Starmer’s Labour imploding already as Welsh government collapses!

Right, so you would imagine the collapse of Welsh governance as something even a mainstream media as pathetic as ours might want to pass comment on but apparently not as a government that has been mired in chaos as a direct result of Keir Starmer’s interference in candidate selections there reaches it’s inevitable conclusion after just 4 months and it has all gone to pieces.
Following ministerial resignations beginning this morning, the deeply scandalised Starmerroid First Minister of Wales Vaughan Gething has finally given in and resigned following months of frankly putting his own self interest before the interests of Wales, I can’t imagine what Starmer found in common with him, but having now stood down, should it really have taken so much scandal to get to this point at last and will we now see a new set of elections as is being called for, or will there be another Starmer-style imposition on the people of Wales instead?
Right, so the story of now outgoing First Minister of Wales Vaughan Gething should be a warning to Keir Starmer and those supportive of him in that no matter how the polls might favour him, that doesn’t necessarily insulate him from political fallout, especially when in no uncertain terms it is interference in electoral procedures, as we’ve seen in so many places across the country under his leadership, that have brought this sorry state of affairs in Wales to it’s inevitable conclusion, perhaps a lot quicker than some expected, but thanks to such meddling in order to get the preferred candidate elected, the Welsh government has basically collapsed.
The Senedd only has 11 Cabinet members, so 3 of them quitting, plus the resignation of the Counsel General, one of four ministerial posts means it might only be a handful of people at the end of the day to make a complete hash of things, but ultimately this is the end of what has seemed like a very long road, but actually has only been 4 months, 118 days to be exact, so Vaughan Gething has managed to last for roughly two Liz Truss’s. He must be glad nobody was timing the longevity of a lettuce on this occasion though.
Gething has been mired in scandal since he held the health brief, in the Senedd, chipgate for him, apparently caught eating chips in the park cith his son during lockdown, was akin to beergate for Keir Starmer, but like Starmer that one didn’t leave him with any lasting damage seemingly and he was still able to progress his political career to taking a tilt at replacing Mark Drakeford as First Minister, running as he was against Jeremy Miles, himself soft left at best, certainly not Starmery either, perhaps him running against Stephen Kinnock in 2014 to be selected as Labour candidate for Aberavon went against him, but who knows? Either way, Gething was more Starmer’s sort and so it seems he had to be the chosen one and there’s been reason to suspect interference in the process to choose the next Labour leader in Wales and by default First Minister, to ensure Gething won.
Now vote rigging was not new to Labour at this point, we’d had the scandal of the Anonyvoter internal voting system used by Labour, provided to them by close associates in Croydon of current Labour General Secretary David Evans, but this was a whole new, non Anonyvoter related vote rigging story as this time it concerned the manipulation of the Organise communication system Labour uses, to have delivered the Welsh First Ministership to Vaughan Gething.
Right, so whilst the Anonyvoter scandal is slowly gaining more attention,
Organise is the email communication system between members used at national and constituency level within the Labour Party, it is what literally connects members in this digital age we live in. It is ostensibly therefore a neutral system, its for communications, but as far as the selection process went for Labour’s selection for the First Minister of Wales role, a role not up for election itself at this time, so whoever got picked, became the new Welsh First Minister. Well it was reported by Nation Cymru that Welsh Labour members were apparently told to not use Organise to support either the eventual winner, Vaughan Gething, or his rival for the post, Jeremy Miles. The message members were apparently sent read:
‘We would like to remind all Organise users that the use of Labour Party systems to promote a leadership candidate or send emails on behalf of campaign teams is strictly prohibited. Any use of this nature will be seen as a serious breach of your use of Organise and will result in your account being suspended and possibly further action. Thanks, Welsh Labour.’
Now this was sent out just 2 days before the vote was held and it very much appeared that Organise was being used to promote Vaughan Gething before this, despite it not being allowed, and the reason for that is if internal campaigning starts taking place across the main Labour Party system it for one can obviously lend an unfair advantage to one candidate or the other and for two would likely end up burying important other communiques to members. Yet there is evidence it was being used to help Vaughan Gething gain a potentially unfair advantage and given he was Starmer’s pick, this is made in light of every other selection process interference story and vote rigging scandal we know of, all the more believable.
