Labour is playing a dangerous game by lining up with Reform

Martin Shipton

No one predicted before the Senedd election that Labour would join forces with Reform UK to vote against a Plaid Cymru motion calling for fair funding for Wales.

Yet that’s what happened on Tuesday, with the result that the motion was lost by a single vote.

I’ve spoken to former Labour Members of the Senedd, as well as party members, who find the Labour group’s position on the issue incomprehensible.

Labour’s decision to vote with Reform also torpedoed a claim made by both Reform and the Conservatives for many months in advance of the election: that Labour and Plaid Cymru would prop each other up, if they were mathematically in a position to do so.

Such a view was essentially confirmed before the election by former First Minister Mark Drakeford, who said on the basis of polling evidence that the progressive parties would have a majority in the Senedd. This. he argued, was ultimately what mattered.

After the results were declared, there was a clear expectation, then, from both the progressive and reactionary wings of Welsh politics that the next four years at the Senedd would see the progressives consistently outvoting the reactionaries.

So what has gone wrong?

Part of the answer lies in the make-up of the diminished post-election Labour group. Before the election there was a swathe of Labour MSs who were very much from the “Welsh” wing of the party and comfortable with the “standing up for Wales” approach, even when that involved speaking out against the UK Labour government elected in 2024 when it snubbed or disrespected Wales. Political heavyweights like Mark Drakeford and Mick Antoniw had no inhibitions about criticising the Starmer government over its perceived betrayal of Welsh interests – and of a winning brand that had kept Labour in power since the outset of devolution.

But Drakeford and Antoniw have both retired, and the shrunken group elected in May 2026 seems disinclined to pick up the baton.

To be fair, they are at present understandably preoccupied with the Westminster transition from Starmer to Burnham, but that in itself perhaps indicates that Wales is not at the top of their agenda, where it should be.

Welsh Labour’s official policy is to support fair funding for Wales, but during Tuesday’s debate on the motion in the Senedd the rather left field argument advanced by Labour MS Huw Thomas was that the Welsh Government should persuade the Scottish Government to agree to a revision of the Barnett formula. This seems to have been based on an outdated understanding of what revising Barnett amounts to – as well as an attempt to create friction between Plaid Cymru and the SNP.

Weird

Intricacies aside, it’s pretty weird for a party that until recently claimed to be standing up for Wales to vote against fair funding for the country it’s meant to be representing. It makes one think that loyalty to British Labour is seen as more important than backing Wales – and that it’s safe to assume that a Burnham government will expect loyalty of this kind.

At the same time, Labour has been playing hard to get when it comes to supporting the Welsh Government’s Supplementary Budget. It’s been customary for these extra amounts of money that become available during a financial year to go through on the nod, leaving it to the Welsh Government’s discretion as to how the money is spent.

On this occasion additional millions have become available via Barnett for Wales because the UK Government decided to write off the accumulated Special Educational Needs and Disabilities deficits held by English local authorities.

The opposition parties are under no obligation to follow precedent and let Plaid Cymru’s minority have its say over how the extra money is spent. They will use whatever leverage they have to secure funds for sectors, policies and projects that they favour. It constitutes a form of political blackmail, of course, but parties will argue that it’s a benevolent form of blackmail that benefits those in need.

However, the presence of Reform in the Senedd certainly carries risks for progressive parties if they are suspected of conspiring with them. A couple of weeks ago there were gasps in the Chamber when Rhun ap Iorwerth admitted he had had a conversation with Reform’s Senedd group leader Dan Thomas.

Direct negotiations

Labour is currently trying to secure more money for local government from the Supplementary Budget, but so is Reform. Labour wants to be able to present any deal with Plaid as the result of direct negotiations with Plaid and with Reform out of the equation. But the optics won’t necessarily look good, and if Labour makes a habit of lining up with Reform, either when Budgets are being debated or when votes on other issues take place, the party is likely to alienate progressive voters in Wales even more than it has done already.

For many years Plaid Cymru was mocked by its opponents on the right as “Labour’s little helpers”. Labour clearly won’t want to fall victim to the same jibe. Both parties have expressed a preference not to form a coalition, and if they did so now, it would look like an admission of failure.

But it would be disastrous for Labour to align itself in any way with Reform, and its decision to join forces with the far right party and vote against a principle it officially espouses was a serious mistake.

Irony

During the debate on fair funding, Dan Thomas of Reform sent the irony counter through the roof when he accused Plaid Cymru of engaging in grievance politics. His party, of course, is entirely based on stirring up unfounded grievances.

In 1932 the German Socialist leader Kurt Schumacher denounced Nazism as “a continuous appeal to the inner swine in human beings”, unique in German history in its success at “ceaselessly mobilising human stupidity”. I look at my feed from X and remark inwardly that nothing has changed.

If Welsh Labour abandons its mission of standing up for Wales and gets into the habit of voting with Reform, neither Andy Burnham nor anyone else will be able to save it from oblivion.

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