Darlleniadau Hir/Long Reads

Gan An Cú

INTRODUCTION 

The 2026 Senedd election has come and gone. Most of the parties have, generally speaking, performed about as they should have after the 2025 Caerphilly by-election. Welsh Labour, which has been a political machine without equal in western Europe for over a century, is now relegated to a distant third place behind Reform UK and Plaid Cymru. Despite Senedd election reform this year which is in theory meant to be more proportional, it has produced a two party system. One which is clearly split by a progressive image of Wales embodied by Plaid Cymru or a right wing, reactionary image of Wales embodied by Reform UK. Both of these visions for Wales resonate with voters across the country, and by all accounts appear to have killed off Welsh Labour’s monopoly on political Welshness  which was expressed by their half Welsh, half British political and cultural identity. The centre ground as it existed under Welsh Labour and the Conservatives has given way to a much louder and polarised idea of Welshness or Britishness embodied by Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. 

Previously Welsh Labour and the Conservatives were the hegemonic parties of the left and right in Wales, but have now lost their dominant position to Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, essentially trading the old Labour-Tory dual party system with another one between Plaid Cymru and Reform. The parties might have changed, but the left and right voter blocs still continue to exist, becoming increasingly segregated by age and national identity between Welsh and British. What has changed, however, is who is leading those blocs. Plaid Cymru and Reform UK may well be willing to draw upon certain elements of the political coalition they lead in ways that their predecessors in Welsh Labour and the Conservatives have not done previously. Plaid Cymru could possibly draw in the fractured elements of Yes Cymru and the nationalist movement more broadly into its political constituency, relying on them as think tanks to legitimise steps towards independence, lobbyist groups to launder some of their policies, or footsoldiers to be used during future election campaigns, having access to resources and funds now that the party could only have dreamed of ten years ago to sustain these new political actors. Reform UK, similarly, will likely draw upon the far right elements that have always existed in Welsh society in the form of fringe, explicitly or implicitly racist organisations or individuals who have never really fitted in under the hegemonic leadership of the Welsh Conservatives over the right wing bloc in Wales. Even during the UKIP-Abolish the Welsh Assembly wave in 2016 it was clear that the Welsh Conservatives were still the dominant right wing force in the country. 

The strange, malformed, pseudo social-democratic anti-politics espoused by Welsh Labour since the beginning of devolution in 1997 is now drawing to a close. According to the record voter turnout this year (which, it must be noted, struggled to go over 50%), this is the most legitimate Senedd in its nearly 30 year history. Voters have resoundingly rejected the social-democratic managerialism offered by Welsh Labour, and in its place has emerged a significant polarisation between left and right blocs, each aligned not necessarily on any common policy but on trying to either frustrate or outright prevent each other from gaining and wielding any political power to further their ideological goals. Plaid Cymru has done well this election, but it should be noted that a significant portion of their political coalition do not favour independence and saw them as the best chance at defeating Reform UK. Similarly, Reform UK will also have to manage a variety of factions within the wider right wing coalition it currently leads, ranging from the disenfranchised socially conservative voter who has historically been unwilling to vote Tory to the genuinely racist and misogynistic far right nutter archetype. For now, this right bloc in Wales is united under the hegemonic leadership of Reform around the issues of immigration and cutting down on perceived waste associated with the Senedd, but it remains to be seen how stable this coalition will be in the long term. 

The final result of the day was 43 seats to Plaid Cymru, 34 to Reform UK, 9 to Welsh Labour, 7 to the Conservatives, 2 to the Greens and 1 (!) to the Libdems. I want to spend the rest of this article on analysing the winners and losers of the Senedd election, and where we might be headed next. 

WINNers

WINNER: PLAID CYMRU 

It is difficult to put into context the historic win of Plaid Cymru this election. On the centenary of the party being founded, not only has the party defeated their rival Welsh Labour (which has dominated the country in some form or another for the past century), they have succeeded in the face of an existential far right threat. Winning 43 seats, they are the largest party in the Senedd, and will be able to govern as a minority government without the support of Welsh Labour or the Greens. 

The proudly nationalist party which has historically been the third voice in the Welsh two party system has become the central voice in Cardiff Bay, breaking through into the urban metropole of South Wales and the more populated regions of north east Wales. 

To put it in perspective, in 2024 Plaid Cymru won 3,529 votes (8.6%) in Newport West and Islwyn, putting them in fourth place behind the Conservatives, Reform and Labour. In this election, they received 23,069 votes (29%), just behind Reform, which had 25,571 votes. Famously, the early devolution movement of Cymru Fydd met its demise at a Liberal Conference in Newport in 1896, in which David Lloyd George was shouted down by the Cardiff alderman and industrialist Robert Bird, who rallied the “Little Englishmen” of south Wales present at the conference against the domination of “Welsh ideas”¹. The fact that Plaid Cymru has broken through not only in the Welsh Valleys, but in the south eastern corridor of the nation which was previously a stronghold for Labour and the Conservatives should speak to the monumentality of this victory.

In constituencies like Casnewydd Islwyn and Sir Gaerfyrddin, where Plaid Cymru were only a few votes away from gaining an extra seat from Reform, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some Welsh Labour voters who might see the result and kick themselves for not voting for Plaid Cymru, which will no doubt boost the Plaid Cymru vote share in the Westminster 2029 election and the next Senedd election in 2030. Plaid Cymru has also in a single day gone from 13 seats to 43, drastically increasing their Senedd resources and parliamentary staff in a single night. If they can keep a hold of their political coalition and continue to stylise themselves as the Party of Wales against Reform, then those resources might go to use in creating a powerful electoral machine similar to that which was once possessed by Welsh Labour. 

There are, however, significant challenges for the party going forward. For one, the political coalition they have built around the centre-left of Welsh politics is not as strong as it might appear. Questions around independence (both in terms of opposition to it and amongst the nationalists who see Plaid Cymru putting it on the back burner this term) could threaten to fracture the party down the line. The party may also struggle to actually accomplish anything it wants to do, having to make concessions to Welsh Labour to pass budgets and legislation lest they decide to vote with Reform to frustrate Plaid Cymru that will inevitably water down some of Plaid Cymru’s proposals, as well as being constrained by the fiscal and judicial powers of the Senedd. Perhaps if the UK Labour faction around Keir Starmer is ousted and a more favourable one is installed in Westminster the policy of going to London to demand more powers could work out for Plaid Cymru. Perhaps both leaders in Cardiff and London will realise the threat posed by Reform.

