How can a campaign this bad possibly win?!
My prediction for who will be the next Welsh Labour leader
Hello!
God be praised, we have reached the end of both the Covid Inquiry in Wales (for a while) and the Welsh Labour leadership contest.
Soon this newsletter will be able to focus on other areas and I for one can’t wait.
I am writing (and sending) this on the evening of Friday 15. By lunchtime the following day we will know who the next leader of Welsh Labour will be and therefore, almost certainly, the First Minister.
In the poll in the last newsletter I asked whether you thought Jeremy Miles or Vaughan Gething would win the race to be leader. By 57% to 43% Jeremy Miles has been predicted by the readers. Not an overwhelming endorsement but European Unions have been left with less.
I personally think it will be Vaughan Gething by a very narrow margin. I am going out on a limb to say it will be 52/48. Given that this newsletter has documented the relentless stream of controversies in recent weeks regarding the huge donations that he received in recent weeks you may be wondering why I am still predicting him to win?
Well there are two answers to this and they are both within the question:
The huge donations.
The fact they only came out recently.
The donations are so big that Mr Gething will have far more resources at his disposal to hire staff (which are not covered by the £44k spending limit) to mobilise voters to back him. On top of this he has the unions behind him which constitutes 100k of the 120k people who can vote (luckily for Mr Miles turnout among union members in these election is usually about 5%).
When it comes to the controversies, the fact they have come out really only in the last few weeks will likely benefit Mr Gething. Lots of people voted early and polling started long before people were even aware of just how much money he had taken from a criminal.
It is worth pointing out the further developments in this story since we discussed it a couple of weeks ago:
The firm that made the donation towards Vaughan Gething's bid to become First Minister was fined £300,000 following the death of an employee. An investigation was launched by and criminal proceedings were brought against the company, for failing to protect the welfare of their employees. I am sure they are delighted they are backing the same candidate as this company…
The BBC broke the story that the company pleaded guilty to ANOTHER environmental office in January of this year. The same month they made a donation to Mr Gething.
Vaughan Gething actively lobbied on behalf of a company to Natural Resources Wales before they made the donation.
In defence of Vaughan Gething
I have had several supporters of Mr Gething contact me to try and offer a reasonable defence of him accepting the £200k. Their first argument is that “Vaughan has broken no rules”.
They say this time and time again.
And to be fair to them, it is totally correct.
It is absolutely true to say that the man hoping to be First Minister broke no rules when he:
- Took a £200k donation from a criminal;
- Took a £200k donation from a company that dumped waste on the Gwent Levels;
- Lobbied for the company that would go on to give him that donation;
- Accepted the donation on the very same day the company submitted a bid to build a solar farm that would require the approval of his government should he win;
- And refused to answer any legitimate questions in a meaningful way about his actions.
All of the above is within the rules. But does this mean that they are the actions one should expect from a First Minister?
On the lobbying, several Welsh Labour politicians supporting Vaughan have told me that from what they could see the letters he sent to NRW on behalf of the company were “good constituency work”. Basically they are arguing that he is simply standing up for a firm based in his local constituency.
One can make that argument. But you could also argue that he is lobbying for a criminal who dumped waste in a nature reserve to have more access to waste. A criminal who would then go on to give him the biggest donation in the history of Welsh politics.
The Unions are mad
I have been told by several sources that some of the Unions who backed Mr Gething are now regretting their decision. The incident with the employee who died has left a particularly bad taste in the mouth. This has translated to less than diligent campaigning by some unions.
Reading between the numbers - the decline in Welsh Labour and Union membership
Stay with me here where I try (and likely fail) to dazzle you with maths.
The spending cap for Welsh Labour leaders is £44k.
The basis for this is £2.50 per member.
This means Welsh Labour currently has just under 18k members.
The last election in 2018 there was 53.1% turnout among members with 13,275 votes cast.
This means in 2018 Welsh Labour had 25,000 members so have lost over 20% in five years.
We can do similar calculations when it comes to union membership in Wales which is down to 100k this year compared to 150k five years ago. This is a huge drop but I don’t know if the amount of unions taking part this year is different (will update when I know).
How could have done better
I think it is worth asking how Vaughan Gething could have run a better campaign.
The obvious first point is DON’T TAKE MONEY FROM KNOWN CRIMINALS.
