Gan Morfil Mawr
At a presentation in August 1990, Peruvian writer and former right-wing politician Mario Vargas Llosa famously said:
‘Mexico is a perfect dictatorship. The perfect dictatorship is not communism, it is not the USSR, it is not Fidel Castro, the perfect dictatorship is Mexico. Because it is a camouflaged dictatorship. So it may not seem to be a dictatorship, but in fact it has, if you dig into it, all the characteristics of a dictatorship; the permanence, not of one man, but of an immovable party, which allows a certain space for criticism to the extent that this criticism serves it, but which suppresses by all means, even the worst, that criticism which in some way endangers its permanence.’
Despite Llosa’s disparagement of Castro and the USSR this quote holds some water; it is referring to the dominance of the ‘Institutional Revolutionary Party’ (the PRI) in Mexico following that country’s revolution. The party was in power for 71 years from 1929-2000, one of the longest winning streaks for a ‘democratic’ party in history. The PRI’s dominance was in no small part due to it being seen as the party of the revolution, the party that freed Mexico from the tyrant Porfirio Díaz, and it took almost 71 years of violence against rivals, corruption and mismanagement by the PRI for it to finally lose its hold on power.
Now, the reason for bringing up the PRI in a piece about Welsh Labour is that there is one immutable fact that in every single year the ‘perfect dictatorship’ was dominant in Mexico, Labour has been dominant in Wales.
Labour in Wales has won a relative majority at every UK general election since 1922 and every Assembly and Senedd election since its inception.
This dominance is unmatched by any ‘democratic’ party in the world; not the PRI in Mexico, the ANC in South Africa, or even the Soviet Union surpassed it. Just like the PRI, Labour has managed to ride on the coattails of its perceived former radicalism and has done so for over a century.
This is highlighted when comparing people like Lázaro Cárdenas – a dominant mid-twentieth century reformer who invested in services, nationalised Mexican oil and increased common land, he remains beloved in Mexico to this day – and Aneurin Bevan a dominant mid-twentieth century reformer who contributed massively to the Welfare State and pioneered the NHS, he remains beloved in Wales, rightly or wrongly to this day.
Labour, once the party of the miners and workers (and their families, once women were allowed the vote), has mutated into the party of the middle managers and bureaucrats. Just like the PRI, Labour has managed to quell almost all criticism that might harm the party, fending off attacks from the likes of Plaid Cymru as emotive appeals to nationalism, the Conservatives as English encroachment, and the CPGB as far left radicals.
Just like the PRI, Welsh Labour is camouflaged, subtle and sadistic in its control over Wales, it is the perfect dictatorship.
And yet, we may be witnessing the end of an era. Recent polls suggest the 2026 Senedd election will be an almost neck-and-neck tie between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK with Plaid Cymru pulling ahead and Labour falling well behind. This would be a seismic change to the face of Welsh politics, with Labour’s century-long reign coming to an end. This is a turning point for the Left in Wales, a moment that we haven’t seen in one hundred years. It’s almost exciting, however, with great change comes great responsibility.
Just as we see Labour falter and Plaid Cymru’s star rising, we also see the aforementioned Reform UK being brought kicking and screaming onto the Welsh stage, there has always been a far-right undercurrent bubbling beneath the surface of Welsh electoral politics, evidenced by a spate of UKIP councillors elected pre-Brexit, but until now they haven’t proved to be a credible threat to Labour’s iron grip on power. However, now we see Nigel Farage’s cesspit of a party clawing its way up to be on par with Labour in 2026. This far-right threat promises to further destabilise our already divided and forgotten communities and leave Wales’ working class fighting itself while Farage and his cronies pillage us for all we have.
So what must the left do to combat this?
We must avoid the mistakes of parties and movements that have come before us, we must not sacrifice the people of Wales on an electoral altar that promises us nothing and gives us less, as has been done by the likes of Plaid Cymru and the Communist Party of Britain. Politics in Wales has never truly been about elections, and we need to shake ourselves out of the electoral mire if we are to reverse the decline of our nation.
In Mexico today, the PRI is an all but spent force. In the 2024 Mexican election, the PRI ran on a joint ticket with another party and still only mustered 27.9% of the vote compared to 59.4% from the winning party, Morena.
Mexico’s Morena party under AMLO’s and now Sheinbaum’s leadership have rendered the PRI utterly irrelevant in Mexican electoral politics. A party that draws a lot of similarities to Plaid Cymru here in Wales, Morena has, through a programme of social democracy and populist nationalism, brought much needed change to Mexican society, and while many of these reforms are undeniably positive they have not and cannot go far enough. Poverty, wealth inequality and femicide continue to be rampant in Mexican society and like here in Wales it will take revolutionary change to build a fairer, safer, more equal society.
We must unite the communities that Thatcher and subsequent governments destroyed, we must rebuild our towns that have been left to decay, and we must revitalise our culture and language so that our children can be proud of who they are. We must grow our movement so that we can defend our nation against those who would destroy it. This is what the Welsh Underground Network and Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru are doing, and we don’t need elections to do it, we just need you!
No matter what happens in the coming months and years, one thing is certain: Welsh Labour is in its death throes and once it’s gone, nothing will be the same.
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
