Starmer has been saying that Wales is the model for the UK. For some reason he has stopped saying it !
They say a picture tells a thousand stories. If so, one must wonder about the sorry image of the First Minister of Wales shaken and sobbing in the Senedd this week.
On Wednesday, Labour’s new incumbent Vaughan Gething, 50, lost a
no-confidence motion just 78 days into the job after his contested appointment in March. It caused him to weep in front of colleagues, and offer – some would say – extremely rare words of contrition.
The reason? In February, during his leadership campaign, it emerged
Gething had received two £100,000 donations from a large environmental company convicted of polluting.
Dauson Environmental Group, whose director is Welsh businessman David John Neal, 63, has been convicted of environmental crimes on several occasions, with his companies fined and ordered to pay costs totalling more than £400,000.
But in the new year, Neal boosted Gething’s campaign coffers by a total of £200,000. Despite repeated calls to return the money by Labour colleagues and opposing politicians, Gething has persistently refused. The £200,000 donation equates to roughly 80 per cent of the £254,000 that Gething spent in total. And it counts as one of the biggest single donations in Welsh political history. To put it in context, his opponent Jeremy Miles was only able to raise £58,800 from all donors during the same time frame.
It is – according to Conservative rivals who subsequently triggered the no-confidence vote – a sorry tale of pollution, corruption and sleaze. Here – in pictures – we tell the story.
