Learning Lessons: Looking Ahead

This is the eighth part of our ‘Learning Lessons’ series, which provides a space for candidates across England, Scotland and Wales to share what they heard on the doorstep and where they believe Labour should go next.

There are ten factors that explain Labour’s fate in Wales at the recent elections.

• This election was always going to be very difficult. ‘Time for a change’ is one of the most powerful slogans in politics, and with every Plaid victory in Wales that slogan gained in potency. This time it stuck.
• Being in government means dealing with many intractable problems not of our own making. Over the last Senedd term, Wales faced the aftermath of the four great crises of our time: austerity, Brexit, Covid and the cost-of-living crisis. These problems were exacerbated by wars in Europe and the Middle East. Public services in Wales struggled to respond, and an older, sicker, poorer population made the hill steeper and harder to climb. Opposition parties succeeded in portraying the impact of the permacrisis as uniquely the responsibility of Welsh Labour.
• Some of Welsh Labour’s wounds were self-inflicted. Vaughan Gething’s short time as first minister damaged Welsh Labour’s reputation for stability. It is hugely to the credit of Eluned Morgan that she held a divided Labour group together, and led an administration which, to the very last day, provided orderly, responsible, and progressive government. The damage, however, had already been done.
• Welsh Labour picked the wrong fight, with the wrong people. Far too often, we appeared intent on placating our enemies and forgetting our friends. The opponents were unplacatable and the friends decided to go elsewhere.
• In the process, we became both insufficiently Welsh and insufficiently Labour. We lost the battle of identity with Plaid Cymru, and we forgot the single most important lesson of the first two decades of devolution: never allow a space to open on the left of politics which could be exploited by others. Now, with that space ever widening, it was enthusiastically occupied by both Plaid Cymru and the Greens, laying claim to the vacated territory of the Welsh radical tradition.
• All that came explosively to the surface in the Caerphilly by-election. Yet Labour’s learnt two deeply damaging lessons from it: Plaid Cymru was the vehicle for defeating Reform, and tactical voting was the way to achieve that end. In the new, proportional system under which the Senedd election was fought that was simply not the case. But this was ruthlessly and successfully exploited by Plaid Cymru.
• All these factors, real as they are, pale into insignificance compared to the unpopularity of the Starmer government in London. It cost us support in all parts of Wales, and in large numbers.
• The decision to remove the winter fuel allowance from pensioners proved totemic. It touched a nerve amongst Labour voters in Wales which was raised time and again in doorstep conversations in the Senedd election. The impact was not simply the policy itself – it was the message it conveyed about the sort of UK Labour government which had been elected. It was not the sort they expected or were prepared to support.
• The serial abandonment of the prospectus on which the prime minister was elected as leader of the UK Labour party created accelerating disillusionment amongst party members. The hollowing out of the Welsh Labour party began before and then continued during and after the general election. It undermined one of the main advantages of Welsh Labour: the ability to mount a sustained and effective ground campaign in any election. The troops had melted away.
• I have kept what I regard as the most fundamental reason for Welsh Labour’s result until last. Devolution has been Labour’s project. Devolution is the ground on which Welsh Labour has been created. Devolution is the policy which most clearly differentiates the Labour party from its unionist opponents on the right, and its separatist opponents on the left. While in opposition, Keir Starmer commissioned the former prime minister, Gordon Brown, to prepare a report on future constitutional arrangements within the United Kingdom. He endorsed the report and promised its implementation. But in the two years which followed, nothing has happened. At a time when, increasingly, it became imperative for Labour to reassert and reinforce our reputation as the party of devolution, exactly the opposite happened. Welsh Labour went into the 2026 Senedd election with the ground cut from under us – without our unique selling point that only a vote for Labour offered Wales the best of both worlds: a powerful Senedd in a successful United Kingdom. It was a bitter blow.

