Toxic Complacency

Ben Wildsmith

This week’s polling, which has Plaid Cymru and Reform UK neck-and-neck for the Senedd elections, suggests that Labour’s struggle in Wales has become existential.

The party is at 14%, only three points ahead of the Tories.

There’s a ‘through-the-looking-glass’ feel to those figures. The cliché is that the Valleys in particular vote Labour as a matter of unthinking tribalism.

Casual Labour support didn’t require anything more than a willingness to go along with ingrained tradition. So, rejection of the party in these numbers means that something is afoot that’s beyond the usual ebb-and-flow of political fortunes.

It will have required people to make a conscious break with the past, with family traditions, and local politicians who have been fixtures of community life. It’s no small thing.

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Main challenger

I doubt it’s finished yet, either. Of the remaining 14%, how many are yet aware that Plaid Cymru are the main challenger to Reform? As coverage of polls intensifies nearer the election, a movement to ‘stop Reform’ has the potential to reduce Labour’s support yet further.

It’s clear from Reform’s social media messaging that historic proximity to Labour is an effective argument against Plaid.

Nigel Farage’s party is seeking to yoke Plaid to Labour’s record in government.

With the electorate clearly in a reckless mood, owning the ‘change’ narrative is key to success. Reform has the advantage of being untried outside of recent council victories.

Reportedly chaotic scenes in these councils may well be a factor in the next general election, but in May the party will still be able to run as insurgents. This is a narrative that Plaid needs to expose.

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Threadbare

Reform’s policy offer is deliberately vague and threadbare. The party’s links to business, however, are a matter of record. Figures like Aaron Banks represent a new establishment that has emerged post-Brexit.

Plaid’s job is to reveal the Reform UK project as Brexit MKII- another deregulatory con trick intended to line the pockets of the wealthy. Nigel Farage’s Wat Tyler meets Arthur Daley act has been allowed to run unchallenged for too long. He reeks of the City.

Labour’s recent experience in Westminster proves that attempting to meet Reform on its own ground is as fruitless as it is immoral.

Every gesture that Keir Starmer’s government has made towards ‘toughening’ its stance on immigration has failed. Nigel Farage can outflank them every time they try this, thus making Labour itself the engine that is driving UK politics to the right.

Every failed initiative, such as the planes that have left for France without migrants this week, acts as free publicity for Reform. Even if the government were to achieve such success as is possible within the law, Farage can say, ‘Too little, too late,’ and continue to own the issue.

Immigration

Voters who are primarily focused on immigration are never going to be persuaded by arguments from the left. The task should be to shrink the issue to its proper dimensions and insist on parity for issues like housing and education which have been distorted by the disproportionate foregrounding of immigration as a factor affecting them.

The unfolding farce in Caerphilly suggests that Labour in Wales still can’t process what is happening to it.

Everybody observing it sees the toxic complacency of an organisation that hasn’t been in a real fight in several lifetimes. There is a sense that they reckon we’ll come to our senses and fall into line, so unthinkable is it that the party becomes irrelevant. At the least, its supporters tell me, Plaid will have to rely on the Labour group to govern. At the current rate of attrition, a fair response would be,

‘What, both of them?’

Before entering into any arrangements with what’s left of Labour, Plaid should consider the likely fortunes of the UK government over the next four years.

If the party’s eventual objective is independence for the nation it should start by exemplifying that on its own behalf.