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As it stands, however, it seems likely that Westminster Labour will try and lash out against the devolved nations, as there isn’t actually a reason to play nice with either Plaid Cymru or the SNP. If Eluned Morgan could not get concessions out of Westminster for rail, devolution of the crown estate and further powers for the Senedd, what chance does Rhun ap Iorwerth have? Plaid Cymru have a mandate for change, but because of the structure of Welsh devolution, lacks any of the means to actually enforce that mandate. Devolution in Wales was built around a symbiotic relationship between Labour in Wales and Labour in Westminster, which came under increasing strain as Westminster Labour faced electoral doom following the financial crash, which in turn ushered in an era of austerity that Welsh devolution was structurally unable to deal with. If Rhun ap Iorwerth is unable to get concessions out of Westminster, what is he able to actually do once he is told to go fuck himself?  Such public refusals could be used to demonstrate the need for full independence and increase anti-Westminster sentiment in the Welsh electorate, but for a variety of reasons Plaid Cymru will not trigger a full constitutional crisis like the one seen in Catalonia in 2017². This juxtaposition between the disempowerment of the Senedd and their unwillingness to act could lead to elements of their coalition fraying, but ultimately even the most radical republican elements of the wider coalition under Plaid Cymru are not in a position where they can capitalise on any form of constitutional crisis. 

Another issue for Plaid Cymru to deal with is inheriting not only the economic and social problems of Wales unresolved by Welsh Labour, but also the myriad of different institutions, NGOs and think tanks that once propped Labour up in Cardiff Bay. Plaid Cymru certainly isn’t a stranger to working with think tanks or NGOs and are likely to rely on them as institutions that provide the research and technical knowledge of how to actually implement Welsh government policy. The party itself has had extensive experience of working with them both in government and outside of it. John Osmond previously ran the Institute for Welsh Affairs from 1996 to 2013 until it was taken over by former Labour MS Lee Waters, and the party has built links with various charities like Shelter Cymru and the Bevan Foundation to articulate their housing policy. Plaid Cymru has also cultivated relationships with business interests in the form of the National Farmers Union Cymru, and supported the establishment of the Celtic Freeport scheme first outlined under Rishi Sunak’s government. More recently in March, Rhun ap Iorwerth met a series of Welsh business leaders in Cardiff ahead of the Senedd election, no doubt trying to ingratiate the party to the faces of Capital as it became increasingly clear that Plaid Cymru would be head of some sort of government in Cardiff Bay after the election³. 

Those same institutions Plaid Cymru are now building links with and relying upon were the same ones who built up the structures of devolution alongside Welsh Labour, and whilst there certainly is a revolving door between Welsh government and the third sector, the issue is not necessarily Welsh Labour apparatchiks frustrating a Plaid Cymru government from their new jobs in various NGOs throughout the country. Rather, it is whether or not Plaid Cymru’s reliance on the third sector will recreate the feeling of a Welsh Labour government despite the popular mandate for change they have been given by the Welsh electorate. The Welsh government has historically been able to work with a series of NGOs and think tanks to produce a wide array of policy documents that look, sound and may even be quite radical, but if that mandate for change that Plaid Cymru campaigned on is spent doing a series of incremental and imperceptible reforms rather than the sweeping changes needed to address the fundamental issues of Welsh society, they may expend a large amount of political capital earned from the good will of voters in Wales very quickly. 

One other interest group Plaid Cymru may struggle to deal with is the trade unions, who have historically been extremely closely aligned to Welsh Labour, who in return grafted them onto parts of Senedd policy (most significantly in the form of a wider policy of “social partnership”)⁴. Plaid Cymru and the trade unions in Wales have butted heads in the past. During Leanne Wood’s tenure as party leader in 2016, Unison circulated a pamphlet to its members implying that Plaid Cymru was against creating apprenticeships and unclear on its policy of private and state sector schooling, for which the secretary of Unison Cymru Margaret Thomas later issued an apology⁵. 2018 saw GMB issue an apology over their proposal to divert water in Wales to the south east of England⁶, but in 2022 the national GMB body was still testing out the idea despite GMB Wales stating that plans needed to be much more developed before anything went ahead⁷. In 2019, Unite Wales accused Plaid Cymru of “political opportunism” after the party created a separate petition supporting the nurses of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board⁸. Trade unions in Wales have previously existed in a symbiotic relationship with Welsh Labour as part of a wider project of devolution will now find themselves in uncharted waters, and it is difficult to say if the relationship between the unions and Plaid Cymru will sink or swim. Plaid Cymru’s Luke Fletcher had made some good inroads with the unions previously⁹, but after failing to secure a seat this election the party and the wider union network in Wales will have lost one of its key intermediaries. Plaid Cymru have emphasised previously this year their commitment to social partnership with unions like the UCU¹⁰, but it remains to be seen what the Labour Party affiliated unions will do now that their  Welsh Labour allies have been defeated. Perhaps if Plaid Cymru’s policy of creating a Welsh Development Agency to direct investment into the Welsh economy gets going we might see the party and the various trade union bodies reconcile some of their differences (especially on the question of nationalism and independence to which the unions have historically been strongly opposed), but there are large hurdles for Plaid Cymru will have to surmount to achieve this. 

Overall, a strong win for Plaid Cymru. The party commands a significant influence over the broader Welsh left, and has taken the mantle from Welsh Labour as the party capable of stopping the far right. Though Plaid Cymru have become the leaders of the Welsh left, they will need to hold together a fragile coalition both inside and outside the Senedd. Their voters will want action on the cost of living, education and the NHS but due to their position as a minority government they will require support from Labour and Green MSs. These political allies will be expecting political concessions in order to be kept sweet, which may require watering down policies, weakening stances and damaging Plaid Cymru’s relationship with their electorate. The Senedd itself is not a vehicle actually able to deliver the reforms that Plaid Cymru and the people of Wales want, which coupled with the broadness of the coalition behind Plaid Cymru could spell challenges in the future. 

