Opinion
Is it time for Plaid Cymru to prepare for power in 2026 - and will Senedd Reform prove to be Labour's undoing?
Martin Shipton
For as long as I’ve been writing about Plaid Cymru, the party has gone through periods when it has convinced itself that a spectacular victory will be delivered at the next election.
Part of this stems from the rhetorical skills of some of its leading politicians.
Adam Price, at his oratorical best, is able to whip up an audience already committed to the independence cause into a state that approaches a frenzy. He can convince waverers that Welsh “freedom” is just around the corner. For those who don’t know, he developed the ability to do this as a teenage lay preacher for the Plymouth Brethren in his home county of Carmarthenshire.
I can testify to the fact that it’s not all a big act. Adam Price genuinely believes that his predictions about the party’s imminent success are accurate.
I remember having a phone chat with him in 2016, when he was standing for the then National Assembly for the first time. He was determined to impress upon me that the outcome of the election would result in his predecessor as Plaid leader, Leanne Wood, being elected as First Minister. His emphatically enunciated parting words to me were: “Leanne WILL be the First Minister, you know!” I wasn’t convinced at the time and, as things turned out, I was right not to be.
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Straight talker
Plaid has a new leader now in Rhun ap Iorwerth. He’s more of a straight talker than an orator, and he’s usually characterised as a pragmatist and a moderate. But that hasn’t stopped him from also making grand claims about the potential for Plaid to do very well at the next election in 2026.
In his party conference speech, he almost used the well-worn Lib Dem line “Go home and prepare for government”.
The strange thing is that, on this occasion, he may not be deluding himself or others.
Welsh politics is a lot more fluid than it was. In 2026 the likelihood is that Labour, in power in both governments, will be unpopular.
The introduction of a new electoral system, where people will vote for party “closed lists” rather than individuals, and where all the seats will be allocated on a proportional basis, will create a new dynamic.
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Every vote will count
Unlike with first-past-the-post elections, voters will no longer have to engage in tactical voting to ensure a party they don’t like doesn’t get elected. They can rest assured that every vote will count, and that by putting their cross against the party they really want to support, their vote will not be wasted.
This will provide Plaid Cymru with a huge opportunity to capitalise on Labour’s likely unpopularity.
In past elections, Labour candidates in marginal seats have invariably appealed to supporters of other progressive parties, including Plaid, to lend them their vote “just on this occasion” to stop the Tories taking the seat.
The situation will, however, be complicated by the challenge of Reform UK, an insurgent and populist right-wing party built on the personality and perceived charisma of Nigel Farage, as well as messages sent to those considered potential supporters on Facebook.
Plaid could easily find itself in competition with Reform for the same disaffected voters.
Llanelli
In the first National Assembly election in 1999, Plaid picked up seats regarded as solid Labour like Islwyn, Llanelli and Rhondda. In July’s general election, all three seats - now expanded because of the reduction in the number of Welsh MPs from 40 to 32 - were won by Labour, but with Reform in second place. In Llanelli, a seat won at devolved level twice by Plaid Cymru, the Reform candidate was only around 1,500 votes behind Labour’s long-serving Labour MP Dame Nia Griffith.
It seems likely that in quite a few of the 16 new super-constituencies in which the 2026 Senedd election will be fought, many voters will have supported both Plaid and Reform in the past, and will weigh up which deserves their vote the next time.
Plaid Cymru, as John Osmond’s newly published book on the Co-operation Agreement between Labour and Plaid that lasted two and a half years, is good at devising policy. Its challenge is to come up with eye-catching ideas that voters believe it’s worth investing their support in.
Reform has policies too, but mostly they are designed to appeal to people’s feelings of negativity towards distinct sections of the community like migrants and benefit claimants - never bankers or investors who engage in tax avoidance schemes.
Identity
In the specifically Welsh context, they will latch on to issues like the 20mph default speed limit, having gauged that public opposition is strong. So while Plaid Cymru will offer the opportunity to vote for nation-building policies, Reform will seek to appeal to voters for whom the idea of Welshness is incidental to their identity.
There’s every likelihood that Reform will win a seat in each of the 16 super-constituencies in 2026. Even so, and despite the fact that many people in Wales have already demonstrated that they are prepared to vote for what is, in essence, an English nationalist party, the possibility remains that Labour could cede its position as the leading party in Wales to Plaid Cymru.
'Split'
John Osmond, who unlike his former boss Adam Price, for whom he worked as a special adviser, is not prone to making rash predictions, told me during a conversation we had about his book that he remains relatively optimistic: “The right wing in UK politics, and Welsh politics too, is strong - but it’s split. That’s the great thing - it’s split between the Tories and Reform. That’s why Labour did so well in the general election that’s just gone, especially in Wales. They didn’t win all the seats in Wales because of their own vote, which had declined. They won because the right split.
“I think that will happen in 2026. The polling at the moment shows that roughly Labour and Plaid are level pegging in the mid-20s, in terms of percentages, and Reform and the Tories are level pegging on 15% or 16% each. That points to the fact that no party is going to get near a majority. So some kind of cross-party collaboration is going to be required. And the only option, as far as I can see, is going to be collaboration between Labour and Plaid.
“The question then is, on what terms? And then it depends on the numbers. So it’s whether Labour is the lead party or Plaid Cymru is the lead party. If Labour turns out to be ahead, Plaid Cymru will be closer to Labour than it was in 2021, soi therefore you’re up for a possibility of a coalition, or a reiteration of the Co-operation Agreement.
"If the two parties are very close, you could look at an Irish situation, where we have the First Minister for one half of the term and Labour for the other half. That might be difficult for Labour to swallow, by the way.
“On the other hand, if Plaid Cymru is ahead of the Labour Party, I think Labour will be very reluctant to go into a coalition with a Plaid First Minister. So Plaid may be forced into leading a minority government, which would be very difficult indeed. Maybe they would need to contemplate some kind of Co-Operation Agreement with the Labour Party, but whether Labour would be willing is another matter.”
When Labour backed the closed list electoral system for the Senedd, it thought it would help entrench it in power for many more years. Ironically, it could prove their undoing.
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