Could a leaked ministerial group chat from 2020 topple Wales' first minister?

Vaughan Gething should be riding the crest of a Labour wave following last week's landslide in Westminster, which saw the Conservative Party wiped off the map in Wales.

Instead, the embattled first minister of Wales is under more pressure than ever.

Questions over his decision to accept a political donation from a man convicted of environmental offences led to him losing a vote of no confidence in the Senedd last month.

That non-binding vote was lost because two of his Labour colleagues, Lee Waters and Hannah Blythyn, were not present. Both are well known critics of the first minister.

We now know that Ms Blythyn was signed off from work at the time of the vote following her sacking as a junior minister some weeks earlier after ministerial text messages were leaked to the media.

The conversation, originally published by the Nation.Cymru website, included a message from Mr Gething telling ministers he was deleting messages from the group, leading to allegations he misled the Covid inquiry.

While confirming he had sent the message, the first minister denied deleting anything from his phone and said it related to internal discussions within the Senedd Labour group.

The reason the exchange was captured at the time appears to have been to highlight comments mocking a backbench Labour MS allegedly made by Jeremy Miles, Mr Gething’s rival in the leadership election.

The row was thrust back into the spotlight in dramatic fashion this week when Ms Blythyn broke her silence in the Senedd, reiterating that she has never leaked anything to the media.

She also said she was not told she was being investigated or shown any evidence before she was sacked.

Mr Gething defended his decision robustly, insisting that it was “clear” the leak had come from her phone.

In incredibly awkward scenes, the first minister told members he was left with no choice but to ask the member for Delyn to leave the government as she sat directly behind him shaking her head repeatedly looking visibly angry.

The next day, the news website which broke the story, Nation.Cymru, took the “unprecedented” step of confirming publicly that Hannah Blythyn was not their source.

The website’s chief executive Mark Mansfield said that “the right thing to do is to state publicly that she was not the source of our story and that at no stage before or since publication of it have we had any contact with her about it”.

The Welsh Government then clarified that it was only able to identify which phone was responsible for the leak because Nation.Cymru sent them an "unredacted version" of the photograph of the group chat when asking for comment.

Mr Gething says the photograph provided by Nation.Cymru could only have come from Hannah Blythyn’s phone, and that “ministers are responsible for their own data.”

It’s understood this is because her initials did not appear at the top of the group.

Things are getting very messy. Cabinet Secretary for the Economy Jeremy Miles told BBC Wales that the Labour group is united, but it's clear there are deep divisions.

Allies of the first minister suspect a leadership challenge could come as soon as this weekend, but a Labour group source says it is unlikely that any rival has the numbers required to topple Mr Gething.

If the challenge fails to materialise, the problems aren’t over for the first minister.

He needs to pass a budget in the autumn, and no opposition member appears willing to abstain to allow the minority Labour government to pass it, which could lead to a snap Senedd election. Now that would really test party unity.

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