Elections in Wales – finding out who we are

Aran Jones, Author, SaySomethingIn

In May next year, we’re going to find out something new – and something very important – about who we are as a country.

Maybe you think that sounds a little dramatic. It’s certainly true that elections come and go, and no elected body lasts for ever. I used to see them a bit like rugby matches – you wanted your side to win, and if they didn’t, you’d hope they would next time. I had a naive and trusting belief that whoever won would generally be doing their best to run the country well.

That’s what safe, middle-of-the-ground territory looks like.

But that’s not what the polls are showing us any more.

For over a hundred years, Labour has been the political choice in Wales. It’s not hard to see why – the Labour idealism of education and workers’ rights made them a strong voice for our mining communities. You only have to watch the film ‘Pride’ to get a visceral sense of how important the Labour voice was for the coalfields.

Since devolution, Labour have been a successfully broad church for Welsh people.

Their roots in our mining communities have made them genuinely conscious of social conditions in Wales to the point where even people in favour of independence have found it possible to vote for them. Meanwhile, their commitment to the concept of Britain has made them the obvious choice for people who consider themselves to be Welsh and British (or the other way around).

In other words, they’ve given the people of Wales an option to vote for a status quo which feels quite like being Welsh, is obviously British, and doesn’t really rock any boats. Safe, middle-of-the-ground territory.

But now the polls are telling us the next election won’t be fought on that territory.

Labour has slipped to third – behind Plaid Cymru and also behind Reform UK.

This is a very different game.

New rules

In opinion polls, Welsh people fall consistently into three camps – they consider themselves to be Welsh and not British, or they consider themselves to be Welsh but also British, or they consider themselves to be British and also Welsh.

But Welsh people who also feel English?

No, that’s not a thing.

(With the rather lovely exception of English people who have moved to Wales and genuinely fallen in love with the country).

This is why Reform UK will spend the next year – even while they’re being so deeply condescending as not to bother naming a Welsh leader – pretending that they are genuinely interested in Wales. (They’ll also be pretending to be a political party, rather than a limited liability company, but that’s another matter).

What they find most attractive about Wales, of course, is the money they hope to get from winning seats in the Senedd.

It’s like a weird little coda at the end of the symphony of Empire – that an English nationalist party should be trying to sweet talk the people of Wales into funding their bid for control in Westminster. Take the coal, take the slate, now come back for the public funding.

Their pretence tells us something else interesting, though.

It tells us that even Reform UK Ltd, with their fundamental lack of understanding of Wales, know enough to know that if the people of Wales are forced to choose between being Welsh or being English, they will choose to be Welsh.

So Reform UK have to try and persuade us that voting for them is about being British, rather than supporting an English nationalist party. They have to try to colonise that safe, status-quo territory that Labour held so successfully for so long.

How do you pretend to be a safe status quo when all your new councillors in England are busy fighting with each other, resigning or just failing to get any work done? When you have precisely zero experience of ever running even local government, and your ideas are all about copying an American administration whose own leaders are busy accusing each other of being paedophiles and drug addicts.

Would Wales really swallow the bait and hand over our public funding to people like that?

That’s what we’re going to find out in less than a year.

Through the looking glass

If we have to choose between a Welsh party and an English party, but the English party has stuck a leek in its hat and is shouting ‘Yekkid da! I love Taffies!’ at us – which will we choose?

If the Labour party in Wales tell us they care about Welsh communities, we only have to remember their fight against Thatcherism to believe them. If Plaid Cymru tell us they care about Welsh communities, when they literally have no other reason to exist – we can believe them.

When Reform UK Ltd (aka The Brexit Party, who championed a withdrawal from Europe and European funding which has done so much damage to Welsh communities) tell us they care about us, and they’re not just here to get their hands on our public funding – who really believes that?

Time will tell.

If the people of Wales see that they’re choosing between a Welsh party and an English party, they’ll choose the Welsh party. For the first time we’ll have the kind of leverage in discussions with London that the Scots have benefited from for so long.

If the people of Wales believe that Reform UK Ltd aren’t just here for our cash, we might end up with an administration whose only concern will be to extract as much money from us as possible. We’ll fund their real goal of taking power in Westminster.

Eleven months to go.

We’re certainly living in interesting times.

Find out more about SaySomethingIn here.