In the coming fortnight, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will travel to an undisclosed town in the Welsh valleys to fire the starting gun on his quest to end the Labour party’s historic grip on the nation’s politics.
Labour has held power in the Senedd parliament in Cardiff for 25 years, since the start of Welsh devolution, and has emerged as Wales’s biggest party in every election since 1922.
But its controlling influence is set to come to an end in legislative elections in May next year, thanks to a pincer movement from Plaid Cymru on its left and Reform on its right. A YouGov poll in May put Labour on just 18 per cent of the vote, with Reform on 25 per cent and Plaid clinching 30 per cent and likely securing a mandate to form the next government.
Plummeting support in Wales for Sir Keir Starmer’s party points to the impact of a cluster of policies that have proven highly unpopular, including cuts to winter fuel payments and disability benefits, and higher inheritance tax on farmland.
The prime minister has announced a U-turn on the winter fuel subsidy and officials are looking at softening contentious welfare reforms, while chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to announce targeted infrastructure investments for projects across Wales in the spending review on June 11. But some in Welsh Labour think the road ahead is a difficult one.
“There are challenges sometimes about what Westminster does,” said David Rees, Labour Senedd member for Aberavon, which encompasses Port Talbot, whose historic steelworks closed last year after London opted against investing billions to keep it in operation.
“People wanted change [when they voted for Labour last July] and they haven’t seen that . . . they’ve seen decisions which in their minds have hurt people.”
For Farage’s populist party, which has picked up flagging Conservative support, the question is whether its new leftward tilt can win over traditional Labour backers or attract enough first-time voters to challenge both Labour and Plaid Cymru.
If the YouGov projections come good in 12 months’ time, Plaid would secure 35 seats and Reform would win 30, with Labour on 19 — leaving no party with enough seats to form a government.
Plaid’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said decisions by Starmer had led to “a Labour party that people don’t recognise”, adding that Welsh Labour’s presumption that voters would always back it “has undone them”.
Iorwerth ruled out working with Reform to form a government and stressed that a coalition between Plaid and Labour was not inevitable if his party won the most seats. “There has to be co-operation, but don’t assume there has to be a coalition.”
The Senedd election, which must be held by May 7 2026, will be the first time that Wales’ electorate goes to the polls in a new “closed proportional list” system, in which all seats will be allocated based on the share of votes obtained by each party.
The new system will expand the devolved chamber from 60 to 96 members and is widely expected to benefit smaller parties.
Since replacing Vaughan Gething, who resigned after losing a confidence vote in June last year, Wales’ first minister Baroness Eluned Morgan has sought to impress upon voters that Welsh Labour is distinct from UK Labour.
In a speech in Cardiff this month before Starmer’s U-turn, she broke ranks to urge the prime minister to “rethink” the abolition of the winter fuel allowance and vowed that the party would chart its own “red Welsh way”.
The slogan was intended to echo the “clear red water” positioning developed by ex-leader Rhodri Morgan in the 2000s to distinguish Welsh Labour from Tony Blair’s centrist New Labour project.
But maintaining that separation has become harder since July last year, when Labour entered Downing Street after a decade of Conservative rule.
Richard Wyn Jones, professor of Welsh politics at Cardiff university, said: “Labour made the argument for many years they couldn’t be held responsible for the failings of devolved services because it was fundamentally a cash problem. That argument seems to have run out of road.”
In Llanelli, the Welsh seat that Reform came closest to winning in the general election, antipathy towards Starmer and his government was palpable.
In an indoor market in the heart of the market town, retiree Michael Clement said he would be switching to Plaid next year after Labour had proven “absolutely dreadful” in power.
“The biggest con is what they’ve done with pensioners, with the disabled, they’ve let them down really badly,” he said, adding that Welsh Labour had put up little opposition to the national party. “My fear is that Reform is going to benefit.”
Another man, who declined to give his name, said he would be voting for Farage’s party because Labour and Starmer had been a “waste of space”; his grandson nodded in agreement.
Gareth Beer, who stood for Reform in Llanelli at the general election, said people were turning to the party in Wales because of the dire lack of economic prospects and poor public services.
He pointed to the 7,000 people waiting for council houses in the town’s local authority of Carmarthenshire — a focus of Reform’s campaigning, which has sought to link a shortage of available housing to the arrival of asylum seekers.
“We don’t get the animosity or pushback that we used to, where people would hand you back your leaflet as though it were kryptonite,” Beer said, sitting in a café next to his wife, Michelle. “People like jumping on a successful train.”
Most academics and pollsters believe the data shows support for Reform — which is expected to come second to the Scottish National party in a by-election on Thursday for the Scottish parliamentary seat of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse — is not coming from people who voted Labour at the general election.
Analysis by Jac Larner, lecturer in politics at Cardiff University, suggests that only 4 per cent of people across Wales that support Reform voted Labour last July, compared with 33 per cent for Plaid.
Instead, 27 per cent of former Tory voters are switching to Reform, according to his analysis, which also suggests the insurgent party is attracting a significant number of people who have never voted.
“Looking at the areas now voting Reform, they’re the same areas that always voted Labour, and it’s very easy to just make the logical mistake to assume it’s the same people doing it. That isn’t what we see,” Larner said.
For Rees, who has represented Labour in the Senedd since 2011, Labour can turn its fortunes around in Wales if it shows it is fighting the government in Westminster on policies that matter, such as investment in local infrastructure and welfare support — and winning those battles.
But he is conscious that such efforts will take time, comparing governments to “supertankers, you can’t turn them around in a second”.
“There will always be a core of voters supportive of Reform and Nigel Farage, but it’s about bringing those other people on the fringes back,” he added. “Twelve months is better than nothing.”
