The Sleep Walk Continues

It is over a month since I last posted some views about the Senedd Elections, which are now little more than 9 months away. (See the earlier post New Thinking Needed to Stop Farage).

For all its bizarre and entirely predictable misfortunes, Reform UK continues to gain ground and according to the most recent opinion polls, it is now the most popular party in Wales with Plaid Cymru close behind and Labour third with less than 20%.

Meanwhile the support for Starmer’s party continues in what appears to be an almost irreversible downward spiral.

But in almost every way things are worse in Wales than in the rest of the UK. Not least because of the growing number of promises made to Wales before the Starmer government came to power that have now been broken.

As all this dawns on more and more Labour voters and what is left of their activists, I suspect that a good proportion have still not absorbed that in a number of ways they are also going to suffer from a largely self-inflicted wound.

How many Labour members have yet to realise that the system in place for the Senedd Elections is the least proportional of all the various PR systems available, and that although the original purpose of it when agreed between Mark Drakeford and Adam Price (to maximise Plaid and Labour seats) it is now looking more likely to maximise Reform UK seats more than Labour?

Nor is this system likely to be much help to the Green Party, or the Lib-Dems, or any Independents, including the new Corbyn/Sultana party if it runs candidates in Wales.

Even worse, voting for The Green Party or some kind of Independent Socialist group may well concede a seat to Reform UK. If some sort of a Left/Green list got, say, 10% of the vote in a particular constituency,  it would be unlikely to be enough to win a seat, but if those votes went instead to Plaid or Labour it could well give one of them a seat that would otherwise go to Reform UK.

And we should never stop reminding people that there is no “cross voting” possible. You vote for a Party list warts, (or worse), and all.

So for those who understand that the overwhelming priority is to stop Reform UK dominating the Senedd, the challenge becomes more and more urgent.

Many people are arguing that it would be better, for the next few months, for Plaid and Labour to restore and update the Co-operation agreement and strain every sinew to implement policies that will make a difference now, rather than find as many reasons as possible to slag each other off. And then we might achieve some kind of electoral pact for next May. And if Greens and Independents found a way of joining in, all the better. And all this may well mean throwing a lot of deep-rooted antagonisms, existing rules, and even some candidates out of the window. But what wouldn’t we do to stop Reform UK taking over?

Then we come to a worse problem. Organisationally the Wales Labour Party is nearly dead. There is widespread confusion and resentment amongst a membership that has roughly halved since Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership ended. It seems that everything is decided in London with Wales officials simply playing the role of colonial enforcers. There are still no constituency lists to campaign for. In Cardiff, where all the sitting MSs have retired, the Party is postponing things once again while they appeal for more potential candidates to come forward.

There’s a theory doing the rounds that the Starmer people would actually like to see a Farage government in Wales. No more Clear Red something or other and impertinent whinging from the Welsh Government! Wales Westminster MPs wouldn’t need to balance their careerist ambitions with showing some respect for the people who had elected them. And, of course, Farage’s Party would make a total mess of everything and would no longer be a threat in England.

Whether you believe this or not, the really frightening thing is that so many people DO believe it. This is what we have sunk to!

There’s a lot more to be said, but for now the worrying reality is that unless the constituency Labour parties and trade unions stage something little short of a top to bottom radical revival and demand that democracy is revived and devolved to Wales entirely, there will be very few seats in Wales where they can be seen as the leading ‘stop Farage’ party.

And that means that Plaid needs to reach out more than it seems capable of in many areas.  And the Corbyn/ Sultana Party needs to think very, very carefully about how they want to approach the elections next year.

Coming soon:  The New Party and Wales.