On top of that there were shenanigans where the trade unions were concerned as well as on top of the issued with Organise, Welsh Labour General Secretary Jo McIntyre emailed trade union affiliates – members of trade unions affiliated to Labour, though not necessarily Labour members themselves, who will have had a vote in this too – providing information to them that favoured Gething, leading to accusations of Welsh Labour itself trying to rig it’s own contest, though given how Labour has behaved nationally, it is entirely plausible and believable that such instruction if true, came from higher up the Starmerite food chain.
There are also allegations of vote rigging in favour of Gething within the affiliate trade union Unite, led by the Starmer supporting Sharon Graham. A recently introduced rule under Graham’s tenure was that the union would only endorse candidates for political office if they had been union lay officials previously. This ended up ruling Jeremy Miles out, following an intervention from the Regional Secretary of Unite, despite him having been a Unite member for some time. Gething had only joined Unite a few months earlier and won Unite’s endorsement, before it finally coming out that the new rule Unite had cited in order to not back Miles, didn’t apply to this election, giving this situation all the hallmarks of a Starmer style fix too.
Upon becoming First Minister, Gething’s problems didn’t go away, not least of which the most famous issue he had, which was of explaining away a £200,000 donation given to him – an insanely large donation in Welsh government terms – by a man twice convicted of environmental offences pertaining to dumping waste on a conservation site – once for dumping it and again for refusing to remove it. Makes it very difficult to believe Gething will clamp down on environmental damage after taking said sums, not least of which after Gething was found to have asked Natural Resources Wales to ease restrictions on the businessman’s companies. The Development Bank of Wales also made huge loans totalling some £400,000 to a firm owned by this same donor.
Never having dealt with this matter it has continued to dog Gething as he became further embroiled in self inflicted problems.
Following messages being leaked from a WhatsApp group that Gething wanted deleted, He accused then Minister for Social Partnership Hannah Blythyn of being the leak, which she denied, but Gething nonetheless sacked her over the matter and he hadn’t really proven the point.
This was one piece of evidence cited shortly thereafter by Tory MS Darren Millar when he brought a motion of no confidence against Gething last month, which he lost by 29 votes to 27, with two members off ill, one of which coincidentally, happened to be Blythyn and it was for this reason Gething complained he had lost, but in actuality, if members of his own Labour Party hadn’t also backed that no confidence motion against him, it should never have been an issue. Being a non binding vote however, it was ultimately academic and Gething remained unmoved, he called it a gimmick, which is just total contempt, especially when members of his own party voted against him here.
Then this morning it all imploded as four ministers quit, including Jeremy Miles, the then economy secretary, along with Julie James the housing minister, Lesley Griffiths, the culture and social justice minister and Mick Antoniw, the Counsel General. A quarter of the Welsh government pretty much as that roughly speaking amounts to, leaving Welsh Labour in disarray and calls coming for elections even though they aren’t due in Wales until 2026.
First off, we can’t have a rerun of the interference whatever happens next, be it elections or a new Labour First Minister selected and put in post & given what happened last time with Gething, that likely won’t satisfy all and if a budget can’t get passed in autumn, which Gething was widely suspected to be on course to fail to do, then this hasn’t necessarily been headed off at this point either, Labour only hold 30 of the 60 Senedd seats, so they will need their own party whole again, plus still need other parties to work with them and they could ardently refuse en masse to do that without new elections. Welsh Labour divisions have now reopened big time, and who can blame them, when some feel that with Starmer as the party national leader, he’ll favour one faction over others regardless of democracy just as he seemingly did before. There’s no trust, and as with all things Starmer, trust is just one thing we will see him lose more and more of, because he is just fundamentally a chronically awful untrustworthy individual, always pushing his own agenda rather than let democracy run its course. He has to be in control and that control freakery is stoking division, not bringing the party together. There’s an argument they could just let runner up Jeremy Miles have it, but Gething still has loyalists to him who won’t allow it and given his resignation led to Gething’s final downfall, that counts for double.
It's a mess, it’s Starmer made in no small part, if he conducts the next Labour leadership race as I think there has to be, as he did before, then there will be no happy families afterwards and I think the people of Wales will rightly be appalled at this party, who have been in charge in Wales for 25 years, falling apart at the seams on them for the most avoidable and ridiculous reasons.
Meanwhile on the matter of Labour donations that are decidedly dubious, here’s a video recommendation covering just how badly some others are bought and paid for by vested interests too, not least Starmer himself and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.