Wales' First Minister has denied he is the reason his party lost votes in Wales. Labour's share of the votes in Wales was down 4% compared to the previous election which has raised questions internally as to whether his declining popularity was to blame.
At the weekend, Kim Howells, a former Labour MP, said that Mr Gething had to quit. Mr Howells warned Mr Gething was "damaged goods" and needed replacing "sooner rather than later".
The First Minister lost a vote of no confidence in the Senedd last month, and cannot currently get a budget through the Senedd. The no confidence row came after donations to his leadership campaign, from a company owned by a man previously convicted of environmental offences. He was asked on BBC Radio Wales' breakfast show if he was the "problem" with voters. For the latest Welsh news delivered to your inbox sign up to our newsletter
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"I haven't spoken to Kim for a long time, as you'd expect. It's many years since I met him, and he's always got a view on a number of things. The public view was 27 out of 32 MPs are Welsh Labour MPs. A really efficient and targeted campaign about how we could win. We won back nine seats we had lost to the Tories [in 2019]. Well, eight seats we lost and one we'd never held before, so actually this does show when the public were asked what they thought change should look like, they chose Welsh Labour across Wales and I'm proud to have been front and centre in that campaign".
During the election campaign, polling of people in Wales showed Mr Gething's personal popularity had dropped further. A poll, done by YouGov for ITV Cymru and the magazine Barn, found that an overwhelming 83% of people (excluding don't knows) thought that Cardiff South and Penarth MS, Mr Gething, was doing either badly or very badly as the leader of Wales' devolved administration..
"I'm confident we can make a real success of two Labour governments working together, you couldn't have had greater clarity in this from both the Prime Minister and a range of Labour figures on this. I'm here to deliver for Wales over the next two years up to 2026 and we do have challenges. The voting system will be different in 2026, the rise of Reform is a real challenge for every party, and if you think about it, the fact they're the third party in terms of vote share isn't just a real challenge for my party but for the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru who finished fourth in vote share terms.
"We need to look at what happens here in Wales to restore some of the trust and to deal with some of the cynicism."
When asked about the situation on election night, the party's deputy leader in Wales, Carolyn Harris, said: "That's not something I'd have an answer to. I've tried to keep out of that situation and I intend to do so.” When she was asked about the drop in vote share, she said the party would have a "post-mortem" after all results were in.
