Good morning!
You have a bumper newsletter today breaking down the election results in Wales. But first I want to share something funny (you may have already seen this on Twitter).
On a wild election night the most surprising thing for me personally was the speech by Conservative MP David TC Davies when he lost his Monmouthshire seat.
He actually said some really kind words about my journalism. Given that 18 months before his Conservative Association edited a picture of me in a pram after I called him out for dodging interviews I thought that was quite a change.
You can see what he said in his speech here (in the worst ever quality video):
What does the election result mean for Wales?
Thursday's results are one of the hardest elections to analyse from a Welsh point-of-view.
A look at the map of the seats would make you think that Welsh Labour had a really, really good night, and they did, from a seat perspective.
But when you dig a little deeper you realise that they could be in real trouble.
It is a bit like a chess game. Imagine a person, let’s call him Vaughan. He is playing his opponent and is sacrificing piece after piece in order to put his opponent's king in check. Eventually he manages it. To someone walking by it would seem that Vaughan is on top and winning.
However when you look closely you realise that this isn’t the case. In his effort to “check” his opponent Vaughan has seriously overextended himself. He is really vulnerable to a counter attack and has very few pieces left on the board. Sure he looks strong now but in a matter of moves the frailty of his position is going to be exposed.
This is the position that Welsh Labour are in now. They look from the outside that they are utterly dominant, yet they are incredibly vulnerable. Yes they have their opponent in check, but check is not checkmate. The game isn’t over and they are not in a good position.
If somehow you understood and are still with me after that extended chess analogy I would like to thank you and extend my sympathies that you also lost your virginity late.
So why are Labour so vulnerable?
Right, let’s start with some figures. Here is the vote share by party compared with 2019 in Wales.
Labour: 37% in 2024 (down from 40.9% in 2019)
Tories: 18% (down from 36.1%)
Plaid: 15% (up from 9.9%)
Lib Dems: 7% (up from 6%)
Green: 4.7% (up from 1%)
Reform: 17% (up from 5.4%)
Let’s start with the obvious. You don’t need to be well versed in stats to see that in a General Election, which in Wales have historically been fought on UK wide issues, that Labour’s vote share going down is concerning for the party. They were up against a really unpopular Conservative government and yet saw their share of the vote fell.
This likely is a combination of factors including but not limited to:
Former Labour voters feeling comfortable voting for other small parties like Plaid and the Greens.
Shifts to Reform from traditional Labour voters (we will come to this).
Frustration with the First Minister’s donations scandal and terrible performing public services.
That last point is interesting. This is the first General Election since the pandemic, a time when many people in Wales realised for the first time who was running many of the public services (not to mention that the Welsh Gov even existed).
That awareness of devolution and which party was running their hospitals (or making them drive at 20mph) isn’t something Labour have had to contend with on such a scale before.
It is also clear that the controversies around Vaughan Gething are an open wound for Welsh Labour that they are seemingly unable to cauterise. Half a dozen senior party figures (some who have supported Mr Gething) told me that the donations scandal was coming up on the doorstep. Unlike every Welsh Labour leader since devolution (except Mark Drakeford in his last year), Vaughan Gething is the unenviable position of being both widely recognised and widely disliked.
Nothing summed up that this is acknowledged within the party like the fact that he took a back seat throughout the election. Yes when Starmer was in Wales he was alongside him but he was nowhere near as prominent as the leader of Welsh Labour should be during an such a high profile campaign.
The threat from the left
Another headache for Welsh Labour come 2026 comes in the form of Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Greens. Plaid’s vote share went up by five percentage points and the Greens by four.
For Plaid Cymru, the General Election went as well as they could have ever have hoped for. Not only did they hold on to the two seats they already had but they won two others in Caerfyrddin and Ynys Mon.
There were no other seats that the party could have realistically targeted in this election and they got over the line in both of them. What makes this more impressive is that both these seats were three way shootouts.
In Anglesey they beat the incumbent Conservative Virginia Crosbie by just under 700 votes (feeling rather smug that I predicted how close this would be in the last newsletter). In Carmarthen they beat back Labour and the Tories to secure a near 5,000 majority.
I have already written extensively about how I think 2026 will be Plaid’s best ever result (read more about that here) but Thursday’s figures have left me more convinced than ever.
The Greens have quietly had a fantastic election. Though they won no seats, they secured 4.7% of the vote having only got 1% in 2019. While Welsh turnout fell 10%, the total people voting Green went from 16K to 62K.
Now this comes with a health warning that they did not stand candidates in all seats in 2019 because they had a pact with the Lib Dems and Plaid so an increase was inevitable. But the fact that they felt in a position to contest every seat and, in some places, run a highly visible campaign I think is noteworthy. In 2026 they will almost certainly get seats in Cardiff.
What Plaid and the Greens both have in common are leaders that are simultaneously ambitious but also incredibly pragmatic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of pact in the Senedd election which would be a real threat to Labour in some areas.
