Plaid Cymru tests Starmer’s openness after historic Welsh election win

While Westminster focused on Labour leadership turmoil, a historic shift in power in Wales has opened a new chapter in the relationship between Cardiff and the UK government.

Plaid Cymru, after winning this month’s election, has quickly tested Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s stated openness to reform by tabling an amendment to the King’s Speech that calls for devolution of justice, infrastructure and welfare powers to the Senedd.

First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth and his nationalist party narrowly missed an absolute majority in the newly expanded Cardiff chamber, with Reform UK finishing second and Labour reduced to about 11% of the vote in a nation it had dominated for a century.

For today’s newsletter, I spoke to the Guardian’s Wales correspondent, Bethan McKernan, about how this shift occurred, what it reveals about Welsh Labour, and how Plaid Cymru is likely to govern and manage relations with London. First, the headlines.

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On the Saturday after the May 7 election, McKernan said she was in central Cardiff where Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth gave an impromptu victory speech.

There were easily a couple of thousand people there, she said, on a sunny day with everyone waving Welsh flags. The media had to stop asking questions because the crowd’s singing of the national anthem drowned everything out.

Nothing like this has ever happened in Welsh politics before, McKernan said. It was really quite moving.

Alun Davies, a long-serving Labour grandee who lost his Senedd seat, called the defeat manufactured in Downing Street, but McKernan said the seeds had been sown for some time.

Labour had been in power in Cardiff for 27 years, and incumbency problems were showing. Despite significant funding for the NHS, waiting lists remained high compared to the rest of the UK.

There was a feeling that Welsh public services had not recovered post-pandemic as they had in other UK nations, McKernan said.

Then there was perceived indifference from London. When Starmer came in, there was talk of a partnership in power, but that is not what happened, she said.

From the HS2 funding controversy – defined as an England and Wales project despite no track destined for Wales – to refusal to devolve crown estates or enact police reform, the Welsh electorate began to feel Westminster Labour was not interested in them.

In the past, Welsh Labour could always blame the minister in London for austerity, Brexit and Covid, saying their hands were tied. That line of defense is gone now, McKernan said.

Her piece on Sunday after visiting Tredegar’s post-industrial valleys constituency of Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni laid bare how people there felt.

Plaid Cymru positioned itself as the only authentic voice for a nation McKernan describes as waking up. They also had a massive, inadvertent helping hand from Labour.

Welsh Labour pushed for the D’Hondt electoral system, believing it would help maintain a hierarchical grip on candidate lists. The system is proportional but tends to reward larger parties, balancing proportionality with stable parliaments.

Labour never imagined they would be one of the smaller parties disadvantaged by its lack of proportionality, McKernan said. The irony is that if they had gone for actual STV, they would have done better, she said.

Plaid vacuumed up the protest vote and presented a progressive alternative distinct from the blandness associated with London leadership.

Plaid’s Westminster leader, Liz Saville Roberts, called the result a permanent rearrangement of Welsh politics.

She said: the growth in support for Plaid Cymru in every region of Wales shows a fundamental shift in people’s hope and aspirations for our nation. This isn’t as good as it gets for Wales. People can also see that Wales doesn’t get the fair treatment that we deserve. We now have a clear mandate to fight for these powers.

In a column on Sunday, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett suggested Plaid had moved from a party catering to white native Welsh speakers to one embracing broader civic nationalism, including a fight for social justice and self-determination for anyone who calls Wales home.

With the Senedd expanding from 60 to 96 seats, significant unpredictability lies ahead. Plaid intends to run a sole minority government in a very different environment.

It is really a whole new batch of politicians, McKernan said, noting that even Labour’s reduced representation includes newcomers.

The massive influx of Plaid and Reform members has no prior Senedd experience. Reform will be the official opposition, but observers expect chaos and potential infighting.

McKernan pointed to the 2016 UKIP intake as a precedent: they imploded quickly, and a few became independents – it was a flash in the pan.

The big unknown for ap Iorwerth is whether the new populist opposition will be constructive or combative as he pushes his agenda.

McKernan said she does not know if Westminster’s Labour party has realized how different it will be with Plaid in charge. We are heading into uncharted waters.

In the first official call between ap Iorwerth and No. 10 last Thursday, Starmer confirmed openness to a conversation on future powers.

McKernan noted that Sinn Fein, the SNP and Plaid Cymru are natural progressive allies with significant power bases in devolved nations, while Labour offers only tepid unionism. The rise of Reform UK in devolved parliaments, with Nigel Farage as a standard-bearer for British nationalism, creates a polarized landscape.

McKernan expects testy relations. Ap Iorwerth has been clear about holding Westminster accountable and demanding things Starmer did not give to his own Labour colleagues. If Westminster gave no quarter to Eluned Morgan, why would they give it to Plaid Cymru? That pushes Labour’s problem with the Welsh electorate further down the road, she said.

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