{"id":571694,"date":"2026-05-07T20:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T20:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/571694\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T20:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T20:35:10","slug":"polls-open-as-voting-underway-across-wales-for-senedd-election-live-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/571694\/","title":{"rendered":"Polls open as voting underway across Wales for Senedd Election – live updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ed<\/p>\n

(Image: ITV)<\/p>\n

Speaking on his podcast Political Currency, former Labour MP and minister Ed Balls said: \u201cIf, as the polls strongly suggest, we’re going to end up with three first ministers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all leading nationalist parties\u2026 that’s not happened before. It would be an overturning of decades of history in Wales.\u201d<\/p>\n

Balls went on to say Nigel Farage, and Reform UK, could end up “supercharging” support for independence movements if Reform continues to advance electorally and if Farage “doubles down on the English nationalist position”.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes Farage present himself as the English nationalist and start to push Wales and Scotland out of the UK door?” Balls added. “Or does he do well enough in Scotland and Wales that he thinks to himself, \u2018I need to speak more for the United Kingdom\u2019, because [he\u2019s] got the opportunity to advance in Scotland and Wales too?<\/p>\n

“My instinct [is] he\u2019ll go for English nationalism, and I think that is the thing which starts to push Scotland and Wales down that path.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Image: ITV) Speaking on his podcast Political Currency, former Labour MP and minister Ed Balls said: \u201cIf, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,48375,50,152549,229,70,105038,56,54,55,174067,105039,195617],"class_list":["post-571694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-green-party","tag-news","tag-plaid-cymru","tag-politics","tag-reform-uk","tag-senedd-election","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-welsh-conservatives","tag-welsh-labour","tag-welsh-liberal-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571694","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=571694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}