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The Labour party’s century-long dominance in Wales has few parallels in the democratic world. Emerging as the largest party in every general election since 1922, Welsh Labour has also won all six Senedd polls following devolution in 1999. In Tim Price’s acclaimed play, Nye, Aneurin Bevan declares: “I am a Welshman. I am a socialist.” For millions of voters in past generations, that merging of national and political identity was an everyday fact of life.
This unique history lends some perspective to a remarkable poll last week, which suggests that next May’s Senedd elections could deliver not so much an upset as a revolution. According to YouGov, the Welsh nationalists of Plaid Cymru narrowly lead voting intentions at 30%, with Reform UK one point behind. Labour are a dismal third on 14%. Next month a Senedd byelection in Caerphilly – in Labour’s traditional south Wales heartland – will offer an early indication of whether such an epic meltdown is truly on the cards. Polling this month put the party of Bevan in third place there as well.
For Labour as a whole, this should be the mother of all wake-up calls. Local factors do apply. A donations scandal that enveloped the former first minister, Vaughan Gething, damaged the party’s reputation. NHS waiting lists – a devolved matter – remain far too high. But Mr Gething’s successor, Eluned Morgan, is also paying the price for a failure to sufficiently distinguish Welsh Labour from the increasingly unpopular Westminster version. Labour’s refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap, and its ill-conceived attack on disability benefits, have seen swathes of progressive voters embrace Plaid as a more authentic advocate of classical social democratic values.
Meanwhile, on the right, a Conservative party that made gains in the aftermath of Brexit risks has been utterly eclipsed by Reform UK. Though lacking high-profile personnel and ambivalent at best over devolution, Reform does not share the historic toxicity of the Tory brand. Nigel Farage’s seductive promises of reindustrialisation appear to be playing well in the valleys. The introduction of a new, more proportional voting system next May, delivering 96 rather than 60 Senedd members, heightens the sense that Wales is on the threshold of a new political era.
At a time of seismic disruption in British politics, and in liberal democracies across the west, the collapse of Welsh Labour would be a landmark moment. In the context of next May’s elections, it could prove to be an unhappy tipping point for Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party. But thus far there has been little sign of an adequate response to the scale of the challenge in either Cardiff or London.
Invoking a “red Welsh way” distinct from Westminster’s priorities, Ms Morgan has demanded greater public investment from the centre into areas such as rail (a particular source of grievance after Wales failed to derive any consequential benefit from the billions spent on HS2 in England). Given the state of the polls, and his own darkening prospects, Sir Keir would do well to heed the call and come up with something radical. During more than a century of political hegemony, figures such as Bevan and Neil Kinnock have embodied Wales’s contribution as a powerhouse of traditional Labour values. That legacy is now under threat as never before.
