Could Reform UK win Wales? Reform Cymru might

Jonathan Edwards

Looking at the main strategic challenges facing established political parties is a relatively easy task.

Faultlines left to fester do not dissipate and re-emerge as open sores in a context where Wales is heading for political stalemate.

As a challenger new entrant party, deciphering some of the major dilemmas faced by a party like Reform Ltd is a more difficult task.

With Reform within the margin of error in successive polls of winning the election, as far as devolution is concerned the enemy is at the gate with a battering ram ready to blow up Welsh politics as we know it.

I had always speculated that the real election to watch for the Senedd would be 2030, but it appears that the moment of truth is upon us.

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Momentum

The most precious commodity in politics, momentum, appears to be with Nigel Farage as he hopes to use next year's election as a bridgehead for the prize he really seeks – Westminster.

Mission priority for Reform I suspect is to ensure that the whole enterprise doesn’t implode. Considering that the party mostly consists of anti-establishment mavericks, the situation is inevitably combustible.

The problem with one person parties is that the health of the party is completely reliant upon one personality.

If Farage falls from grace the whole thing is finished, and not just because he reportedly owns 53% of the shares.

Having said that, if it can be held together the new Senedd system is made for a political offer based on one demagogic personality.

Labour and Plaid Cymru have given Farage a gift he could only dream of in conspiring to introduce a closed list electoral system.

The main strategic challenge Reform faces is how they move on from here and win the election, an event that will reverberate way beyond our own borders and send Westminster into panic mode.

Reform’s main challenge, I suspect, will be to turn the energy behind it into actual votes. Turnouts for Senedd elections traditionally are pathetically low, and therefore will anti-establishment voters actually make the effort to cast their ballot.

Poll ratings are all well and good, but polls don’t win elections – only cast ballots.

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Tipping point

Bearing in mind that it has already cornered the anti-Welsh political establishment vote, Reform should be thinking about how it can push the Tories beyond the precipice.

At 15% the Tories are in tipping point territory, and those of a right of centre persuasion could easily coalesce around Reform in droves.

Reform’s major strategic decision however is whether to drape itself in the Welsh or Union flag over the coming 12 months.

It already has hard core unionists in the bag, but it can’t win with that vote alone. Some symbolic rebranding along the lines of “Reform Cymru” could easily build a perception that the party is reaching out to those who clearly identify as Welsh.

What the Reform leadership should consider is that Welsh identifiers are more numerous in Wales than British identifiers, and are far more likely to vote in a Senedd election.

This would be exactly the same trick played by all the UK-wide parties, so they could hardly complain about this perceptive turn of hand.

Anti-Welsh

From the conversations I have in the Amman Valley, there are plenty of people who want to shake matters up but are reluctant to support an enterprise that they deem to be anti-Welsh.

The political decision it faces is similar. Are Reform going to Cardiff Bay to do a Brussels? In other words, bring the house down. Or are they as a party committed to devolution in principle.

I am not particularly clear on where they stand on that. Strategically it's difficult to play the anti-establishment card if they want to become a part of the furniture in CF99.

Here lies a major contradiction for Reform that surely the other parties will zero in on.

The fact that Reform is in such a strong position as matters currently stand is a damning indictment of the failure of successive Welsh Parliaments to address the major social and economic challenges faced by our country.

A sizeable chunk of the Welsh population has lost faith in the establishment parties and in the ability of devolution to improve their lives.

If Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Tories are to have any hope of seeing off the insurgency before them, they are going to have to seriously up their game.

Regrettably, from what I see they resemble paralysed rabbits as the political freight train approaches.

Jonathan Edwards was the MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr 2010-24