WINNER: REFORM UK CYMRU/WALES 

Coming in second place is Reform UK on 34 seats. There’s no doubt about it, that, as the leaders of the right voter bloc, the election has been an improvement on how the right wing of Wales has historically performed. In total, 34 plus the 7 Conservative seats could have left Reform UK in a position to form a right wing minority coalition government if Welsh Labour had a better evening and had spited Plaid Cymru. This is the best performance the right has ever had in the history of devolution in Wales. 

I’ve seen people online try and argue that Reform is an English nationalist party, or that it is a party for English people in Wales to align with against a potential Plaid Cymru government. Reform UK has certainly struggled with its image as an authentically “Welsh” party this election. This hasn’t been helped by a series of clips that can only be described as Sais behaviour regarding the Welsh language (which has popular support throughout the country and especially in Y Fro Gymraeg), typos and misspellings in the Welsh on their manifesto and legions of freakish influencers they have brought over from England to sway voters to the party. 

All that might be true, but we cannot simply chalk up Reform’s second place to a column of old English pensioners in West Wales, Clwyd and Monmouthshire. There is a popular sentiment in Wales that they are clearly able to tap into that is built around an explicitly British and unionist identity which contrasts the more progressive, nationalist identity that is coalescing around Plaid Cymru. It stems partly from a genuine sense of dissatisfaction with perceived political elites based in Cardiff Bay and Westminster, but also is just as influenced by a collective sense of decline that is palpable throughout Wales, manifesting partly as a weird anti-class “popular” approach to politics. This is evidenced by Dan Thomas’ bizarre reference to the party as the “People’s Army” in his speech in Casnewydd Islwyn¹¹. 

Another key element to Reform’s success, and arguably the most significant one, is that the party has continuously stoked racist and reactionary sentiments towards immigrants, refugees, disabled people and LGBTQ+ people. A big talking point on the Plaid Cymru supporter side of social media was that Reform are an English nationalist party, and that their stoking of reactionary sentiments in Wales was an English import into Welsh politics, which has enjoyed the veneer of being much more progressive and morally righteous compared to the phenomenon of English voters always voting for increasingly far right political parties. It must be noted that these racist and reactionary sentiments that Reform have relied upon this election are not new in Wales, and that this has been a relatively quiet but still significant part of the political terrain in the country for over a century. Race riots kicked off across South Wales after the First World War in places like Barry, Cardiff and Newport, with more recent riots in Wrexham seen in the early 2000s¹². Fascist groups like the National Front were also active throughout Wales in the later half of the 20th century, making unsuccessful attempts at building inroads with militant Welsh nationalism associated with Meibion Glyndŵr in the 1980s and 90s by picketing letting agents in Wales and publicly supporting the arson campaign¹³. 

Reform in Wales are not articulating a new sentiment based on attacking migrants, refugees, the disabled or LGBTQ+ people that hitherto has been unknown in Wales. In actuality, Reform are the newest party who have been able to articulate and build upon those prejudices and sentiments that have always been festering in Welsh society, but unlike their previous explicitly fascist peers like the National Front or the British National Party, the party has been able to take those sentiments and translate them to electoral success and political legitimacy whilst simultaneously taking control of the small c conservative voting demographic which has typically voted for the Tories. The racist politics of Reform are not an aberration in Welsh politics, nor are  they some English import that has no base in Wales. Support for Reform and far right politics in Wales stems from the large bloc of people who identify as British unionists rather than some form of Welsh progressive nationalist (who either supports independence or is opposed to it, but is also opposed to Reform), which is fundamentally tied to the historical development of British unionism as an ideology centred around extreme chauvinistic imperialism. Certain elements of Welsh society have clearly weighed up their options between the British unionism espoused by Reform and the progressive nationalism of Plaid Cymru, and have made the decision that they will rally around the Union Jack and their white racial peers against an array of minorities they perceive as political and social enemies. We can talk about how Reform voters are made up of disenfranchised and economically marginalised members of Welsh society and what steps we need to take in addressing this demographic, but it is impossible to deny that this the racist and reactionary ideology espoused by Reform is clearly one that resonates with a large portion of the electorate. 

Despite Reform doing well on a historical scale, they will be disappointed with the number of seats they have won. Certainly the right has coalesced around them and escaped the baggage of having to rely on the hegemonic leadership of the Welsh Conservatives over the right bloc, but Reform absolutely underperformed in several areas where they were expected to win three or more seats. Casnewydd Islwyn should not have been that close with Plaid Cymru given their historic lack of presence in Newport, nor should it have been close in Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr or Pen-y-Bont Bro Morgannwg. Plaid Cymru even beat them in Sir Fynwy Torfaen (the most Anglicised part of the south) by nearly 10% of the vote! The narrative going into this election (and the by-election in Caerphilly) was that Reform were going to come to Wales, use the ex-industrial areas as bases to build form, and launder a popular racist party backed by the Welsh working class. Segments of the Welsh working class certainly have gone over to them in parts of the country, but segments of the working class who are typically younger and just as politically disenfranchised seem to have gone over to Plaid Cymru rather than Reform. 

I attribute this to what I call a program of “Idiot Thatcherism”. I refer to it as Thatcherism because that is what it is. Reform ran a campaign based on attacking vulnerable and marginalised communities across Wales, on attacking public services when they could get away with it, and harkening back to a time where the state served the interests of the wealthy and did not interfere with them in service of the less fortunate. I refer to it as Idiot Thatcherism because the Reform campaign to achieve a neo-Thatcherite government in Wales was run by morons. They might have been able to tap into a popular dissatisfaction with “establishment politicians” and a genuine racist sentiment that is pervasive throughout Wales, but their political program consisted of right wing grievances alone rather than a clear path for the future of Wales. . 

Reform were fundamentally unable to offer a positive vision of what Wales would look like compared to a Plaid Cymru government. As a voter, Rhun ap Iorwerth was able to say to me that he will concretely make my life better by offering me better access to childcare, improvements to public transport, creating nationalised public utility companies, devolving the crown estate and getting the money from it (etc.). That isn’t to say that he will deliver me those things, but he was able to offer me a compelling vision of what his government in Wales would be doing on Monday the 11th of May. All Dan Thomas was able to say was that he would get rid of 20mph zones, maybe he’d build the M4 relief road, he’d definitely get rid of DEI or whatever and he’ll punish the uniparty for not looking out for my interests for the past 30 or so years. Which is whatever I guess. That might appeal to a certain segment of the population, but it isn’t enough to radically change Welsh society as we know it, like how Thatcher was able to transform England by beating the miners and letting everyone have property portfolios. The key to building the property owning racial-democracy that Reform wants is to actually offer voters something other than indulging weird grievances fostered by looking at Facebook or Instagram reels for an hour every day. 

