Opinion
Be Brave, Plaid
Ben Wildsmith
Trying to read the electorate nowadays is like second guessing a volatile teenager whose demands are as urgent as they are unreasonable.
Finger drumming impatience greeted Keir Starmer’s government upon taking office. Instead of a comfortable honeymoon period during which the nation enjoyed its successful defenestration of the Tories, Labour found itself on the hook for everybody’s problems straight away.
This isn’t, I emphasise, to downplay the sheer awfulness of the current regime, nothing could at this point. Even without the cowardly U-turns, economic inaction, and ideological disorientation of Starmer’s mediocre team, however, the public does seem impossible to please.
It wants better services, lower taxes, higher pensions, deportations, reindustrialisation, and green energy. If you could sort that out by noon, at the latest Keir, we haven’t got all day.
For all the contradictory demands of a divided UK, there is one thing uniting us all. Everyone is agreed that things cannot go on as they are.
The momentum of national life has been on a downward trajectory since the 2008 crash, and our politicians have seemed content to manage the decline. Each day brings further unwelcome news, the closure of pubs, shops, and public provisions, yet no aspirant leaders seem to feel our frustration at our lives being relentlessly denuded of joy and ease.
It is as if our shrugging overlords have accepted that we’re done for and are just counting down the clock. It’s depressing.
So, the great, soggy mush of neoliberal conformity that has mouldered away in both major parties for decades has finally become too malodorous to bear.
There’s only so many times you can hear production line politicos trot out the same bilge about how you can’t have a library because that prick from Pimlico Plumbers might move to Dubai before eventually smelling a rat.
The murine Rod Stewart lookalike has, of course, jumped ship anyway.
For the first time since Thatcher’s election in 1979, the mood of the nation is for radical change. The first test of this mood will be at our Senedd elections in May and it’s difficult to see how either labour or the Conservatives can prevent humiliation.
Zeitgeist
This is, make no mistake about it, a political moment in Wales that hasn’t been seen for over a century. Whether Plaid Cymru or Reform UK can seize the zeitgeist will redefine Welsh politics in the short term and very possibly for decades to come.
It is not, then, a time for caution. Voters are spoiling for a scrap, wanting to flex their democratic muscles in spite of a political environment that seems to be drifting towards corporate feudalism.
Reform UK’s take on British/English nationalism is anything but revolutionary. Behind the party’s confrontational rhetoric sits doctrinaire Thatcherism – a reactionary defence of the economic status quo that relies on xenophobic posturing to disguise its orthodoxy.
As everybody argues over the party’s uncouth posturing about immigration, the loot will continue to be shipped from the public realm to the private; from you to them. Farage’s skill is to inflame anger so that people misdirect it. He is a matador in need of goring.
In Wales, the horns up his jacksy need to be delivered by Plaid Cymru and they need to be wielded without fear.
This week, we’ve heard plenty of timorous bleating over Farage’s intention to run Reform’s Senedd campaign and appear at the television debates. There is, of course, no real justification for his doing this but Plaid must see it as a tremendous opportunity.
'Welsh Dave'
Firstly, not appointing a Welsh leader is as good as a concession that no Reform talent exists here. Rhun ap Iorweth need only to ask where ‘Welsh Dave’ is to expose Farage’s lack of faith in Reform’s Welsh operation.
Secondly, Farage knows nothing about Wales. Lindsay Whittle won in Caerphilly by demonstrating forensic local knowledge and a demonstrable love for the area he represents. The Wales Farage thinks he knows is a fiction that exists only in relation to England and his party’s wider fortunes.
Under the lights, facing scrutiny from people who live here, that’s going to fall apart. Plaid should be cartwheeling at the prospect of facing him on a pitch he doesn’t understand or care about.
If Plaid need to develop a love of the fight when it comes to Reform, its darker instincts need to be honed when dealing with Labour. Dire as the polls are for Eluned Morgan, my expectation is that they will yet worsen.
The last of Labour’s apolitical, tribal vote is yet to realise that the game is up for them. As in Caerphilly, these broadly left-wing voters can, reluctantly, be won over by Plaid as the prospect of a Reform victory becomes tangible.
So, Labour will be annihilated in May. Here and across England the results will cast existential doubt not just over the hapless Starmer but the party itself.
In Wales, Plaid needs to imagine itself as the natural party of government. Not only should it campaign against Labour’s record, it should rule out any formal arrangement with the party in government. If a rump of Labour MSs decides to vote with Reform and whichever Tories are left, then it would finish their party permanently. Plaid should dare them to go ahead and shame them for even considering it.
Meaningful reforms
The UK, and Wales specifically, has been in desperate need of meaningful reforms for decades. The moral and practical cases for change have already been won. What has changed now is that the political climate is perfect for that shift to happen.
It has, perhaps, taken 25 years for this century to begin politically, but here we are on the cusp of something new.
The lesson of Starmer’s failed government is that drift and complacency breed resentment in today’s electorate. Plaid’s default position has always been to downplay its radicalism for fear of spooking the middle ground of Welsh opinion. Those days are done.
Wales is demanding something new and different. Plaid must step into that space unashamedly, drawing a contrast with the tired politics of Labour.
Reform can only thrive here if their Nu-Tory continuity is allowed to be misrepresented as radicalism. If Plaid come with the real thing, they’ll win.
Be brave.
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