The big 2025 predictions for Wales

Plus what I got right and wrong last year

Hello!

I have a fun newsletter planned for this week (not that they aren’t all fun).

I am going to put my thin veneer of credibility on the line and make some predictions for what I think is going to happen in Welsh politics in 2025.

I also want readers' predictions. If you think you can be the Welsh Nostradamus (or Nostra-dai-mus) you can email me on will@willhayward.co.uk or post in the comments. The best prediction will win a six months complementary paid subscription to the newsletter. Obviously we won’t know if your foretelling will be accurate for months so I will be judging it based on:

• Believability - it has to be possible.

• Boldness - it can’t be too obvious.

Your predictions can be as broad or niche as you like, just make sure you show your workings.

Before we get into my predictions, here are a few words from our sponsor:

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Predictions from last year…

In the interest of transparency I will briefly take you through my predictions from the newsletter last year to see how I got on. There were some misses but overall I was pretty pleased.

1. Andrew RT Davies will back the right-wing candidate to replace Rishi Sunak. Conservative Senedd Members will move against him out of fear for their jobs. And he will no longer be Welsh Tory leader within six months.

I got this mostly right. Andrew RT backed Robert Jenrick, who is more to the right than Tugendhat or Cleverly although you can argue he isn’t as far to the right as Kemi Badenoch. Either way, Tory MSs did move against Andrew RT and he has stepped down as leader.

2. The Welsh Labour leadership race will be closer than the Brexit referendum

Feeling pretty smug about this one. Back in March I predicted that Vaughan Gething would beat Jeremy Miles to the Labour leadership with 52% of the vote. Here is the tweet:

In the end he won it with 51.7% of the vote.

3. There will be just one Tory MP left in Wales

Given that the Tories got wiped out in the General Election I got this one wrong. I predicted they would hold onto Montgomeryshire. However, that was before (now former) MP Craig Williams made a bet on the election date. In one safe bet he ruined my safe bet.

4. Plaid Cymru will take Ynys Môn

Back in December last year I wrote:

Plaid are likely to put all their effort into winning Anglesey and they have a really good chance of doing so. Labour will likely be more focused on reclaiming other north Wales seats and, in Llinos Medi, Plaid have a well-known local candidate who is very driven.”

Plaid/Llinos Medi did end up winning.

5. Wales will still have more than 10,000 people waiting in excess of two years for an NHS appointment and more than 100,000 waiting longer than a year

So in December 2023 there were:

• 26,000 still waiting two years for an NHS appointment (down from 41,000 in January 2023).

• More than 133,000 waiting over a year (down from 152,000 in January 2023).

We are now in December 2024 and the figures are:

• 24,000 two-year waits

• 172,000 one-year waits.

So while the two years have gone down very slightly, the over one-year waits have soared.

I take no pleasure in getting this one right, though I must admit I didn’t expect the situation to be as bad as it is.

6. Support for Welsh independence will plummet after an election but will be back up to its previous level within 12 months

It is hard to properly assess this one as 12 months haven’t passed since the election and we simply haven’t had that many polls on the issue.

However if we take the last poll before the election which was done by Redfield and Wilton and compare it with the YouGov poll from September we can see that support for indy has fallen.

• In June the poll was: 33% support v 57% oppose.

• In September it was: 24% support v 61% oppose.

I anticipate support will rise again as people become more disgruntled with the Labour Government in Westminster. I do however believe that this surge will be stymied by the disgruntlement with how badly the Welsh Government is doing. During Covid the perception that Wales was doing things better was a key motivator in the increased support for indy.

Right, now I’ve made myself thoroughly unlikeable by patting myself on the back, let’s look at next year…

The 7 big predictions for 2025

Some of these are quite complex and will take explanation, others are simply a single line.

Prediction 1: Andrew RT Davies will join Reform, but quickly become disgruntled and fall out with them

Andrew RT Davies

I have been on the fence about this but I think it is more likely than not that the former Welsh Tory chief/Leader of the Opposition will leave the Conservatives to join Reform.

Before I explain my reasoning, take a look at this exchange he had with Lewis Goodall on LBC last week:

Lewis Goodall: Would you ever consider joining Reform?

Andrew RT Davies: I was blue when I was born, as people know I've said this many a time. As a breech baby, I was blue when I was born and I'll be blue when I die.

LG: So no, you will never leave the Conservative Party?

ARTD: Well, as I said I was blue when I was born, I will be blue when I die. So read into that what you will.

LG: No, no, I would like you to be explicit, Mr Davies. You'll never leave the Conservative Party. As charming as your metaphor is, I just wonder whether you could say yes or no? You'll never leave the Conservative Party?

ARTD: The Conservative Party, I hope, will never leave me and I hope I will never have to leave the Conservative Party.

LG: But there's a possibility, but you're leaving the door open that that could happen.

ARTD: Well, as I said, I hope the Conservative Party never leaves me and I hope I'll never have to leave the Conservative Party. But I'm a blue conservative, blue collar conservative through and through and I'll always be a blue unionist conservative.

Let’s put aside the blue collar, man of the people, spiel (Mr Davies is a multi-millionaire largely from inherited wealth who had a privileged boarding school education at the £14,000-a-term Wycliffe College and earned over £100,000 from his role as leader of the opposition).

It is very clear from the exchange that Mr Davies isn’t ruling out defecting to Reform. All this Boris Johnson bluster about being “blue” when the colours of both the Tories and Reform are blue is exactly the level of unseriousness that undermined him as leader.

New Welsh Conservative leader Darren Millar has named his shadow cabinet and Mr Davies is not in it. This isn’t a matter of numbers - Mr Daves’ shadow cabinet included all Tory MSs. It is a deliberate decision to distance the party from their previous leader.

I can’t imagine that Mr Davies will find this a tolerable situation. I predict that in the second half of 2025 he will use some attempt by the Welsh Conservatives to tack to the centre as a pretext for his defection to Reform.

If the Reform Party accepts him this will make him their default leader in the Senedd which will give him a tidy paybump.

However, the honeymoon will be short lived…