How the mighty have fallen

Ben Wildsmith

Next year’s Senedd elections are finally registering as a thing in Westminster. Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage have, this week been setting out their stalls and trying to give the impression that they know or care what we all care about.

Badenoch’s plight as Tory leader would inspire pity for almost anybody else. Having inherited the burnt-out shell of a party exploded by Boris Johnson, held up to ridicule by Liz Truss, and virtually euthanised by Rishi Sunak, her task is impossible.

She has gone about it, however, in such a tin-eared, graceless manner that even traditional sympathy for the underdog is beyond her appeal. The Tory leader’s claim to be ‘fighting to win’ the Senedd election puts further clear, blue water between her party and reality.

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Laughable irrelevance

Formerly the world’s most successful political party, the Tories are approaching Monster Raving Loony Party levels of laughable irrelevance. Absurd ambitions to govern Wales in the immediate future recall Screaming Lord Sutch’s promise to tow Britain to the south of France for better weather.

How the mighty have fallen.

Reform UK, on the other hand, project the confidence of ascendancy. Thus far they have announced no candidates, no Wales-specific policies, and no Welsh leader.

Despite this they are consistently drawing level with Labour and Plaid. Farage announced this week that Reform would work with any other party in the Senedd in order to enact its agenda, whatever that might turn out to be.

It seems unlikely that any party other than the Conservatives would sign up to a confidence and supply arrangement with Reform, and to formally accept subservience to Farage would be an act of unfamiliar humility for the party of Churchill and Thatcher.

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New rules

As Farage concedes, no party will govern alone in the Senedd under the new rules, so there is an awkward possibility of Reform becoming the largest party but having no input into government.

Those who oppose devolution would have a field day with that outcome.

Next month’s council and mayoral elections in England may offer a glimpse of where we are after 10 months of Labour government.

A collapse in the Labour vote does not necessarily correlate with a surge for Reform, and turnout levels in the elections will be as interesting as the actual results.

The online volume of Farage enthusiasts can be misleading as regards their actual level of support, but if the party does surge in England, then Plaid and Labour will need to be far more focussed in taking the fight to Reform than has been the case so far.

Key to this is recognising when open goals have been left for Reform to exploit.

Whilst the party has no policies at all for Wales, Farage promised that his party would ‘reindustrialise’ South Wales and cancel Net Zero commitments to achieve this.

Meaningless

This promise is so wide-ranging and vague as to be meaningless, but the swipe at Net Zero is canny politics.

With the open sore of Port Talbot’s redundancies causing pain and anger in our communities, the rationale for a single-nation target to decarbonise has not been made plausibly.

If the UK, or Wales specifically, is to hold itself to a higher environmental standard than huge industrial nations like India and China, then a case must be made as to how that can be done without disadvantaging our nation at a time when economic ruin seems a breath away.

Environmental fundamentalism may feel moral but as the UK government ships coal from Japan, and China supplies us with wind turbines and solar panels, that rectitude can be made to look ridiculous.

The idea that the UK is ‘leading’ on this issue is for the birds. The UK isn’t leading anything at all anymore, it is a visibly declining power that lacks economic heft or meaningful alliances in the world.

The Milbandiste idea of the UK as being in the vanguard of environmental change is as delusional as the imperial fantasies that continue to beguile the right.

The electorate perceives society as broken. It craves change, or failing that, at least an acknowledgement of how desperate things have become for so many of us.

Reform UK is a stockbroker’s plaything; a con trick from top to bottom. That trick, however, only works because the establishment in UK politics offers no meaningful change at all. In the Senedd, that lack of urgency seems to have threaded through 25 years of relentless decline without a voice being raised nor a tear shed.

The appeal of Reform UK to most of its potential voters isn’t ideological, or racial. It is the hope that something, anything, might visibly change at pace.

In an atmosphere of political despair, a circus beats an inquest.