Liz Truss’s 49 days in Downing Street is unlikely to earn her a place on the Lords’ red benches any time soon, but another leader with a similarly mayfly-like tenure in office is rumoured to be heading to the second chamber.
All the gossip at Welsh Labour’s annual conference in Llandudno at the weekend was that Vaughan Gething, who lasted 139 days in a disastrous spell as first minister of Wales, is in line for a peerage after Wales secretary Jo Stevens lobbied on his behalf.
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Last autumn Gething announced he would not be standing again in next year’s Senedd election, and Stevens, who is a friend of his as well as a former colleague at Thompsons Solicitors in Cardiff, is said to be keen for him to remain in politics in the Lords. Other senior Welsh Labour figures, however, are queasy about reminding the public about the dodgy donations scandal which ultimately did for Gething’s time in office ahead of an election in which Labour is already expected to do badly.
Aside from peerage chatter, the conference was also notable for a blink-and-miss-it appearance from prime minister Keir Starmer. Starmer spent a grand total of 30 minutes at the venue, making a speech in which his justification for disability benefit cuts was met with silence. He also read from an autocue on a large plasma screen at the back of the wall – meaning delegates could read his phonetically written words in Welsh, including DEE-OCK for Diolch, which is very much not how the Welsh word for ‘thank you’ is pronounced.
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