Gan Hedd Goch

Winning Power vs Picking It Up Off The Floor

On the 7th of May, the people of Wales went to the polls for the Senedd elections, utilising a system of proportional representation, which I’m sure we all understand now that the election has happened, right? The result of this election has been deeply historic for Wales. With a turnout of around 53%, Welsh Labour was not just ousted from power; they were relegated to the third largest party in the new Senedd, ending 100 years of political domination and 27 years of running Wales in the Senedd.

The collapse of Welsh Labour, the historic party of Wales, is shocking for another reason beyond their catastrophic results at this Senedd election, because two years ago, with a marginally higher turnout of 56% in Wales, UK Labour won 411/650 seats in Westminster. How did Welsh Labour do so badly this year when UK Labour did so well less than 2 years ago?

The answer is this: UK Labour didn’t ‘win’ power in 2024 in any meaningful sense; the Conservative government gave it up. They ‘won’ with a turnout across the UK of 59.7%, a decrease of 7.8%. UK Labour got fewer votes in 2024 than they got in 2019, the year that the UK Labour vote collapsed across the working-class heartlands of England.

But why talk about UK Labour in 2024 when this erthygl is about the Senedd election of 2026? Simple – Plaid Cymru beat Labour and took power this week  in a real, tangible way.

Yes, fewer people in Wales voted in this Senedd election than they did in the general election, but this turnout beats every previous Senedd election. More people voted for Plaid Cymru than ever before, and more people engaged in the political reality of Wales in 2026.

What Was On The Metaphorical Political Table?

Going into this election, Welsh politics was shaped by the reigning Welsh Labour Party, by the Welsh Conservatives, the waning star of the Liberal Democrats; and by Plaid Cymru, who, in the last Senedd, were not even the official opposition. A late entry to the political landscape was Reform UK, though insurgent right-wing parties had done well before, with UKIP in 2016 taking 7 seats from nothing and rapidly losing MSs until they ended the term with only one left. Reform UK entered the 2026 Senedd election with 2 MSs, who had defected from the Welsh Conservatives shortly before the election.

So, how has Plaid Cymru made the rapid ascent to the largest party in Wales, more than doubling their amount of MSs? Let’s look at what was actually on offer for Wales in 2026.

While there may be some nuance in the specifics of the political tendencies present in Wales, I would say they fit broadly into these three brackets; independence, devolution (or soft-unionism) and anti-devolution (or hard-unionism). Using these positions, you can peg where the political parties should be (in theory). Plaid Cymru are obviously in favour of independence; Welsh Labour repeatedly called itself “the party of devolution”; and both Welsh Conservatives and Reform UK positioned themselves as wanting to restrict the duties of the Senedd and promoted a strong, UK Unionist identity. The more minor parties, like the Green Party in Wales, positioned themselves as pro-devolution but flirting with independence, and the Liberal Democrats positioned themselves as staunchly anti-independence but pro-devolution.

So, coming up to this election, we expected a neat arrangement of ideas presented to the people of Wales, the reality however was that the ‘political table’ was a bit of a mess. Why was this? On the one hand, Plaid Cymru committed to not call for a referendum should they win and instead focus on fixing the glaring issues in Wales, securing additional powers for the Senedd, and building up Wales to create a nation more ready to leave the union. They were able to adopt this position because Welsh Labour had, in their eyes, abandoned their position as the “party of devolution”.

Welsh Labour entered the election and campaigned on their historic victories, such as free prescriptions, and other things they did almost two decades ago now. Wales, as a devolved nation under Welsh Labour, has roughly existed in 3 periods, the Blair-Brown years, when devolution was young and rapidly developing; the Tory years, where Welsh Labour became the manager of austerity on behalf of Westminster; and the Starmer years. Welsh Labour eagerly awaited the return of their mother party to power in Westminster, with plans to work hand-in-hand (or was it shoulder-to-shoulder?) with a UK Labour government, but UK Labour arrived on the scene and nothing changed. Worse than nothing, UK Labour seemed (at best!) uncaring for their loyal vassals in Welsh Labour and sometimes downright hostile to them. Labour MPs in Wales actually voted against devolving the crown estate to Wales, something that has broad and popular political support across Wales, evidenced by every single council voting for it. They entered this election in a defeated manner, they had been rocked by a political scandal by the former leader, but that was a short term trigger – Wales has had enough of Welsh Labour, we have grown tired of being told that the things they did decades ago meant they deserve to win an election now. The writing on the wall for Welsh Labour became apparent when half the sitting Welsh Labour MSs declared they would retire rather than face a disastrous election. Moreover, Labour has not done enough to actually support the argument that they are “the party of devolution”, instead Welsh Labour came across as “the party of the status quo”.

The final strand is the hard-unionist side; Welsh Conservatives might have entered this election as the official opposition with 16 seats, but they have spent the last two years bleakly staring down the barrel of the gun, which has finally gone off. Reform UK was there to pull the trigger. Their easy to grasp, sloganistic positions usurped the (sometimes) sensible and somewhat boring Welsh Tories. Reform UK approached this election with the following positions: stop the ‘Nation Of Sanctuary’, stop planting trees in Uganda, scrap 20mph speed limits, and stop funding the Welsh language. If the Senedd does it, stop it.

