How to stop Reform in Wales

Plus a landmark poll shakes up Welsh politics

Polls and speeches and predictions, oh my!

You know it has been a busy week in Welsh politics because people from outside Wales remember it exists.

We had a bombshell poll that put Plaid in 1st place with Labour 3rd on just 18% of the vote, followed by Eluned Morgan delivering what Labour believed to be an earth shattering speech.

I am going to look at some juicy nuggets from within that polling and then assess if there is anything behind the First Minister’s speech other than hot (or perhaps “tepid” is more accurate) air. We will then work out what parties in Wales can do to stop the rise of Reform.

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Farage unable to participate in Welsh election TV debates?

(Copyright: Rob Norman/HayMan Media)

Last week I attended an event at the Senedd where ITV Cymru confirmed that no one who wasn’t a candidate in the Senedd election would be allowed to take part in any televised leadership debates they hosted.

This prevents Nigel Farage taking the stage for Reform and means the party would need to essentially elevate another candidate to the role of de-facto leader in Wales if they want to take part.

Of course they could just stick Mr Farage at the bottom of one their constituency lists to make him eligible but in order to do that he would need to be a resident in Wales. It may be that they just give him a bogus Welsh address. That sort of thing happens all the time. A Tory candidate in Cardiff at the General Election actually lived in Northampton.

However if they did do this then I think it would do more harm than good. The optics for his constituents in Clacton would be pretty damaging and the questions it would raise would probably not offset the advantage of having him on the broadcast.

I should say, the BBC have made no such commitment yet when it comes to any TV debates.

Incidentally this decision earned the ire of Arron Banks. Somewhat ironic that the man who founded and funded Leave.EU (which was fined £70,000 for breaking electoral spending laws) got upset about “cheating”.

That poll

For those of you who haven’t seen it. The Barn Cymru poll conducted by YouGov for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University showed:

• Plaid 30%

• Reform 25%

• Labour 18%

• Conservatives 13%

• Lib Dem 7%

• Green 5%

• Other 2%

Be under no illusion, if this is even close to accurate it represents a seismic shift in Welsh politics. Plaid being clearly the front runner is huge for them because it puts them in the driving seat to have a First Minister.

But what will this mean in terms of seats?

Seat projections

The graph below was made by Dr Jac Larner. He is a lecturer in politics at Cardiff University and is an absolute guru when it comes to this stuff. You should give him a follow on Bluesky here.

This graph can seem confusing but it’s actually really simple. It shows the range of seats a party could get based on that polling. Due to the fact that in some constituencies it is very close, a few votes either way could change the seats. The graph shows the high/low watermarks for each party.

I don’t want to dwell on the Welsh Tories too much because I will be covering them in depth next week because I am going to their conference in Llangollen, but if the Welsh Conservatives end up going from 16 MSs to just nine (when the Senedd has expanded from 60-96 members!?), it would be such a damning indictment of their total lack of credible opposition for the last decade.

What would this mean in terms of the coalitions?

If we consider that Reform and the Tories will only be able to go into coalition with each other, then the only way that any selection of parties can get to that magic 49 number of seats is if Plaid and Labour come together.

Together they would have 54 seats. There is no way that Plaid could do it just with the Lib Dems so it seems that Plaid and Labour together is the most likely with a Rhun ap Iorwerth as the First Minister being a probable outcome.

However, what if we took the upper limit of Reform and the Tories. What if Reform got 36 seats and the Tories got 15? Well if that did happen they would have enough to form a government. Alas for Darren Millar, there is one factor that makes this highly unlikely - who is voting Reform/Conservative.

Where the parties votes are coming from

Right the graph I am about to show you (which also comes from Dr Jac Larner) shows how votes for each party have changed since the General Election less than a year ago.

Let me give you the key points:

• Almost no voters are going from Labour to Reform. Only 4% of people voting Reform voted Labour in the last election. Whereas a third of Plaid’s projected vote are coming from Labour. This is why it is madness that Keir Starmer and UK Labour are focussing on Reform so much. The threat is on the left, not the right.