The threat from the right
Perhaps the biggest concern for Welsh Labour from the night was the rise of Reform. Though I said earlier that their vote went to 17% from 5.4% it is worth bearing in mind that at the time they were called the Brexit Party and they were against a Boris Johnson led Conservatives promising to “get Brexit done”. In addition they also didn’t stand in every seat so the rise isn’t perhaps as monumental as it looks on first impression.
But whatever the change the fact remains that Reform was only 16,000 votes away from overtaking the Tories and being the second largest party in Wales. This is all the more alarming given the candidate for Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney dropped out late on after he was accused of reposting racist content online. I would not have been surprised if had secured significant votes in that constituency had he stood. Given that many of his votes would have come from the Tories it is not inconceivable that the gap between the two parties for the whole of Wales could have been under a few thousand.
The party came second in 13 of Wales' 32 seats. If you look at the seats where they came second they were, predominantly, former Labour safe seats with high levels of poverty. Aberafan Maesteg, Ponty and Llanelli for example.
That Llanelli vote was particularly close. Labour’s 12,751 was only 1,500 ahead of Reform on 11,247. It is worth noting that Plaid also did well with 9,511. Welsh Labour is under pressure from both sides.
Reform nearly did very well despite the first past the post system, but come 2026 they won’t need to worry about that as the Senedd is elected under a far more proportional system. I have no doubt whatsoever that there will be at least a dozen Reform MSs in two years.
How well they do will depend on a few factors including how they interact with the Abolish the Assembly Party. Though tiny compared to Reform when it comes to UK visibility and resources, Abolish have picked up votes in Wales in the past. It isn’t clear yet whether Reform will be overt in wanting to roll back devolution but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were. Lots of the people in the party are old UKIP and Abolish people and they have both campaigned to get rid of our Senedd (turns out they only respect the results of referendums they agree with).
What is the answer for Welsh Labour?
It was always going to be tough for Welsh Labour this time around. Whichever party was in power got a kicking across Britain. The SNP in Scotland, Labour in Wales and the Tories in London all saw falls in support. But things are not going to get easier for Welsh Labour.
When pressed from both sides there is only one way for Labour to combat the threats to its hegemony in Wales - improve people’s lives.
Obviously this should have underpinned everything they have done for the last 25 years of devolution but if they are going to be able to meet the massive challenge they are facing they need to be able to point to quantifiable improvements in the next 18 months.
It is difficult to put into words how hard it will be for them to do this. For one thing that they are not even, at present, able to pass their own budget. Vaughan Gething doesn’t command the support of the Senedd. He can’t do anything.
Beyond this we have already discussed how his polling is abysmal. If Labour are to have any hope going forward, he needs to be gone. It is not even a matter of whether or not he did anything wrong - it is simply impossible for him to carry on. He was toast from the moment he lost that no-confidence vote.
Even when they remove him they face a three month leadership contest. If they had any sense they would come to an agreement where only one person is nominated but such is the bad blood now between the different factions it seems highly likely there will be a contest.
Whoever emerges from that faces the incredibly difficult task of pulling together a divided Welsh party while improving Welsh public services with almost no additional money and probably having to institute some cuts.
Our voting system needs to be put out of its misery
I won’t spend too long on this point but our voting system has now reached the stage where we can’t really call it democratic. On Thursday Labour won 84% of the seats in Wales with just over 37% of the vote. This is crackers.
Of course Labour should be commended for adjusting to the system that was in front of them. Keir Starmer was infinitely more accomplished at playing the game presented to him compared to Corbyn.
But imagine, just for a moment, how wonderful it would be if the people of the UK were able to actually just vote for the party they most agreed with instead of navigating safe seats, rotten boroughs and tactical voting. Parties would be rewarded for compromise and appealing to the widest range of people rather than rigidly appealing to a narrow group who luckily happen to live in the same geographical area.
Goodbye to the Welsh Tories
I am going to do a special piece in the coming weeks on the Tories in Wales. But we can’t finish this newsletter without taking a moment to discuss the fact that Wales now has no Conservative MPs.
Going from 11 to zero, even with the boundary changes, is dire. Four men who held the secretary of state role lost their jobs. The chief whip was beaten back into third place in his former constituency.
Frankly, the Conservatives got what they deserved in Cymru. When you look at 14 years of governance and your crowning achievement in the country is that you renamed the Severn Bridge “The Prince of Wales Bridge” (in the most vomit-inducing piece of royalist brownnosing in recent memory), getting wiped out is a fitting end.
But this leaves Andrew RT Davies as the most senior Conservative politician in the country. Given he has shown more desire to lie about asylum seekers than to actually win seats, this is very worrying. Wales is crying out for a sensible right of centre voice. If the Tories fail to provide this then it will only be to the benefit of Reform and poor governance.
Thank you so much for reading. The messages of support I get writing this genuinely mean the world to me.
Take care
Will
I don’t often agree with David Davies, but you do a superb job of unbiased journalism.
A valuable concise analysis.