So to summarise, we had Plaid Cymru who had a plan to advance and change Wales, Welsh Labour who were saying that Wales is basically fine and doesn’t need changing, and Reform UK saying that we need to slash and burn the Senedd/civil service. With this in mind, it is no surprise that Plaid Cymru has become the largest party, even attracting those who don’t want independence, simply because the party that was meant to be “the party of devolution” has given up its mantle.

O Socialists, Where Art Thou?

Y Seren Goch is a Socialist-Republican paper, so let us look at the state of socialism & working-class organising within Wales in relation to this election.

Historically, the working class within Wales has remained allied to the Labour Party through the trade union movement, a relationship embedded into Welsh political life during the first 27 years of devolution, with the Labour Party having formal agreements with trade unions to give them a voice within the party and more recently via the  ‘Social Partnership Act’ which formalised the duty of public bodies within Wales to consult and compromise with trade unions on workplace matters. On paper, this sounds great, job done, unions onside, working class listened to! But regrettably this is not enough for Labour to be socialist. What socialist party would tolerate the high levels of poverty within Wales? Around 30% of children in Wales grow up in poverty and have done so since the beginning of devolution. Perhaps then, devolution as it is now is not capable of dealing with poverty? But then, what socialist party would tolerate lacking the powers to end poverty in the first place?

To be charitable to Welsh Labour, I don’t believe they were intentionally starving children in Wales, but they did not create a political state capable of ending poverty when they first had the chance, and they didn’t seem to try when they finally had Labour in Westminster and were theoretically working “shoulder to shoulder”  in 2024. Regardless, with Welsh Labour out of the spotlight, it is now Plaid Cymru’s turn to reconcile these issues, but the foundations of our devolved state were built by Welsh Labour and with heavy trade union cooperation, who will not be happy that their close allies in Welsh Labour are not just gone, but pushed into the fringes of politics.

In this election, Plaid Cymru have been positioned as a socialist party, which is more of a point about how limited our imagination is of what socialism is more than anything else. To be crystal clear, while there are socialists within Plaid Cymru, this does not make it a socialist party, nor will it achieve socialism in this or any Senedd term. I don’t say this to shit on this historic victory for the party or to say that it is bad that Plaid Cymru has won; it isn’t! However, it needs to be stated to understand the socialist movement now that the official, trade union approved, way of organising for change is no longer relevant nor possible. Trade unions will be scrabbling to make links with Plaid Cymru, and it is up to Plaid Cymru whether they engage. There will be those in Plaid Cymru asking whether trade union links are even a necessity in 21st century Wales, at a time when we are facing historic lows in trade union membership.

As it turns out, socialists exist outside of these parties too, as we found out in this election. The Communist Party of Britain, who claim the lineage of the old Communist Party of Great Britain, was not able to replicate the old CPGBs success in Welsh elections, with the famous communist mayor Annie Powell in the Rhondda at one point. The Trade Union & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) also ran candidates across Wales, a fact that unfortunately surprised many socialists on election day when they saw them on the ballot paper. Outside of these legacy socialist parties, we had Beth Winter, the socialist former Labour MP, attract over 2000 votes in the Pontypridd-Cynon-Merthyr constituency, but the electoral system we’re using in Wales is set up in favour of larger parties. Whilst it is possible that under a better system, Beth Winter would have got enough to get over the threshold, it is also possible that a strong electoral challenge is the ceiling of electoral organising for the left in Wales.

This is not stated to gloat, but to reinforce the next point – whilst ‘the left’ struggled to make electoral inroads, ‘the right’ did not! 

“Wales does not vote Tory” is a common refrain in Wales, in fact, not a single Tory was elected in Wales in the 2024 General Election, nor did the “Welsh Red Wall” of the valleys fall to the Conservatives in 2019 like it did in England. Welsh Conservatives were, up until this election, the official opposition in the Senedd, but it is not a party rooted within Welsh political tradition. This year, Reform UK hoovered up Tory defections and seemed to many socialists to be meaner, big C conservatives. This did not damage their chances in Wales. Incredibly they not only seemed to take the majority of the Tory vote, they also ate into the working class heartlands, as Welsh Labour votes went to Plaid Cymru and to Reform. There is some precedent here as in  2016 UKIP won 7 seats, and was in many ways the precursor party to Reform UK today.

Socialism For The Welsh People?

Left Versus Right is a debate that plagues socialists, but the core truth here is that the working class is hurting, and is looking for answers. The working class in Wales has found two competing answers in this Senedd election, to expand and improve the Welsh devolved infrastructure (with an eye on independence), or to follow Reform UKs advice, and dismantle it piecemeal whilst screaming about the “savings” and how Reform UK in the Senedd will “stop the boats”.

But this is not the complete answer to our issues, and it cannot be framed as this. The working class will not find the answer to our issues through a Senedd vote, but we can through independent class organising, by reasserting ourselves as the prime movers of history, of society, as the class that creates rather than takes.

So, on the one hand, let’s be pleased and celebrate Plaid Cymru’s victory, whether you believe in the party or just want to see the well-earned punishment for Welsh Labour, but on the other hand, we should not pin our hopes on one moment, on one struggle, on one avenue. The fight for the working class is everywhere, and the fight cannot be led by anyone other than the working class ourselves.