• Tory voters are switching to Reform. This is really crucial because it shows why a Reform/Conservative coalition is unlikely. Most of Reform’s growth is due to Tory decline. It would therefore be hard for them both to hit their highwater mark.

The lie Labour needs to stop telling

In her speech this week First Minister Eluned Morgan said:

“A vote for Plaid risks letting Reform take power”

I have heard iterations of this said by several Labour Members since. They all were basically saying “Vote Plaid, Get Reform”.

Under our new electoral system this is utter tripe. It is scaremongering. The new system is proportional. Labour should know this, they were the ones who introduced it.

If Labour’s strategy for the next 12 months is to essentially try and scare people into staying with them or Reform will get in, they have rocks in their head. It’s a lie and insulting for the voters. The new system, for all its issues around closed lists, allows people to put aside tactical voting and choose who they most want in government. Labour would be much better off making their case to the electorate instead of pointing at the Reform boogeyman.

Clear (as mud) Red Water

Last Tuesday Eluned Morgan stood up at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay to deliver a speech. The idea was to try and regain momentum after a tough first nine months in office where their colleagues in Westminster had repeatedly made policy decisions which were damaging to Wales. The principal aim was to put some distance between Welsh and UK Labour (if only someone had suggested they do that months ago…).

First Minister Eluned Morgan speaking at the Norwegian Church (Welsh Labour)

The first thing to say about the speech was it was LONG. Over 5,000 words, it was 45 minutes in length.

One line that stood out was around natural resources. Commenting on how Wales needed to benefit from green energy projects she said:

“Let me be clear: we saw them take our coal. We saw them take our water. We will not let them take our wind.”

Putting aside the fact this sounds like a baby William Wallace about to be burped I think it is worth noting how much what she is saying is designed to counter Plaid. While UK Labour see Reform as the big threat, Welsh Labour does actually understand that Plaid is where they are haemorrhaging votes too.

She went further talking about the drawing of Tryweryn. She said:

“And it’s not just coal. In 1965, the UK Government drowned a Welsh village - Tryweryn - without Welsh consent, to supply water to Liverpool.  The Nationalists have always tried to claim this as a fight that they uniquely took on, but I am proud to say that not a single Welsh Labour MP supported that Conservative project when it went to a vote in 1957. Not one because it was wrong.”

Again this speaks to a Welsh nationalist audience but it also inadvertently aptly illustrates the point that Welsh MPs have always had limited influence in Westminster to stand up to their constituents. It also overlooks the fact that all Welsh Labour MPs voted against devolving the Crown Estate (which is official Welsh Labour policy).

Gavin and Stacey…

The First Minister’s speech also contained a highly strained Gavin and Stacey analogy.

She said:

Last Christmas, millions of us watched the Gavin and Stacey finale - a love letter to Barry Island and a story about messy, modern families. That’s how I see Welsh Labour within the UK Labour family. Yes, we’re part of something bigger, but like any family, we know when it’s time to stand up and speak out

There will be times when what’s right for Essex is not right for Barry, nor for Wales, and that’s okay. Like Nessa and Smithy, there will be a bond, but yes, there will also be issues.

I guess the Welsh/UK Labour relationship is like a family. But at the moment it is like a family where the dad won’t give his child money to catch the bus to the hospital (see I can do strained analogies too).

“The Red Welsh Way” - was this speech a success?

The climax of the speech was the coining of the phrase the “Red Welsh Way”. Designed to be a new version of “clear red water” without being as overtly hostile to their fellow party members in London.

The speech wasn’t too bad to be fair. She delivered it well. But it felt like it had been written by half a dozen people (which by some accounts it was) and didn’t really do much to distinguish them from previous Welsh Labour statements.

If this speech had been made at the start of Eluned Morgan’s reign it would have been a strong line in the sand and set out her stall. Now however, after UK Labour seeks to impose really damaging benefits cuts to Wales, it feels like a weak and underdone course correction that manages to identify that Welsh Labour aren't happy without showing the backbone to do much about it.

How to defeat Reform in Wales