Mamdani beat the machine in NYC. Can Rhun beat Reform in Wales?

Owen Williams 

Nigel Farage has never cared much about Wales.

He’s an English hedge-fund man who sees Wales only as a stepping-stone to Westminster relevance. Reform UK has no candidates for the Senedd, no policies for Wales, and no plan beyond stoking grievance.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not a threat.

Because Farage understands something too many Welsh parties ignore: politics today is an attention war.

Reform doesn’t need policies to win seats in Wales. It just needs eyeballs. It doesn’t need roots here. It needs only to dominate the feed.

Plaid Cymru can’t ignore that. If they want to win the Senedd for the first time, they must beat Reform at its own game – not by mimicking its cynicism, but by out-competing it for attention with authentic, rooted, local storytelling.

And there’s a model for that.

From Queens to Caerdydd: A Case Study in Modern Campaigning

Last week, New York City’s Democratic primary delivered a shock. Zohran Mamdani, a 33‑year‑old socialist councilman from Queens, toppled the machine-backed Andrew Cuomo to become the Democratic nominee for mayor.

He did it not with big-money TV ads or party endorsements, but with an insurgent ‘attention strategy’ that outmanoeuvred the establishment on their own streets and on people’s phones.

Political journalist Chris Hayes described it as “a masterclass in networked mobilisation” on Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast.

Mamdani’s approach wasn’t just about turning out voters. It was about activating them as media producers, messengers and storytellers.

It was about creating ‘attentional attrition’ – but in reverse. Not draining energy through negativity and division, but filling feeds with hopeful, personal, place-based narratives his supporters owned and spread themselves.

This is exactly what Plaid Cymru – and Rhun ap Iorwerth personally – need to do to stop Reform UK in Wales.

The Real Threat Reform Poses

Let’s be clear about Reform UK:

• It has no Welsh policy platform.
  • It has no credible Senedd candidates.
  • It is the direct descendent of UKIP and the Brexit Party, whose only Welsh legacy is division.

But Farage understands how to set the agenda for free by flooding social media with provocative soundbites and cheap outrage.

Even negative attention works for him, because it pushes out real debate about our schools, NHS, or the powers Wales actually needs.

He doesn’t need to be here. He just needs to occupy our feeds.

Mamdani’s Alternative: Flood the Zone With Hope

What makes Mamdani’s campaign such a valuable lesson is that it proved you can beat an attention machine by building a better one.

Hayes and Klein dissected this in detail:

• Mamdani didn’t have money for endless ads. He had narrative discipline, not rigid message discipline. He gave supporters a simple story to tell in their own words: We are the movement fighting for tenants, transport, cost of living.
• He made content designed to be shared, not just watched. Short vertical videos. Meme-friendly graphics. Raw, direct-to-camera dispatches that didn’t feel like marketing.
• He activated volunteers as creators, not just foot soldiers. They canvassed, texted, commented, posted, DMed. They weren’t told what to say word-for-word – they were given a shared purpose and trust.
• Crucially, he maintained relentless volume. He didn’t post a policy launch and go quiet. He flooded the zone with hope, daily.

That was ‘attentional attrition’ flipped: wearing down the establishment’s control of the narrative, not with negativity, but with a human, authentic movement that people wanted to join.

Rhun’s Unique Welsh Advantage

Here’s the thing: Rhun ap Iorwerth is uniquely placed to run this kind of campaign.

He is ‘of Wales’ in a way Farage will never be:

• Born in the south-east.
  • Raised in the north-west.
  • Educated in the capital.
  • Worked in Wales and London.
  • Fluent Welsh speaker.
  • Former journalist who knows how to communicate clearly.

But being local isn’t enough. He has to show it in formats that work in the modern attention economy.

Rhun ap Iorwerth: The Vehicle for Wales’s Own Attention Strategy

If Plaid Cymru is going to beat Reform UK at the attention game, it can’t do it through faceless branding or top-down slogans.

It has to do it through Rhun ap Iorwerth himself.

Because ap Iorwerth isn’t just the party leader – he’s the single best proof of what “of Wales, for Wales” actually means.

Born in the south-east. Raised in the north-west. Educated in Cardiff. Worked in London. Speaks Cymraeg fluently, thinks in it instinctively, and knows how to communicate across all of Wales’s many identities.

He has to make himself not just the messenger but the message.

That means:

Personal storytelling as strategy

ap Iorwerth can’t just read policy bullet points. He needs to talk about growing up on Anglesey, about walking the streets of Cardiff Bay, about the conversations he’s had in village halls and hospitals. He needs to show that he doesn’t just represent Wales – he knows it.

Unpolished, direct communication
Farage’s power is that he seems unfiltered – even when he’s anything but. ap Iorwerth’s strength is that he doesn’t have to fake authenticity. Short vertical videos, bilingual to camera, filmed on the road, in communities, on the doorstep: that’s where he can connect.

Relentless presence in people’s feeds
Reform will be there every day with grievance and division. Rhun must be there every day with hope and belonging. Daily clips, reflections, reactions to events in Wales, volunteer stories – he must make himself unavoidable because he’s everywhere people already are.

A local face to a national story
Plaid wants to talk about housing, schools, health, transport. ap Iorwerth can show those issues by being present with the people affected. Walking with the farmer worried about trade. Sitting with the nurse facing cuts. Listening to the teacher buying supplies from their own pay.

Embodying Welsh difference
Farage can’t do this. He doesn’t speak Cymraeg. He doesn’t know Llanelli from Llandudno. Rhun can – and should – lean into that. Bilingual videos, local place-names, dialects, jokes, references that signal ‘this is ours.’

Being the face of trust
At its best, politics is personal. If people trust ap Iorwerth – really trust him – they’ll believe him when he says Reform UK isn’t here for Wales. That trust doesn’t come from press releases. It comes from a human being showing up, telling the truth, and listening back.

Rhun ap Iorwerth isn’t just Plaid Cymru’s leader. He is its single greatest asset in the attention war Wales is about to fight.

He needs to be ready to fight it on every phone screen in Wales – not with empty populism, but with the most powerful weapon there is: the truth about who he is, and the country he’s fighting for.

This Is How You Beat Reform

Reform UK doesn’t have a plan for Wales. It has a plan to distract Wales.

Plaid Cymru can’t fight that with policy PDFs and occasional press conferences.

They need to win the same battle Farage is fighting: the one for attention.

But they can do it better.

More local. More human. More Welsh.

They can build an attention network that doesn’t divide, but connects.

If Mamdani can do it in the world’s biggest media market, Rhun ap Iorwerth can do it in Wales.

But it will take boldness, consistency, and a willingness to see attention not as something to fear, but as the battleground on which the future of Welsh democracy will be won or lost.

Owen Williams is the founder of Siml, a strategic storytelling studio.