{"id":570076,"date":"2026-05-06T23:25:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/570076\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T23:25:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:25:28","slug":"reform-and-plaid-cymru-likely-to-benefit-from-polarisation-of-welsh-politics-welsh-elections-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/570076\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform and Plaid Cymru likely to benefit from polarisation of Welsh politics | Welsh elections 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a sunny but cold evening in a shopping centre car park on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil, Reform UK supporters enjoyed free pizza and loud music as they waited for what the party leader, Nigel Farage<\/a>, said was his last big speech before Thursday\u2019s Welsh Senedd, Scottish parliament and English local elections.<\/p>\n

Reform could win the most seats under Wales\u2019s new more proportional voting system but it is unlikely to be able to form a government, as other parties have ruled out going into coalition with it. Yet Farage\u2019s outfit is the first rightwing party with a shot at winning in Wales<\/a> since the 1850s. The surge in support for a party that got 1% of the vote in the last Senedd election is impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n

\u201cA coalition of losers blocking the biggest party [Reform] will backfire, if that\u2019s what happens,\u201d the party\u2019s Welsh leader, Dan Thomas, told the Guardian. \u201cI think that the people of Wales will be very determined next time around to make sure that the biggest party wins.\u201d<\/p>\n

After more than 100 years of dominance in Wales, support for the Labour party has collapsed, with former voters seemingly going to Plaid Cymru<\/a> or, in lesser numbers, to Reform \u2013 opposite ends of the political spectrum. The two parties have been neck and neck throughout the campaign.<\/p>\n

Laura McAllister, a professor of public policy at Cardiff University, said the Welsh nationalists and Farage\u2019s party were in a similar position. \u201cThe definition of \u2018winning\u2019 is always contestable in PR elections. Often the largest party emerges with similar proportions of votes and seats to other parties, so of course Reform are going to exploit that, quite understandably, if that\u2019s what happens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, they\u2019ve always known their route to power or government is more constrained than Plaid Cymru<\/a>, because there\u2019s more parties on the left in the Senedd, and the growth in the Reform vote has cannibalised the Conservative vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dan Thomas: \u2018A coalition of losers blocking the biggest party will backfire, if that\u2019s what happens.\u2019 Photograph: Finnbarr Webster\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

At the same time as Thomas and Farage were speaking on Tuesday night, the final YouGov poll before the Senedd vote put Plaid Cymru slightly ahead, on 33% to 29%. The poll underscored the polarisation among Welsh voters: it found \u201cstop Reform\u201d was the single biggest factor influencing respondents\u2019 votes, at 14%. The second highest was immigration, at 10%.<\/p>\n

Immigration policy is not devolved to the Welsh government, and the country has one of the lowest ratios of asylum seekers<\/a> relative to population size out of any UK region or nation, but the issue still made up a major portion of Farage\u2019s Merthyr Tydfil speech. The party has been accused by other politicians of stoking fear and division around immigration. On Tuesday, however, Farage\u2019s comments were met with cheers and applause.<\/p>\n

Thomas said: \u201cWhether we like it or not, [immigration] is a top three concern<\/a> of Welsh voters, and there needs to be a party that reflects that. Now, I accept that the Welsh government has no powers over immigration, but it does come up on the doorstep, it comes up in debates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrie Lewis, 74, had travelled from Swansea to Brecon for a Reform event on Tuesday morning before following Farage to the evening rally in Merthyr. \u201cI\u2019ve had enough of Labour and Plaid Cymru; they\u2019ve run Wales into the ground<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ll probably form a coalition again to keep [Reform] out. But we\u2019re a new party, and we\u2019re still doing really well, and Dan will be there in the Senedd to hold them accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The army veteran said the Welsh election was also a vote about Keir Starmer<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s never here, he\u2019s always abroad, he doesn\u2019t know or care what people at home think,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Eluned Morgan, the Welsh Labour first minister, appeared to acknowledge that Starmer\u2019s unpopularity<\/a> could contribute to her party losing control of the Senedd. Some polls predict Labour, which has ruled Wales since devolution began in 1999, could end up on a single-digit number of seats and that Morgan will lose her seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m certainly hoping that [Plaid Cymru and Reform UK] won\u2019t [take control],\u201d she told the Telegraph. \u201cBut there is a danger that that could happen, and I don\u2019t want to see that happening. I do hope people will reflect on what this election is really about \u2013 and it isn\u2019t a time, I think, to pick a fight with Starmer. There\u2019s a general election, that\u2019s the time to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a sunny but cold evening in a shopping centre car park on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-570076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}