Looking Ahead

I will now turn to the future and offer some grounds for optimism. The new, proportional voting system under which the Senedd election was fought saved the Labour party in Wales. Welsh Labour received 11 per cent of votes cast and has 11 per cent of the seats in the Senedd. Nine seats hold the balance between a minority Plaid Cymru administration and a reliable progressive majority.

As a starting point for our recovery, the new Labour group should use its continuing relevance to set a radical agenda. An agenda of cautious Starmerism will not work. Free of the daily grind of government, the Labour group should set a lead for others to follow. It should, for example, make the earliest possible call for next year’s local government elections to be held under a proportional system. Otherwise, the brutal cull of Labour councillors seen in England on 7 May will be at high risk of being repeated in Wales.

At the same time, the work must begin to renew both the Welsh party and the electoral coalition which offers the chance of future success. Internally, the Labour party in Wales must wrestle control over greater parts of its own rulebook from the centre. For the party which created devolution, we have been remarkably unwilling to apply the same principles to our own affairs. If we are to win back the confidence of our own members, they need to know that Welsh Labour means something inside our party as well as beyond it.

Then we must rebuild the coalition which has sustained us in times of success. There are three key elements to the coalition, each of which needs attention.

First, we must become the true party of the wider labour movement. Trade union membership is higher in Wales than in any other part of the UK. It was a Welsh Labour government which put social partnership on the statute book – this remains one of the most significant achievements of Labour in government. Our trade unions are not simply just another stakeholder, to be consulted when convenient.

Public sector workers, in particular, are the bedrock of electoral support for Labour in Wales, and our manifesto in May’s elections offered tangible benefits to them. Yet, many of them gravitated to other voices. We must win them back. That’s the work of a four-year term, not a few months. We have to work directly and closely with our trade union partners to find the new ideas and to convince trade union members that Labour can be again the best vehicle for their implementation.

Second, we must repair our relationship with the diverse and black and minority ethnic communities in Wales. The harm of Gaza must be mitigated by a different, ethically driven foreign policy over the next three years. The harm caused by speeches which described the presence of these communities as turning the UK into an ‘island of strangers’ cannot be mitigated simply by disowning the phrase, while licensing the home secretary to embrace it as an article of faith. The fear of Reform in these communities is, for very good reasons, palpable. The threat of ICE-style snatch squads on our streets is a real rather than a theoretical risk for global majority citizens. They need to know that Labour will never pander to such racism.

In Wales, there is huge anxiety among many communities that the Anti-Racist Action Plan, a keystone achievement of the Welsh Labour government, will lack supporters both in government and in Labour in opposition. The work of the next four years must focus on building relationships and insisting that the institutional and policy commitments made to these communities over the last decade are honoured and pursued. We must be visible in all communities, all year round. Our affiliation with communities must be unambiguous and proud.

Third, we must turn our policy efforts to re-attracting those progressive voters who, until 7 May, preferred Labour to other political parties.

This new coalition needs, at its heart, those voters who are determined that Reform should never speak for them, who opposed Brexit, who want to see a modern, outward-looking Wales, confident in our own identity and welcoming of others to share in it. These are those fellow citizens who believe that government exists to ensure that markets serve the interests of the people, not the other way around. These are the natural supporters of devolution, who reject nationalism of whatever persuasion. They want a Labour party which authentically stands up for Wales and is unafraid to do so when that places us at odds with the UK government, whatever its political persuasion.

A coalition of this sort would form the core of future support for Welsh Labour; a core around which others would be attracted to our commitment to a radical reshaping of our society in – to echo a phrase – the interests of the many, not the few.

While all that must be led by the Labour group at the Senedd, it cannot rest there. The future of our party and our movement in Wales will depend on that far wider group of individuals in local government, trade unions and constituency parties who must be involved in shaping and reinvigorating that future. And that is why, even in these bleak times, it is still possible to be optimistic.

If you enjoyed this piece and aren’t already a member of the Fabian Society, you can join here.