Analysis: a defiant statement from the outgoing FMpublished at 14:06
David Deans
BBC Wales politics reporter
If that had not been abundantly clear from the events of this morning, it is clear from Vaughan Gething’s statement in the Senedd that he is not going of his own volition.
He was defiant, it was very much a statement from someone who felt they were being unfairly ushered out.
Those on the other side of the argument would I imagine strongly disagree.
Mr Gething said there had been a “growing assertion of some kind of wrongdoing has taken place has been pernicious, politically motivated, and painfully untrue”.
“In 11 years as a minister, I have never, ever made a decision for personal gain,” he said. “I have never, ever misused or abused my ministerial position”.
While he did not financially gain directly from the £200,000 donation from Dauson Environmental Group opponents might argue that, actually, he may well have benefited from taking a large amount of money for his leadership campaign – unheard of in Welsh Labour contests. It may have helped him win.
The source of that cash, from a company owned by a man previously convicted of illegally dumping waste and then not cleaning it up, had upset some in Labour over how it looked more than anything else.
Lee Waters, Llanelli MS, in attacking the donations, said in the Senedd in May: “They say that when accepted standards of behaviours -norms – are undermined, it lowers expectations, and that lays the ground for a new set of weaker standards to take hold.”
