In a matter of weeks, Rhun ap Iorwerth is hoping to end 26 years of Labour rule in Wales.
Sitting down with The i Paper, the Plaid Cymru leader – who started his career as a journalist for BBC Wales – speaks with the energy of a man who believes he is months away from becoming the most powerful politician in Wales.
But ask him about Reform, and something sharper enters his voice.
He admits to a “fear” that Reform Senedd members would actively try to disrupt Plaid’s programme for Government. “Reform are diametrically opposed to us on fundamental questions,” he says. “They have zero loyalty to Welsh nationhood” – by which he means the status of Wales as a devolved nation.
Farage said last year his party wanted to “make devolution work” in Wales, and denied suggestions that it would seek to scrap the Welsh Parliament. Ap Iorwerth, however, is sceptical of this.
“We know that they say they accept devolution now, but the truth of the matter is that they would change their opinion on that at a whim.”
Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, centre, with Lindsay Whittle, right, on the steps of the Senedd following Whittle’s victory in the Caerphilly Senedd by-election (Photo: Matthew Horwood/Getty)Reform UK Wales, however, has rejected this charge. A party spokesperson said that Plaid had “propped Labour up throughout the devolution era and have to take responsibility for the havoc this has caused for Wales’s economy and public services”.
“The only party offering real change for Wales in May is Reform,” they added.
Instead of working with Reform, ap Iorwerth says he would seek common ground with “people who do share values with us” — most likely the Greens or other left-leaning parties. Speaking to BBC Radio Cymru’s Gwleidydda politics podcast in January, he said it was his party’s “wish” to govern as a minority Plaid-only administration.
May elections could bring a ‘seismic shift in Welsh politics’
The polls, at least, are giving him reason for confidence. May’s Senedd elections are now just weeks away, and they look set to deliver a seismic shift in Welsh politics.
The latest YouGov survey for ITV puts Plaid on 37 per cent — up from 30 per cent last autumn — with Reform on 23 per cent and Labour down to just 10 per cent, level-pegging with the Conservatives. Labour, who have governed Wales almost without interruption since devolution began in 1999, is staring at an electoral collapse.
Into that vacuum, two very different forces are rushing: Plaid Cymru’s progressive Welsh nationalism, and Reform’s populist right.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage welcomes Dan Thomas, right, on stage after announcing him as the leader of Reform UK in Wales before the Senedd elections (Photo: Andrew Matthews/PA)Ap Iorwerth is clear that Plaid, not Reform, should be the natural home for voters who feel let down by the political establishment. He is not dismissive of the anger that drives Reform’s numbers — he is “angry too”, he says, claiming that decades of “underfunding” in rail infrastructure and Westminster’s refusal to devolve policing are examples of systemic neglect.
“But you have to turn that anger into hope. What I see in the populist right is people being exploited because of fears being amplified in a way that isn’t based on fact.”
He says Plaid’s victory in the recent Caerphilly Senedd by-election — won by 3,850 votes — is proof that his brand of politics can cut through. “It was very positive — standing up for our values of tolerance and caring for others.”
Sources on the ground, however, told The i Paper at the time that Plaid’s victory was less about ap Iorwerth and more about stopping Farage. One Labour MP said that it was “clear lots of our supporters voted tactically to stop Reform” in the seat, calling it a “silver lining” for the party after it came third in the race.
Labour has ‘a sense of entitlement’ in Wales
If Reform represents the threat from ap Iorwerth’s right flank, Labour — the party that has governed Wales for its entire devolved existence — represents a different kind of reckoning.
And ap Iorwerth, who has never met Sir Keir Starmer, is withering about a party he believes has taken Wales for granted for too long.
He requested a meeting when Starmer became Prime Minister, but says he was passed to the Secretary of State for Wales instead. “People can make of that what they wish,” he says.
The critique that follows is careful but pointed. Labour in Wales, he argues, has been brought low by a “sense of entitlement” — in its policymaking, its internal scandals and, above all, in its relationship with Westminster.
He gives the example of the 20mph speed limit — introduced across roughly one-third of Welsh roads in 2023 — which he suggests was a good policy “done in a very clumsy, entitled way,” without bringing the public on board.