If you are not going to do give the money back when a controversy ensues, the last thing you should do is be as evasive and closed lipped about it as Mr Gething has been. This was never just going to disappear. By sticking to their “nothing to see here” attitude they have just made the whole scenario stink even worse (though likely not as bad as a nature reserve covered in waste).
If from the very start they had given interviews and actually face the criticism they would have avoided the accusations of arrogance and hiding from scrutiny. Instead they just made a bad situation worse.
How will the votes break down?
Let's start first with the 18k Labour members. Here I think Jeremy Miles will have an edge. These are estimates but from what I have heard Mr Miles seems to be ahead with the members.
Let's say he gets 60% of members (this is the roughest of rough estimates). But not all members vote. Last time there was a leadership election the turnout was 53% among the membership.
Let's say it is higher this time because there has been more attention on it and 58% vote. That means 10,440 vote. If Miles gets 60% of the vote that is 6,264. Meaning Gething gets 4,176.
Then we come to the union members who can vote. There are 100,000 of them. But last time only 5.6% voted. Let's say, because VG's team have been smashing the phones this goes up to 7%. This is 7k extra votes.
But what will the split be?
Because the major unions are supporting Gething, that means that the unions supporting him could (if he hasn’t really annoyed them) use all those contact details to tap into a voter base of 100k - Miles does not have this.
I think this will lead to union members massively coming down for Mr Gething. Let's say the union votes are 70/30 in favour of Mr Gething. This gives Gething 4,900 votes compared to Miles' 2,100.
So if we add my total guess work figures together we end up with: Vaughan Gething: 9,076 - 52% Jeremy Miles: 8,364 - 48%. Nothing bad has ever come from a 52/48 split right?
I stressed this on social media as well - this is pure speculation. These are guesses based on guesses. There has been no polling and we simply don't know.
It is a bit of fun however.
Would love to hear your predications! Closest gets a shout out in my newsletter.
What we have learned from the Covid Inquiry in Wales
It is strange to see the worst two years of many of our lives condensed down to three weeks of questions.
From the moment Baroness Hallett took her seat in a hotel in the Llanedeyrn area of Cardiff all those things we had put to the back of our mind came flooding back. The debates over masks, the anxiety over tests, the loss of basic human contact.
For those who lost loved ones in Wales it was a bittersweet moment. On the one hand they could finally be getting some answers and accountability, but on the other this is not going to be the Welsh specific inquiry they so wanted (and deserve).
In her opening statement, Baroness Hallett made this abundantly clear. She said that she was “aware” of those concerns and that by necessity the inquiry would only be looking at “the biggest issues in Wales during Covid.
What is beyond doubt is that when the inquiry does look at something it is forensic, methodical and insightful. While the barristers may have struggled with some pronunciations (one pronounced Llanelli perfectly while butchering “Taf”) they were laser focused on key Welsh issues such as care homes, the fire break and slow early pandemic response.
On those issues there were indeed huge revelations. The decision to not test asymptomatic patients was a deliberate decision according to Frank Atherton because it was assumed that homes could “manage” an outbreak. Vaughan Gething said he was following scientific advice whereas the man giving that advice, Rob Orford, said that he was never asked for his opinion. Whereas Mark Drakeford just said that the decision was based on a lack of tests.
Vaughan Gething and Mark Drakeford’s testimony in particular underscored why they were so desperate to have a UK-wide inquiry. Barely 10 minutes went by without a reference to how Westminster had detrimentally impacted on their ability to handle the virus in Wales.
For a pair of politicians who spent much of the pandemic response itself pointing out how Wales was a thing in and of itself and their decisions shouldn’t be endless compared with those in London, this was quite an about face. “London is only a factor when it is expedient” seems to be a lesson they took when it came to managing perceptions of themselves.
This is not the end of the inquiry in Wales. More modules are to come. But it is likely to be a relentless sore for whoever takes over as First Minister.
Thanks again for reading.
If you have anything you want me to look at let me know
Will
Hi Will, thanks for the coverage of the leadership election since, as always, there has been a lack of interest by media outlets with regards to Welsh politics.
I was wondering whether the North Wales Metro might warrant a newsletter. Specifically regarding it's plans, progress, and whether adequate attention and investment has been given in comparison with the South Wales Metro.