Welsh politics is entering a new phase. It’s likely to be a rough ride

Martin Shipton

Another nail in the coffin of Welsh democracy was hammered home this week with the publication of the Democracy and Boundary Commission Cymru proposals for the new “super constituencies” that will be used to elect the expanded Senedd of 96 Members in 2026.

No criticism should be made of the Commission – its members have done the job they were told to do. But the outcome is a dog’s dinner that is likely to result in greater alienation of the people of Wales from the national parliament that is meant to serve them.

Instead of having one constituency Member to represent them, as happens under the present system, there will be six. Of course there are also four regional Members under existing arrangements, but they tend to be seen – at least from a constituency perspective – as incidental add-ons rather than core to the task of representation.

Closed List

By electing six MSs from a Closed List system where people vote for a party rather than an individual, the crucial personality element of politics is being eliminated. Individuals will be elected to the Senedd not because of their appeal to voters or work they have done, but because they have played the system within their party to ensure they are at the top of the Closed List or close to it.

Who will secure the “top seed” places? People who are regarded as loyalists to the party tribe who will not just follow the party whip come what may, but actively work to ensure that what the party hierarchy wants, the party hierarchy gets. For any maverick who does manage to get selected, there will be the constant threat of deselection if they step out of line.

Of course they could stand as Independents at the following election, but getting re-elected will be much more difficult in a huge super-constituency where the only thing in common between different parts of it may be that it’s possible to drive relatively easily from one location to another.

Winning as an Independent is also much easier where the Single Transferable Vote system is in operation, allowing voters to express their preferences for candidates in an order they devise themselves. Under the Closed List system, every voter is robbed for choice except the mundane option of ticking a list chosen by party apparatchiks motivated predominantly by the desire to win power and retain it.

Apparatchiks

Even if the apparatchiks are content to allow local party members to construct their own Closed List, the numbers involved in making the selection could be very small. Political parties have been hollowed out for various reasons – some ideological, but perhaps more because people tend to have lifestyles focussed less on the collective than was once the case. Parties tend not to publish voting figures for selection contests, so hard evidence tends to be patchy and only comes to light when someone wants to make a point.

But in the devolution era there have been instances where some Plaid Cymru regional list candidates have reportedly been selected with less than a couple of dozen votes. Those selected were subsequently elected as Assembly Members.

When campaigning in the 1997 referendum that resulted in a narrow victory for establishing what was initially the National Assembly, Ron Davies said Wales needed the nation’s “brightest and best” to be elected. More recently Professor Laura McAllister, who chaired a panel that recommended an increase in the number of MSs to be elected by STV or a similar system, has argued that a larger Senedd would necessarily lead to better scrutiny and better legislation.

I don’t think many people believe that we have a Senedd full of Wales’ brightest and best. Nor am I anywhere near being convinced that the calibre will improve once the number of MSs elected shoots up from 60 to 96.

Sycophantic

I see people promoting themselves on social media and being sycophantic to their party leaders. The only reason I can think why they engage in such humiliating behaviour is to tout for selection as a Closed List candidate in 2026. From my perspective, they display little originality of thought and reinforce my prejudice against party tribalists of all persuasions.

They are a far cry from the type of MS wanted by Ron Davies, Laura McAllister and, I believe, Wales as a whole.

In my view, it is more than likely that Labour will have a bad election in 2026. The parties to watch will be Plaid Cymru and Reform UK.

Will Plaid under its “common sense” leader Rhun ap Iorwerth manage to overcome its baggage and persuade the bulk of disillusioned Labour voters to back it? Or will many flock to Reform, a party that isn’t a party in the conventional sense but a private company whose majority shareholder is its leader, Nigel Farage?

A cynical friend suggested that while other parties may struggle to find the brightest and best candidates with the ability to scrutinise the Welsh Government forensically, for Reform it doesn’t matter. They can recruit all the candidates they need in Wetherspoons.

‘Affront to democracy’

I thought it likely that many of my views would chime with those of former Bridgend council Labour leader Jeff Jones. They did. He told me: “It’s certainly wrong to blame the Commission – they were given an impossible task.

“The people to blame are the Senedd Members who voted this through. The Closed List system coupled with constituencies of this size is an affront to democracy. It’s a short-term fix that arose out of the Cooperation Agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru, but anyone who thinks that it will be changed to STV after the 2026 Senedd election is deluding themselves. This is it.

“The number of MSs is increasing to 96 simply to fit in with a mathematical formula tied to the number of Westminster seats in Wales. Perhaps there would have been 120 MSs if the number of Westminster constituencies had remained at 40 rather than gone down to 32.

“Why, in any case, is there a need to involve Westminster constituencies at all? The Commission should have been asked to draw up a list of new constituencies that suited Wales. In Ireland, the number of seats per Dail constituency varies from three to five. That provides the flexibility to ensure the size of constituencies isn’t unmanageably big. By having such large constituencies in Wales it will be impossible for individual MSs to represent people properly.

“The Closed List system is for the benefit of parties, not voters. The way parties operate today, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the person who gets the most votes in an internal selection contest will be declared the winner. It happened with the Plaid Cymru election for a nomination to the House of Lords, where the former MP Elfyn Llwyd won but the person he defeated got the nomination because she was a woman.

“It happened to me in 1999, when despite getting selected to top the regional list I was removed because the local MP and members of his family who hated me threatened to veto the whole candidate selection process. I received a phone call telling me I was being removed from the top of the list from Welsh Labour official Jessica Morden, now the MP for Newport East.”

Ms Morden was recently elected Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

We’re entering a new phase of Welsh politics. It’s likely to be a rough ride.