There was also the issue of the campaign being run really poorly. Reform has previously had issues with candidates not being vetted properly because it is so centralised around Nigel Farage, which in April 2025 led to them having to suspend a candidate in Oxford for proclaiming the innocence of Jimmy Saville¹⁴. Reform in Wales a few weeks before the election also had to deal with beloved Commedia dell’Arte character “Guy Who Got Caught Doing A Hitler Salute”, which no doubt hurt their capacity to campaign in Pen-y-Bont Bro Morgannwg. I would think that the guy doing a Nazi salute is a nightmare scenario to deal with on the doorstep¹⁵. This is a historic issue that is going to be compounded by the fact that there isn’t a coherent class base to the leadership of the party. You may have ex-small business owners, right wing think tank guys and Facebook nutters all in the same party, who will all naturally have very different ideas about how to achieve their policy goals. The party in broad terms consists of white collar managerial professionals, large and petit-bourgeois interests and downwardly mobile white workers and lumpenproles. Taken all together this is a significantly large voting bloc, but it is far too incoherent to actually sustain itself long term, and is why parties like Reform are so prone to splits or tantrum resignations by leading figures. A parallel we can draw is the splintering of UKIP into Abolish the Welsh Assembly from 2016 onward. The right in Wales this time is certainly more coherent and organised this election, but the fundamental class relations that give birth to it are so chaotic and shifting that it will be a struggle for Reform to capitalise on them. Opposition may be the best outcome for them in this case, as it will allow the party to continue to unite the broad right bloc against a Plaid Cymru government. 

Reform has essentially hit their ceiling in Wales. Their base is now much wider than that of the Welsh Conservatives of yesterday, but it still isn’t really ever going to peak above 35% of the electorate. Despite being free from the shackles of the Welsh Conservatives the party has struggled to beat the wider left wing voter bloc. They have hugely benefitted from the D’Hondt voting system’s proportionality, as under First Past the Post they would be facing worse results. If this election used First Past the Post like Westminster elections Plaid Cymru would have had a much greater portion of seats. There is also the question of the demographic time bomb facing them and modern conservatism in Britain more generally. The 16-49 year old voting demographic in Wales is, generally speaking, Woke¹⁶. It’s all well and good relying on the larger voting bloc of pensioners who are more reliable at elections, but after a certain point you will see diminishing returns in what you get out of them, especially with Wales’ ageing population. There are no Welsh yuppies climbing up the property ladder to replace the ageing base that Reform and the right wing in Wales have tended to rely on at election time. 

This was a good election for Reform UK in terms of past performances of the right in Wales, but by no means the overwhelming tide they wanted it to be. This is a positive sign that there clearly is a ceiling to the vote share they can achieve in a national election. What the future holds for Reform in Wales isn’t clear at the moment, but it wouldn’t be outlandish to say that second place in these elections will precede some internecine division and split between the competing wings of the party going forward.

WINNER: PLAID WERDD/THE GREENS

The Greens came from electoral nothingness to two seats this election, which on paper is a great result. I would argue however that they have won the least compared to their peers in Reform and Plaid Cymru. The party has obviously benefitted from association with Zack Polanski to a certain type of young, educated and urban voter, but it would be difficult to say that the rise of the Green Party in England has really translated to success for the party in Wales, as whilst zero seats to two is technically an increase of 200%, I personally expected them to do a fair bit better and get some additional seats in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea and acquire some fifth and sixth seats across the country after riding the Polanski wave. 

There are a few reasons I think as to why the Greens only got two seats compared to what I thought they could achieve. One reason is overestimating the Polanski bounce and the lack of capability for the Welsh party to actually capitalise on it. The Greens have always been a minor party in Wales, and whilst Polanski may have put the party into the public consciousness through successive social media campaigns, that doesn’t actually translate into the developed local political machine which is needed to campaign successfully. The Greens are also dealing with the fact that they have significantly less resources compared to any of their peers, and so whilst they might have a strong local base of activists across Cardiff who are generally younger and energised there isn’t any real institutional power behind them in the form of a large, powerful party machine. Other parties have dedicated research officers, social media managers, and, above all else, money to throw into seats in ways that the smaller Greens will at present be unable to. With Anthony Slaughter and Paul Rock gaining some additional staffers and resources from the Senedd, however, this is a problem that I think will resolve itself over time, giving the Greens the resources they need to actually push out from the urban centres they have traditionally campaigned in. 

Another issue the Greens faced this election was one of identity. A real challenge for Anthony Slaughter was actually articulating the differences between his party and Plaid Cymru in an election that amongst other things was about stopping Reform. Plaid Cymru and the Greens agree pretty much on everything beyond some minor points about sustainable farming or reforms to the Welsh power grid, which may matter to some voters (and this isn’t to say it’s an unimportant distinction), but it certainly isn’t enough to actually translate to them being able to outmanoeuvre Plaid Cymru in an election where the latter are successfully making the case that the image of a progressive Wales is under threat from Reform and only they can stop it. If you’re a voter outside of Cardiff concerned with the rise of Reform and see Plaid Cymru commanding a hegemonic presence over the Welsh left, it’s a tough sell to you to vote for the Greens who are pretty much the same but lack the institutional and historical credibility of Plaid Cymru.

The lack of difference between the Greens and Plaid Cymru may benefit them in the future, however. If this election has shown anything it is that the leading party of Wales cannot take for granted that it holds a monopoly over Welshness and Welsh identity. Just as Plaid Cymru took being the Welsh party from Welsh Labour, I don’t think it’s unfeasible for the Greens to take bits of this from Plaid Cymru should they be unable to deliver the radical change they have promised. The Greens for this election haven’t been able to differentiate themselves from Plaid Cymru to voters across the country, but in 2030 may have a bit more success building up a clear green water between themselves and the governing party in the Senedd. If part of this election was about change and Plaid Cymru were seen as the only vehicle to deliver this change, then it’s not out of the question that they may lose support to their left to the Greens in future elections, who will also have the resources and capacity now to expand out of their Cardiff strongholds into other urban centres like Swansea and Newport, or even up into the Valleys where they have traditionally had zero presence. With a Plaid Cymru minority government in place, the Greens and their two seats could be significant power brokers in passing a budget or implementing policy, which will also cement them as the fringe of the Senedd left bloc and give them national prominence and political importance that they haven’t had previously. 

