First Signs of a Wakeup Over Closed Lists

Speaking to the Guardian last week, Wales’s First Minister Eluned Morgan explained that she was “nervous” that changes to the voting system and an increase in the size of the Senedd may mean the Welsh parliament ends up with a large number of Reform UK members. She has every reason to be nervous; there are some of us who could see this coming way back.

But since she is First Minister, surely there is no one better placed to instigate a fast reconsideration, at the very least, of the awful closed lists voting system.

It should never be too late to take steps to avoid Farage’s disgusting mob gaining a frightening foothold in Wales.

Here is an update of something circulated a few months ago, which can be seen below.

We are sleepwalking towards a pretty grim outcome to the Senedd elections due in May next year.

In a little more than twelve months, full-scale campaigning will be underway.

You will be able to vote for a party list. You will not be able to support candidates in an order of preference between lists. Each of 16 constituencies will elect six candidates. Each of these sixteen constituencies consists of two Westminster constituencies. The new Senedd will consist of 96 MSs.

Representations concerning the shape of the sixteen constituencies closed on January 13th 2025. The commission will report by the end of March. Their decisions are binding. They cannot be altered by the Senedd.

I have provided some possible projections based on aggregating the actual outcomes of last year’s general elections in five of the new constituencies.

It could well be the case that the Plaid and Reform vote will be up, and the Labour vote will be down.

We need to consider what the effect will be of Senedd elections having a much lower turnout than Westminster elections. Closed lists will probably exacerbate that.

Based on my work on the five constituencies I have had time to calculate, I would predict that it is difficult to see how Labour or Plaid can get three out of six seats in any, but a handful of constituencies. So there will be no overall majority for one party. It is also difficult to see how Greens or Independents can win any seats, whether that would be a good thing or not.

Wales GE 24 Stats—analysis done on Westminster 2024 results.

Those who want to get the best results for a Socialist and Green Welsh government will need to study the exact circumstances in each of the 16 seats.

So far as the Labour Party is concerned, the way things are at the moment, it is depressingly unlikely that party members will have much say in who the candidates are and how they will be listed.

At the very least, party members should be fighting for the right to choose who the 6 candidates are in their constituency and in what order they are listed. However, it appears that incumbents seeking reelection will immediately rise to the top of the lists.

It is unlikely that Labour will win three seats in any more than a handful of the constituencies. In many seats, it will be two or less.

So there will be little scope for a big increase in the total number of Labour MSs.

It may even be that Labour and Plaid together cannot achieve an overall majority.

The green left or whatever you want to call us should start to formulate a list of key policy demands to put to parties and potential candidates to assist in tactical voting in each of the 16 seats.

And we need a major discussion on how big the threat is from Reform and the Tory Right.

Earlier piece:

Some people should be more careful of what they wished for!

The new system for electing the Senedd is a nightmare.

The legislation has been passed. Despite some verbal opposition, no Labour MSs voted against. This was steered through the Senedd by Mick Antoniw, a long-standing ally of Wales Labour grassroots. Mick had spent some time a few months ago claiming that the new electoral system would help the Left to get more MSs elected and, would you believe, would be able to field a decent left candidate for Leader/First Minister in the next Senedd (i.e., 2026). Sadly, this idea is more fantasy than an evidence-based suggestion.

On September 3^rd a 4-week consultation will be launched by the Wales Boundary Commission, closing on 30^th September. Blink, and your CLP will have missed it. Which means you get no say in an arranged marriage.

The 32 Westminster constituencies will become 16 by being paired with neighbours. It is this pairing that will be proposed and consulted on in September. Each of the new “double” constituencies will elect 6 MSs, so the new Senedd will have 96 seats.

Revised proposals will be published in mid-December, and there will be a further 4-week consultation ending in mid-January.

The Commission will publish their final decision in March.

This will hardly be a year before campaigning will enter its final phase (the short campaign) for the May 2026 Senedd election.

The voters will be offered ONE vote for a party list. So you will have to vote for ALL of a party list, or not, as the case may be.

It would not be overly cynical to suggest that based on recent behaviour, the party membership will be allowed little, if any, say in this process.

The lists will have to be gender balanced, but up until now no one seems to have worked out how to do that.

Based on the votes for each party, a calculation will be made as to how many seats a party will get, and those seats will be allocated according to the ranking that a party has made with its candidates.

This is a dreadful system. It makes it all to easy for bureaucrats and party managers to manipulate the whole thing for factional purposes. (How we arrived at this point is described elsewhere on this site.)

There is a powerful argument that says, even now, we should stop the whole thing and start again. Strong advocates of proportional representation need to understand that this system is going to discredit the basic principles that PR is trying to achieve.

But, given the disillusionment and lack of activism in many Wales CLPs, the reduced membership, and the failure of the WEC majority to do anything but rubber-stamp whatever they are asked to, we have probably missed any opportunity to start again.

But at least there could be a strong campaign (starting now) to demand that the paired CLPs meet as soon as the final boundaries are agreed, and that other than serious due diligence issues, the CLPs membership choose and rank the candidates that they want to support.

And those intent on trying to do the whole process without any real say from the members might remember that ultimately people may vote for other lists if they feel no “ownership” of the Labour list.

This all has a familiar ring. We sleepwalk into these inappropriate arrangements and then wake up when the process is underway, and it is too late.

We are heading for a situation where the new Starmer machine will pick the candidates and how they are ranked in collaboration with the Cardiff bureaucracy… and yet more activists will give up and go away.

Nor will the prospects for Independents of various left and green credentials doing well be enhanced.

They will struggle to negotiate lists. They will feud over policy disagreements. They will find it very difficult to raise money (these are going to be high-cost elections). And they will find a dramatic shortage of people who know how to run an election campaign.