Reader, I am no expert on Wales.
I enjoyed Fireman Sam as a boy. I have watched Gavin and Stacey through half-a-dozen times, and I once shared a Christmas dinner with Cerys Matthews. My better half is from Swansea, and I’ve been promising her y byddaf yn dysgu sut i siarad Cymraeg. She wasn’t impressed when I suggested that I had a sneaking respect for Edward I, despite his often poor form.
Nonetheless, this week I have found my gaze inexorably drawn towards Cardiff Bay, not only because I’ve got to work out what to get her family for Christmas. The Welsh Conservatives are at a low ebb. The resignation of Andrew RT Davies follows the wipeout of every Welsh Tory MP in July. Our vote share halved, at a stroke wiping out our post-Brexit advances in the Principality.
Davies’s leadership was scuppered by pursuing a devo-sceptic course amongst MSs who aren’t too keen on making themselves redundant. But the minds of his colleagues were focused by a poll placing the Tories in fourth, behind Plaid Cymru in first, Labour, and Reform UK. Under Davies, our best hope looked to be an unhappy future as Reform’s junior partner.
The next elections for what I am obliged to refer to as the ‘Welsh Parliament’ are not until May 2026. Labour have been in power since its establishment. As in Scotland, two decades of devolution have seen Wales fall far behind England in health and educvation, despite more public spending per head.
Also à la Scotland, a revolving door of political pygmies have used their Cardiff platform for ideological posturing, blaming of Westminster, and the studious wasting of (English) taxpayers’ money. But unlike their Celtic confrères, the Welsh appear to have been roused from their slumber, not by a Michael Sheen monologue, but by the sheer farce of three First Ministers in a year.
Even after July’s whumping, this should provide an opportunity for the Conservatives. Since the ‘Parliament’s’ establishment as a humble Assembly, we have alternated with Plaid Cymru as the main opposition. Wales voted to Leave. Since 2016, several polls have put the Tories ahead. Toppling the ‘Red Wall’ included winning seats like Wrexham, Delyn, and Clwyd South for the first time.
Every seat not won back in Wales is another that must be picked up in England or Scotland. It took two elections after an identical wipeout in 1997 for the Conservatives to win an MP past Offa’s Dyke. What this poll presages is even worse: our potential permanent relegation to the ignominy of minor party status, as Reform scoop up exactly the voters we gained in 2017 and 2019.
Such a situation reflects our current national trajectory. As the main opposition, we naturally win back swing voters as Labour prove abysmal. But Reform are hoovering up those voters across provincial England and Wales who voted Leave and loved Boris Johnson but hated his immigration policy. We spat in the face of the 2019 coalition, failed accordingly, and opened the door to Farage.
Without making inroads with those voters, the next four and a half years look drearily predictable. Despite Labour’s struggles, we go backwards at next year’s local elections. Kemi Badenoch is given the benefit of the doubt, since the same wards were last contested at the peak of Johnson’s vaccine bounce. The general election was only a year ago. She continues, a little wounded.
Whilst our poll ratings tick up a little from Labour’s unpopularity, Reform remain the big victor. Barring Nigel Farage falling out with the world’s wealthiest man, the crossover point is reached when Keir Starmer is bumped into third. At the 2026 local and devolved elections, Reform gains at our expense. Tory MPs panic.
Would a result like that be fatal for Badenoch’s leadership? It depends on her standing with her colleagues. She counts on the instinctive loyalty of under a third of MPs. Every Reform success provides an opening for her critics to needle her for a milquetoast policy on migration and apathetic public performances.
Wales alone will not break her leadership. Failures would have to be on a wider front. But the summer of 2026 looks like when Badenoch will face her first leadership crisis. It’s a rite of passage that every modern Tory leader must endure until someone watches Conclave and realises that the Catholic Church has been running leadership elections more effectively for centuries.
This is dependent on other parties. The timetable shortens or lengthens based on the success (or lack thereof) of our rivals. Labour might get their act together, outflank us on migration (as per PMQs), and deliver a genuine increase in living standards. Pigs might also fly. Reform, flushed with Musk cash, might break through even more quickly, as voters put a plague on both our houses.
Badenoch, therefore, needs a concerted eighteen-month strategy for not only winning back Wales but also seeing off Reform nationally. Her speech last week on migration was a step in the right direction. But the considerable hurdles of cash, credibility, and cut-through remain. Our founder won’t be the last big-name defector that Farage woos. The snowglobe has been shaken.
One can be honest about Farage’s limitations whilst agreeing with his optimistic boasts at the Speccie’s awards. Reform will win dozens of Labour seats at the next election with voters that we lost. At best our future looks Germanic. We face either being reliant on Reform to govern, or wiped out by them. You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.
Farage is not and can never be an ally. We should not be discussing deals with Reform, but how we destroy them. They are a product of our failure, the whirlwind sowed by our Boriswave indulgence and impotence in stopping the boats. Until we wholeheartedly apologise for the bulk of #FourteenWastedYears, any intervention we make against Farage will be limp.
With a pirate, a pirate and a half. I have previously urged Badenoch to kill the Sons of Brutus – a fight with her party which, even if it involves a few MPs defecting to the Lib Dems, is a necessary evil. Aside from big policy moves which she is currently unwilling to make, that is the only way she can signal to voters that this is not their father’s Tory Party. Repent, oh sinner.
If not, Badenoch faces not only being outflanked on immigration, at least rhetorically, by Labour but will find herself imperilled, as plenty of her predecessors have been, by the Farage spectre. What starts in Wales will not end there. Whoever replaces Davies must work hand in glove with Badenoch to tame the Reform dragon, and halt a slide that could challenge her position.