Whilst the Greens are probably disheartened by the underperformance in terms of seats gained this election, they are certainly not going to be a spent political force. They now occupy an important position as power brokers to Plaid Cymru’s left both in the Senedd and in wider Welsh society, and so whilst 2026 may not have been their grand moment in Welsh politics, the only direction for them at this point is onwards and upwards. 

LOSERs

Loser: LLAFUR CYMRU/WELSH LABOUR

It’s a cliche to say at this point, but the 8th of May 2026 is a historic day in Welsh history. Undergraduate and postgraduate theses will be written about why Welsh Labour fell from its total political, social and cultural mastery over Welsh civil society. Outside of the still enduring Marxist-Leninist party states in China, Vietnam, Laos, Korea and Cuba, Welsh Labour was at one point the most efficient political machine in the world, reliably returning large majorities across the country and being synonymous with the very idea of Welsh nationhood and Welsh culture. There is not a single moment in Welsh history since the coal strike of 1898 that has not in some way been influenced by the forces that animated the Labour Party in Wales. And yet despite all of this, on the 8th of May 2026 this political juggernaut that had ruled over Welsh politics and civil society for over a century came crashing down, dropping below ten seats in a parliamentary body that was forged by the party in the 1990s to ensure their continuous control. 

The complete anatomy of Welsh Labour’s defeat is still to be dissected. A century of political dominance coming to an end in one night is not the sort of thing that can be written up coherently and comprehensively in a single weekend by anyone, but it is worth outlining some of the factors which have caused their downfall. A significant one is Westminster Labour’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Starmer’s support for Israel and the Westminster party continuously cracking down on people’s civil liberties has undoubtedly burned through its activist base, seeing a mass exodus of members who joined during the Corbyn years leave and diffuse amongst the various left wing sects of Wales leaving only the various councillors and briefcase wankers as the skeleton of the party in Wales. Starmer’s sheer unpopularity with the general public outside of his stance on Gaza is also a large factor in the Welsh party’s decline. The weird self-stylising of himself as an efficient manager of a human resources or operational delivery team is one that I think genuinely grates a lot of voters, which again is not helped by people actually seeing what he is like as he either shadows the rhetoric of Enoch Powell in trying to start a Labour led race war to claw back Reform voters (who are never coming back to Labour, and which alienated the left wing base of the party), gets embroiled in some stupid corruption scandal involving bribes or affiliation with Peter Mandelson, or waters down things like the Employment Rights Act in favour of the interests of Capital. The centralisation of the party in Westminster this election has inarguably kneecapped the local party in Wales. Preventing it from being able to actually capitalise on its centrality to Welsh political life, producing bizarre slogans like “Fairness You Can Feel” (which I’m sure was developed in some London think tank) that feel so alien to the rhythms of Welsh politics. Nobody feels that society is fair! People see that there is a Labour government in Cardiff and Westminster, and things aren’t improving! Society is very obviously deeply unfair at the moment, and Welsh Labour are having to promise that this time they will actually intervene and wield the powers of the Senedd in redressing these issues, despite being in power for nearly 30 years! 

Whilst the unpopularity of Starmer and UK Labour is key to Welsh Labour’s defeat, the local party clearly has its own issues and questions asked of it that it simply cannot resolve or answer. Eluned Morgan has had to deal with the fact that for years the Welsh party has been saying that a Labour government in Westminster will one day return and bring with it all the benefits of having two similar governments in Cardiff Bay and Westminster. This wasn’t wishful thinking but I think a genuinely held belief by the local party that a victory in Westminster in 2024 would deliver the Welsh government from having to deal with a situation it was totally unprepared for and unable to deal with when Welsh devolution was being established. 

Devolution in Wales evolved with the idea that there would be a set of political and ideological allies in Westminster who could provide funding for the Welsh government when needed. After 2010, this consensus between Cardiff and Westminster ultimately broke down after Gordon Brown lost to the Cameron-Clegg coalition, leading to the government in Cardiff having to stumble its way through the early austerity years as funding dried up. There had been calls for the Senedd to gain more powers over taxation throughout the 2000s, but by 2013 Carwyn Jones’ government was much more reluctant to accept new taxation powers lest Barnett formula funding disappear as a consequence¹⁷. The height of the austerity years under the Cameron-Clegg coalition, followed by May and then the muscular unionism of the Johnson, Truss and Sunak governments was simply a political situation that the government in Cardiff was both unable to deal with, but also unsure of how to address. There was no pathway to actually challenge the cuts to the Welsh budget or to gain further powers whilst maintaining the same level of funds from the central state budget. If Parliament was sovereign, then Parliament could do pretty much what it wanted despite the protestations of the Welsh government. By 2024, the Welsh government had effectively run out of steam and was now waiting on the electorate in England to elect UK Labour to Westminster so that they could address the constitutional issues that could then address the political, economic and social issues plaguing Welsh society for the past 14 years. 

The party emerged from the wilderness of Tory rule to one led by Keir Starmer, who should have worked with them on matters concerning HS2 compensation, devolving the crown estate, giving the Senedd more powers regarding finance and justice and curbing austerity. Yet nearly two years on from the election and repeated pleas from Eluned Morgan to at least deliver something for Wales, by the time of the election she had literally nothing to show for having two Labour governments in Cardiff and Westminster, yet still had to promise that although Welsh Labour had 30 or so years to fix Wales’ problems regarding jobs, health, child poverty, housing, homelessness, education (etc.) and failed to do so, this time they absolutely certainly definitely 100% would fix the country, and that only they were the party who had the experience and connections in Westminster to do this. Unsurprisingly, this has not been a strong selling point for the party at hustings or the ballot box.

