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Opinion

Elections in Wales – finding out who we are

14 Jun 2025 6 minute read
“‘For The Empire’ ‘GOD SAVE THE KING’ Commemorative Flag …” by Bernard DUPONT is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

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).

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks during a press conference in Port Talbot. Photo Ben Birchall/PA Wire

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.

Rhun ap Iorwerth – Matthew Horwood

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.


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Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
1 month ago

Education…Brexit…Case unproven…

Steve D.
Steve D.
1 month ago

Ultimately, many just won’t be listening to the ‘an English party’, ‘no Welsh leader’ or that they are ‘just going to take our money to use as funding for a win 2029’. Many want real change to the hardships of their lives and will blindly vote for any party that offers it. The ‘How’ ( something that still needs to be seriously brought to people’s attention) they’ll actually do it is irrelevant Welsh Labour are in a bind, needing to improve people’s lives dramatically and fast before next May but are tied up by the finances of Westminster – which… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve D.
Pete
Pete
1 month ago

For 25 years both Labour and Plaid have failed to outline any strategy or vision for our country. This has led to the repugnant rise of Reform. It’s really that simple. The saddest thing is that all I have seen in response from Labour, Plaid and the rest of the political elite is negative campaigning and ill-judged attempts at satire. It’s all very well criticising Reform but where, I ask in vain, is your positive vision for Wales and the supporting policies that will make it happen? Yup. Thought so.

Only Considerable Upsides
Only Considerable Upsides
1 month ago
Reply to  Pete

To be fair, Pete, I’m not convinced that Reform UK has that positive vision either, their campaigning seemingly centred around being opposed to this, or rejecting that; opposed to immigration, opposed to supposed attacks on personal liberty (eg 20mph, unhealthy meal deals), opposed to a vague notion that local and national governments are ripping us all off (eg Senedd expansion, council waste), etc. It’s a rather negative message. The problem confronting Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats, is the same one the pro-EU campaign faced in 2016, namely how do you make ‘more of the same’ attractive? How do… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Only Considerable Upsides
Ernie The Smallholder
Ernie The Smallholder
1 month ago

The main problem is extreme inequality. There are people just surviving, in debt, and yet there are billionaires with nothing to really spend their money on. You can see this in the proof provided by Gary Stevenson (youtube: @garyseconomics). The way we solve this is complex when we have politics decided by politics outside Wales. England is a different nation to Wales (and Scotland) and therefore we should have our own parties orginiating in Wales (and Scotland). This should have been addressed eighty years ago, after WW2. We lost our coal and manufacturing industries because we never had control and… Read more »

Ian Michael Williams
Ian Michael Williams
1 month ago

Aron Jones’s tirade against Reform UK and Nigel Farage is baffling for so many reasons—but I’ll just address a couple this time! Once again, we see someone who, like many advocating for an independent Wales, criticizes a man whose boldness and determination surpass anyone else in politics! He claims that Reform UK is running in Wales solely to drain its finances. Really? Because Plaid and Labour have been doing exactly that since the Welsh Assembly was established! Once again, we are faced with the same tiresome rhetoric that clings to the tired notion of Welsh victimhood, hurling blame at anyone… Read more »

FrankC
FrankC
1 month ago

Farage isn’t bold. He’s a political coward who has never taken responsibility for the damage he’s done. He’s a racist, grifting, hypocrite. If you think he’s the solution to our problems in Wales you’re seriously deluded.

Ian Michael Williams
Ian Michael Williams
1 month ago
Reply to  FrankC

You would never say that to his face!!! Calling him a Racist is unbelievable and you may possibly have to answer for?

Cwm Rhondda
Cwm Rhondda
1 month ago

The Labour party in Cymru, have taken votes for granted. As they say power corrupts, unfortunately Labour in the valleys have abused their power for decades.

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