a quiet deal to avoid any further open conflict. “...Unity is a consequence of renewing in office. It is the end result of a process to reach an agreement. It follows an exchange of ideas and is not some precondition for a contest where the less that is said the better. “...We are not a management committee, we are a political movement. We were created for a purpose - to bring about change for working families, to challenge power, to make society fairer, and be a voice for the voiceless. That requires a passion, a hunger, and courage to reshape and reform ourselves as a political force to meet the modern context, in order to do the same for our society. “The central question of this leadership contest should be how we can meet the appetite for change in a way that honours our values as a political movement? If we can’t answer that question then this may well be our Scottish moment. “After the collapse of the Labour Party in Scotland Jonathan Powell, the PM’s Chief of Staff through the whole Blair period in office, said that Scottish Labour had become a hollow tree - all it took was someone to come along and push it for it to fall. Nobody wants to hear this at the moment but this could well apply to Welsh Labour too. “There's nothing inevitable about any of this. The difference between us and Scottish Labour in 2011 is that we have a long-record of devolved governments to be proud of, and a proven ability to stand up for Wales. “The d’hondt voting system we’ve legislated for will actively work against us. “We now have had the extraordinary spectacle of a First Minister announcing on the floor of the Senedd that we are failing for the second time to honour a manifesto commitment to bring forward legislation on taxi reform (instead we are to have a draft Bill, which is something) and being forced to add when making the announcement: “Members may wish to note a declaration of interest concerning the company Veezu”. “Never before has a First Minister had to declare a formal conflict of interest on a key matter of Government business. The fact it has passed without a single comment tells us something about where we have reached. “The rules for the Welsh Labour leadership contest were that candidates would spend up to £45,000 to run their campaigns. Vaughan raised £251,600. “This party spending cap excluded staffing costs, office costs and costs of travel. The rules assumed that campaigns would be primarily run by volunteers and that ‘staffing’ would not be a significant factor. “...He recruited a paid staff team, including the deputy political editor of the Daily Mirror, Ben Glaze as Deputy Head of Communications. Labour members were bombarded with text messages and letters within days of the contest starting. This was a well organised and funded campaign. And there’s nothing in principle wrong with that, Vaughan is quite correct in saying that he did not break any rules. But rules can’t cover every eventuality. “I remain firmly of the view that in setting out to deliberately side-step the spirit of the spending rules he made a significant error of judgement. He didn’t need to spend so much, and shouldn’t have. It resulted in him seeking and accepting money from people who have agendas that clash with ours, and are perceived to be seeking to buy influence. “It seems that Vaughan remains unwilling or unable to confront his own role though. He was told by several colleagues after the election that he should return the donation, but chose not to. “The election result was very close. Vaughan won 51.7% of the vote. Jeremy Miles took 48.3%.The Labour Party has refused to publish the actual number of votes he won but Jeremy’s campaign manager told the Walescast pod that the result was ‘within a few hundred votes’. “As well as the enormous disparity in funding, the closeness of the result threw attention onto the pivotal role played by the regional committees of trade unions which overwhelmingly supported Vaughan Gething - with some very sharp practice in evidence. “...One of the reasons why the last three months has been so painful in the Welsh Labour Party is that the schism that has surfaced has revealed a genuine tension in values. I literally felt sick when I felt compelled to speak out against what I saw as ‘norm spoiling’ behaviour; and when my cry of pain was ignored I made myself ill with the thought of endorsing this amorality in a confidence vote. I couldn't do it, and didn’t do it. * * * * 24th July: “ Former first minister Mark Drakeford was among those offering their support to Eluned Morgan on Tuesday. He said she will bring to her role "a commitment to public service. Steeped in the radical Welsh Labour tradition, she will listen to people across our nation and speak alongside them with respect for, and resonance with, their experience of being citizens of 21st century Wales," he said.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c51yjqrzm54t * * * * 28th July: Martin Shipton: “She can end the pervasive culture of secrecy and hostility towards any group that dares to hold the administration to account. Such an approach had early beginnings. In the first months of the National Assembly, before he was ousted in a no confidence vote, the body’s first leader Alun Michael would regularly lambast anyone, including opposition politicians, who criticised decisions made by him and other ministers for “talking Wales down”. “Elements of such an attitude persisted and were manifest during Mr Gething’s short period in charge. “Getting information disclosed by the Welsh Government about matters that may put it in a bad light – or embarrass ministers – requires persistence. I remember Rhodri Morgan proclaiming that he intended to lead “the most open administration in the western world”. Whatever his intentions, those at the Welsh Government who respond to freedom of information requests are, as at many public bodies, notorious for using the many exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act to withhold, often on spurious grounds, documents that should be in the public domain. I am currently trying to get to the bottom of one aspect of the events that led to Mr Gething’s downfall. After NationCymru had leaked to it the now infamous iMessage in which he admitted he was deleting messages because otherwise they could be captured by an FoI request, I became convinced that the screenshot we had been sent represented only a small part of a longer conversation. Taking a cue from Mr Gething, I submitted an FoI asking for the whole of the “ministerial chat” to be disclosed. I was quickly told that no such documentation was held by the Welsh Government, leading me to the conclusion that all the messages had been deleted. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. More recently it became clear that additional messages had come to light and that they had been handed over to the UK Covid Inquiry by the Welsh Government. How could this be? I asked the Welsh Government and was told that the messages had come into its possession after I was sent the FoI response. I sent the following questions back: “Why hadn’t the material been disclosed? Who produced the messages in due course and why hadn’t they produced them earlier? When exactly did the Welsh Government become aware of the material’s existence and when was it passed to the UK Covid Inquiry?” https://nation.cymru/opinion/the-new-first-minister-must-be-honest-and-open-with-the-people-of |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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