There is also the problem of what Welsh Labour actually wants to use the Senedd for, as despite their historic hegemony over Welsh politics there is a remarkable poverty of intellect and ambition within the party. The Senedd was built by the party as a fiefdom for them to govern over the country, almost stumbling into doing sweeping constitutional reform rather than changes to local government¹⁸. In the end it got constitutional reform, but the party wasn’t actually sure what to do with it. The left of the party wanted to do some things with trade unions and make some vague gesture to implementing some form of socialism in Wales that was ill defined, whereas the right wanted to do a technocratic, pro-business but also pro-worker corporatism that could allow the country to move beyond its heritage as an ex-industrial economy and into the shiny new service economies that were in vogue throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, animated in particular by the success of the Celtic Tiger experiment in Ireland¹⁹. The political project of Welsh Labour during the founding years of devolution was a sort of anti-politics that was remarkably opposed to any actual public accountability or collective participation in governance, preferring instead to manage its fiefdom and implement a series of pseudo social-democratic policies that were amenable to Capital that were legitimate by virtue of the party still being able to win an election on an increasingly ailing voter turnout. 

The fracturing of this politics took place in the aftermath of Covid-19, with Mark Drakeford expending all of the political capital Welsh Labour had built up over the 20mph speed limits rollout in September 2023, which preceded the resignation of a tired First Minister and the ascent of Vaughan Gething, who would resign 118 days later over a corruption scandal. The party stayed afloat through Starmer’s landslide victory in 2024 (which as we see now was built on sand), but two years later the reality has set in, leading up to the present of Welsh Labour having 9 seats. The issue was not the 20mph rollout per se. The policy has resulted in less deaths, less pollution and lower car insurance costs for the people of Wales; on the whole, it’s one of those social-democratic policies that Welsh Labour loves rolling out. The issue stemmed more from this policy being the second time the people of Wales saw the devolved state intervene in their lives since Covid-19 as part of a negative program outlining what people could not do. 

The speed in which the 20mph policy was rolled out compared to addressing the structural issues of the Welsh economy and society on matters of healthcare, education, homelessness, housing (etc.) produced a dissonance between the theory and practice of Welsh Labour governance. “If the party can roll out this policy using the levers of government in Wales so quickly, then why aren’t they dealing with NHS waiting lists, or child poverty as quickly?” is a very fair question to be asking. The right of the party certainly did not have an answer to this question, but the left of Welsh Labour have also struggled to answer what they have actually done for Wales despite their hegemony over local government. The trade unions are effectively a third estate in Wales owing to their integration into local government and their sponsorship of the governing party, but what do they have to show for it? Are people’s wages higher in Wales? Are jobs more plentiful and better quality? Are working conditions improving? Is the Welsh economy able to stand on its own or is it still structured around resource extraction and a continuous dependency on payments from Westminster? The left of the party have been able to implement a regime in Wales that would be the dream of a 1950s social democratic party in Europe, but nothing has concretely improved for people, and the people of Wales are keenly aware of this. Unlike in England, there is a genuine enthusiasm for socialism in Wales both historically and contemporaneously, as vague and ill defined as that term can mean across different parts of Welsh society. Welsh Labour are at least nominally a socialist party, and have historically played up that identity to its base and the electorate, and yet they have nothing to show for it. 

What the future of Welsh Labour is at this point is difficult to foresee. They still have 9 seats in the Senedd, and so still have some form of presence in matters of governance. They will be able to support or antagonise Plaid Cymru, but this could again further hinder them if they shift away from their identity as a Welsh party in trying to fight the nationalists, as their base will not appreciate them aligning with Reform against Plaid Cymru like we have seen Scottish Labour attempt to do against the SNP. The question of how Welsh Labour comes back from the fringes might even be better phrased whether or not they can come back from the fringes, as it seems that by losing its status as the Party of Wales to Plaid Cymru, Welsh Labour will now be relegated to a shadow of its former self whose constituency are left-liberal voters unwilling to engage with the ascendent nationalist parties who have taken control of the left. That will always be a constituent in Wales, but it isn’t going to be one that will deliver them a larger chunk of the vote share than Plaid Cymru. 

The party will continue to have the backing of the unions, and in conversations with other comrades it has been pointed out to me that Shavanah Taj, MS for Caerdydd Fynnon Taf and previous TUC Cymru General Secretary, could make a bid for power with the backing of the unions, but that will not be enough for the party to recover, nor will it be a path that the party is likely to take. With the pro-Gething faction of Welsh Labour currently taking the reins of power under interim leader and former Gething ally Ken Skates²⁰, it doesn’t seem that the party is willing nor able to divert the course it is on. Even if it were able to recover locally and develop a coherent plan of action, the brewing factional death war for who gets to take Starmer’s throne is something that voters will again see leading up to 2029 and 2030, and is something that Welsh Labour will again be ill-equipped to deal with. Again questions will be asked about why should voters return to Labour, and even if a more left wing social democratic Labour party emerges in Wales after the factional struggle for leadership, the credibility that the party has had for the last century has been shot to pieces. Perhaps if Plaid Cymru have a similar fall from grace over the next three to four years the party might recover to 20 or so seats in the Senedd, but that pathway for the party seems unlikely to materialise at present. 

LOSER: CEIDWADWYR CYMREIG/WELSH CONSERVATIVES 

The Welsh Conservatives are sort of like the last neanderthals watching homo sapiens crossing into their territory, and so they should be breathing a sigh of relief that they were only wiped out to 7 seats as opposed to the 2 or 3 I expected them to get. 

Despite narratives that Wales is “Labour Country”, the Conservatives have always had a presence in the country as an everpresent fifth column of reaction against the militant socialist and not-so-militant social democratic politics that Wales is well known for. Traditionally strongest in the rural farming regions of Wales around Pembroke, Monmouthshire and the historical Marcher lordships, the Conservatives in Wales have historically been shackled down by being the party of Margaret Thatcher and carrying all the political and social baggage that this entails. The party has been ambivalent at best and hostile at worst to the project of Welsh devolution, and has contested their great rivals in Labour in the Senedd seemingly out of embarrassment and social awkwardness. They have never seriously thought they could be leading a government in Wales, and have oscillated between championing anti-devolution sentiment, embodied in Andrew R. T. Davies’ premiership throughout the 2010s, or adopting a Welsh road to Conservatism embodied by Darren Millar that attempts to unite the right in Wales and imitate some of the harsher rhetoric around refugee legislation in Wales to outmanoeuvre Reform. 

Both Darren Millar and Andrew R. T. Davies have returned to the Senedd this election, which demonstrates the diverging paths the party now faces. The question of what is the point of the Welsh Conservatives is one that neither wing of the party really has an answer for. Darren Millar ran on a platform of imitating Reform, emphasising his opposition to 20mph, the Nation of Sanctuary policy (which he is on record as supporting previously²¹), and a variety of other unserious positions which in the end didn’t pay off for the party, as it is abundantly clear the right wing bloc has liberated itself from the Tory yoke, earning considerable electoral success under the leadership of Reform and seeing the Conservatives in a distant fourth place. R. T. Davies’ attempt to manifest the spirit of Ian Paisley in Pen-y-Bont Bro Morgannwg also didn’t appear to work out either, earning him the last seat in his constituency despite his claims that Bridgend was a stronghold for Welsh unionism. 

Like Plaid Cymru taking the left vote from Labour, it’s clear that Reform have taken the right vote from the Conservatives. What is the future for them now? With 7 seats the party could be an ally to Reform in the Senedd, and work with the other unionist parties to frustrate Plaid Cymru’s minority government, although the chances of this becoming a formal alliance are low, I think it would be unlikely to get a sign off from the Westminster party. There is also clearly a constituency for the Conservatives in Wales that Reform are unable to rally, which could be due to loyalty of older Tory voters to the old party rather than Reform, but I think it could also be from a distaste with Reform, the latter being too extreme for the remaining Tory voter constituency. A possible path now for the Conservatives is to dial down the temperature and rhetoric of the party and shift into being a moderate, pseudo-Cameronite party in the wider right wing ecosystem in Wales, supporting Dan Thomas at certain points but maintaining a healthy distance between the two parties. This could be an interesting time for the future of the Conservatives; an opportunity to forge a new identity distinct from that of Reform’s Idiot Thatcherism and love-hate relationship with devolution, but with R. T. Davies and Darren Millar surviving to fight another day, I am doubtful whether a moderate right wing Conservative party will emerge.

LOSER: DEMOCRATIAID RHYDDFRYDOL CYMRU/WELSH LIBDEMS 

What is the point of the Libdems? Who are they for? Would Jane Dodds be better off running as an independent, or forming Jane Dodd’s Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd regional party to cement a base in the one constituency that is still willing to vote for what she believes in? If I was a delegate at next year’s Welsh Libdem conference these are the sorts of questions I would be asking, because they need to be answered if the party is to continue to exist going forward. 

To borrow from the analogy of Welsh Tories, neanderthals and homo sapiens, the Welsh Libdems are like the last mammoths of Siberia slowly being driven to extinction as they struggle to find their place within the Welsh political ecosystem. This article has spent time trying to tease out who the new constituents of each party are after this election, but it is here where I must admit that I genuinely do not know who is voting for the Welsh Libdems or why. Clearly in Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd there is something animating it, but outside of that constituency what are the Libdems for? They could in theory occupy some centre ground as the sensible centrist party in favour of federalisation not independence, but Jane Dodd’s bizarre shift to stoking unionist fears of independence is attempting to fill a void already filled by Reform and the R. T. Davies wing of the Conservatives²². 

In a seismic night of Welsh politics it is a testament to the freakishness of the Libdems that they have entered the new Senedd right where they started on just a single seat. They are a political anomaly, too weird to live but too rare to fully die. Perhaps they’ll do a neo-David Lloyd George thing and claw together a distinct Welsh identity that can articulate the necessity of their existence in Welsh politics in the future, but for now we are left with Jane Dodds returning to her lonely vigil in the Senedd.  

FINAL POINTS 

The 8th of May 2026 will be a seismic day in Welsh history. In terms of the political trajectory of the nation this is arguably more seismic than Gwynfor Evan’s breakthrough in Camarthen in 1966. Welsh nationalism has historically been much weaker at a parliamentary politics scale compared to its peers in Ireland and Scotland, but the breakthrough moment that has been brewing since Plaid Cymru formed in 1926 has finally come to fruition. The proverbial dam has been broken in Welsh political history, and we are now in an era where an openly nationalist party is running the devolved government of the country. 

What happens next is up for debate. Plaid Cymru have a mandate of support and change, albeit a small one that can easily be frustrated by Labour, Reform and the Conservatives at the legislative level. There are fundamental barriers woven into how the Senedd is structured and how it functions day to day that will again force Plaid Cymru into a difficult position to struggle out of, but perhaps they will be able to do so should the factions in Westminster realise that it isn’t worth fighting on all fronts after Starmer is forced out. Questions about the future of Welsh political and social life are not just being asked now, but are being answered in real time. We are all living in a historic moment for politics in Wales whether we realise it or not, and the actions we take and movements we build from this point onward will come to shape the very future of Welsh nationhood. 

I want to end on this point because it is crucial for socialists of all stripes to now begin to realise. At a May Day march in Cardiff a few weeks ago one of the speakers was, to be frank, whining about there being no “socialist voice” on the ballot box at the Senedd, singing a dirge for Your Party in Wales as the final verse at yet another choreographed march through a city centre that accomplished nothing. The significance of Plaid Cymru’s win stems from the fact that it has ended the hegemony of Welsh Labour over left wing political organising by articulating a progressive image of Wales that clearly resonates with a large section of Welsh society. The traditional attitude of Welsh socialists dismissing nationalist sentiment as either always reactionary or a misguided bourgeois frivolity is not a tenable position anymore. There is clearly a constituency of younger workers willing to engage with a nationalist party as part of a broad front against the far right, which socialists in Wales risk turning away from if they return to the various small sects that maintain an attitude to what is objectively a progressive nationalist sentiment stuck in the 1920s. The proletariat certainly has no nation and is an international class, but if sections of the proletariat in Wales are engaging with a positive and progressive idea of Welsh nationhood the task should, at the very least, be to engage with this positively and interrogate why this is happening and where socialists should intervene if they actually want to build socialism in Wales. 

This is why I want to lay on the point that what happens next is so important to the future of socialist politics in Wales. We are now free to intervene as socialists in an entirely new political terrain that has broken from the chains placed on it by Welsh Labour. Socialism wasn’t on the ballot box this election, nor most likely will it be in 2029 and 2030. The task now is to start positively engaging with this progressive nationalist sentiment, building up the capacity and political independence of working class organisations across the country. The socialist republic will not be built within the Senedd, but only through the collective action of the working class in Wales struggling for it. It is the job of us now as Welsh socialists to work towards building that independence.

Footnotes

1.  K. O. Morgan, Wales in British Politics 1868-1922 (1991), p. 163. ↩︎
2. I am referring here to the 2017-2018 Spanish Constitutional Crisis, in which Catalan nationalists attempted to hold a referendum on independence from the Spanish state. This referendum was deemed unconstitutional by the Spanish Constitutional Court, at which point the People’s Party government led by Mariano Rajoy mobilised security forces to arrest the Catalan leaders responsible for organising the referendum and prevent local councils to either impede or outright prevent any attempt at holding a vote on Catalan independence. What followed was effectively the precursor to a civil war as the Spanish state moved in police and the national guard to prevent a vote from being held (and took control of the Catalonian regional police due to fears of insubordination) as Catalans mobilised in the streets and proceeded to occupy several buildings and violently clash with Spanish police. ↩︎
3. ‘Final Chance to Secure Your Place as Plaid Cymru Leader Addresses Cardiff Business Club’, Business News Wales 4 March 2026 https://businessnewswales.com/final-chance-to-secure-your-place-as-plaid-cymru-leader-addresses-cardiff-business-club/ (accessed 19 May 2026). ↩︎
4.  M. R. Powell, ‘Social Partnership – Are Unions Getting Too Friendly With Welsh Government?’, Voice.Cymru 27 July 2022 https://voice.cymru/social-partnership-are-unions-getting-too-friendly-with-welsh-government/ (accessed 8 May 2026). ↩︎
5. M. Shipton, ‘Unison apologises to Plaid Cymru over policy inaccuracies in election leaflet’, Wales Online 5 May 2016 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/unison-apologises-plaid-cymru-over-11289657 (accessed 8 May 2026). 
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6. ‘Supply Welsh water to south east England, says GMB union’, BBC News 8 June 2018 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-44411744 (accessed 8 May 2026). ↩︎
7. B. Summer, ‘Plan outlined to take water from Welsh reservoir and send it to London to solve drought’, Wales Online 15 August 2022 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/water-firm-should-take-water-24765018 (accessed 8 May 2026). ↩︎
8. Unite Wales, ‘“Political opportunism” of Plaid Cymru regarding Betsi Cadwaladr attacked by Unite Wales, Unite Wales 20 August 2019 https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2019/august/political-opportunism-of-plaid-cymru-regarding-betsi-cadwaladr-attacked-by-unite-wales (accessed 8 May 2026). 
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9. L. Fletcher, ‘Plaid Cymru works with workers and their unions, not around them’, The Morning Star 28 February 2026 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/plaid-cymru-works-workers-and-their-unions-not-around-them (accessed 8 May 2026). ↩︎
10.  ‘Plaid and unions discuss combatting the far right’, The Morning Star 28 February 2026 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/plaid-and-unions-discuss-combatting-far-right (accessed 8 May 2026). ↩︎
11.  ‘Reform UK Leader in Wales Dan Thomas wins seat at Senedd Election 2026’, ITV News 8 May 2026 https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2026-05-08/reform-uk-leader-in-wales-dan-thomas-wins-seat-at-senedd-election (accessed 8 May 2026). 
    This is interestingly not the first time figures around Dan Thomas’ campaign in Wales have referred to the imagery of fighting and warfare. Nigel Farage reportedly picked him because he was “battle-hardened” from his time as a Tory councillor in the trenches of Barnet county council, and at the same conference where his leadership was announced he also referred to Reform as a “people’s army”. See A. Browne and D.Deans, ‘Ex-Tory councillor unveiled by Nigel Farage as Reform’s Welsh leader’, BBC News 5 February 2026 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgndvkv80ro (accessed 8 May 2026). Perhaps Chairman Thomas will call for Reform to serve the people and bombard the headquarters in the future, in which case we should all consider reassessing our opinion of the party. ↩︎
12.  F. al Yafai, ‘Race riot rocks Welsh estate’, The Guardian 24 June 2003 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/24/race.world (accessed 19 March 2026). ↩︎
13.  G. Macklin, Failed Führers: A History of Britain’s Extreme Right (2020), p. 462. It must be noted that, as far as I am aware, this attempt at building up solidarity between the National Front and Welsh nationalism on ethno-cultural grounds was never reciprocated by Welsh nationalists, who rallied around Welsh culture and the language being threatened by English second home buyers rather than any ideas of racial unity. ↩︎
14. B. Nimmo, ‘Reform UK candidate suspended after Savile tweets’, BBC News 4 April 2025 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2xey4m2ygo (accessed 9 May 2026). ↩︎
15. C. Davies, ‘Reform candidate quits Senedd election after appearing to do Nazi salute’, BBC News 27 March 2026 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6257mj94m0o (accessed 9 May 2026) ↩︎
16.  W. Hayward, ‘Bombshell polling for Wales’, The Will Hayward Newsletter 17 December 2025 https://willhaywardwales.substack.com/p/bombshell-polling-for-wales?utm_source=publication-search (accessed 9 May 2026). ↩︎
17.  K. O. Morgan, Revolution to Devolution: Reflections on Welsh Democracy (2014), p. 48. ↩︎
18. M. S. Lang, The Labour Party, the Trade Unions and Devolution in Wales (PhD Thesis) (2006), pp. 140-141. ↩︎
19. ‘The Celtic Tiger is coming – Morgan’, BBC News 10 March 2000 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/672967.stm (accessed 10 May 2026). ↩︎
20. S. C. Cook, ‘Vaughan Gething & The Crisis In Welsh Labour’, Voice.Cymru 2 July 2024 https://voice.cymru/vaughan-gething-the-crisis-in-welsh-labour/ (accessed 10 May 2026). ↩︎
21. W. Hayward, ‘Outrageous Welsh Conservative hypocrisy’, The Will Hayward Newsletter 5 October 2025 https://willhaywardwales.substack.com/p/outrageous-welsh-conservative-hypocrisy (accessed 10 May 2026). ↩︎
22. D. Deans, ‘Welsh Lib Dems vow to block independence after Senedd election’, BBC News 14 April 2026 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy91g245r07o (accessed 10 May 2026). ↩︎