The Welsh Government has insisted the policy has saved lives, pointing to an 11.8 per cent fall in road casualties in the 18 months after it was introduced. But a BBC-commissioned poll found 54 per cent of Welsh people oppose it — suggesting whatever its merits, the political damage was real.
Ap Iorwerth claims that the succession of first ministers, including the brief and embattled tenure of Labour’s Vaughan Gething, has eroded trust further. But the most damage, in his view, was self-inflicted by the current First Minister, Eluned Morgan.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (right) and First Minister of Wales Eluned Morgan during a visit to Taffs Well Depot in Ffordd Bleddyn, Cardiff (Photo: Matthew Horwood/PA)“She made it very, very clear that her loyalty was to her Labour boss, Keir Starmer, rather than to the people of Wales. The penny dropped for the people of Wales.”
A source close to Morgan said it was “ridiculous to suggest that the First Minister is doing anything other than fighting for Wales at all times and as a result is winning extra support from the UK Government”.
They added that she had secured “the biggest increase in money from UK Government since devolution during the 20 months of her leadership” and that this funding had come from an administration that “listens to Eluned Morgan as she rebuilds Wales after 14 years of Tories failing to invest”.
The consequences for the party, ap Iorwerth suggests, will nonetheless be severe in May. “If I’m First Minister, Labour will have had a devastating election. They will need to reassess how they wish to be perceived going into the next UK general election in 2029.”
‘I’ll be something of a nuisance to Starmer’
He promises a very different approach to Morgan — one that would, he acknowledges with some relish, make him rather less comfortable company for Downing Street. “I’m sure I’ll be seen as something of a nuisance in a way the current First Minister isn’t.”
He is frank about the challenges. He would be leading a party that has never governed Wales, inheriting a devolved administration with limited fiscal powers, and doing so as the leader of a Welsh nationalist party that Starmer has no obvious political reason to placate.
Asked about that dynamic, he suggests the ball is very much in Westminster’s court. “It will be down to the UK Government to do one of two things — show it does not care for Wales at all and will not budge, or say something has gone wrong.”
The first option, he seems to acknowledge, is entirely possible. He points to policing as a case in point. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has launched what she describes as the biggest review of policing in 200 years — and Labour in Wales now agrees with Plaid’s long-standing policy of devolving it to Cardiff. Yet Westminster won’t act.
“It would be easy, would work for Wales and would allow us to devise policing as Scotland, Northern Ireland and Manchester do.”
However, responding to Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts in the Commons in January, Mahmood said she “did not” think this overhaul was the right time to devolve policy.
If successful, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth would be leading a party that has never governed Wales (Photo: Ben Birchall/PA)‘The old union is finished’
Zoom out, and the ambition becomes still larger. Speaking at the Institute for Government (IfG), ap Iorwerth said he believed that “the old union as it was is finished” and called for it to be replaced with “new alliances, underpinned by radical pragmatism, partnership and principle” — including a “Celtic bloc” with Scotland and other nations.
He has the backing of Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney, who told Plaid’s spring conference that Westminster “concentrates power, hoards resources, and asks our communities to make do with less.”
But ap Iorwerth is careful to resist the separatist label. “I have always believed in independence, I always will,” he says. “But I also believe very firmly that independence works through collaboration and co-operation.”
There will be no referendum on Welsh independence in his first term — but he is clear he would use the platform to make the case. “Independence comes as part of a journey. A journey on which I’m eager to show leadership and bring people with me.”
Part of that journey may be persuading the people of Wales. YouGov polling from January suggests that 54 per cent of the nation is opposed to independence, with only 26 per cent in favour.
The more immediate challenge facing him, however, is persuading disillusioned voters to support him over Reform. At their manifesto launch last week, Farage and Reform UK Wales leader Dan Thomas said that their plan for the nation was a “blueprint for real change” and would “put the people of Wales first”.
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Eye-catching pledges include cutting 1p from every band of Welsh income tax, scrapping the 20mph speed limit and dropping the target for 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050.
But only time will tell if that message cuts through before the Sennedd elections on 7 May. YouGov polling shows the party’s vote share has already dropped from 29 per cent in September to 23 per cent in January.
For his part, ap Iorwerth seems determined to keep the message positive. “New leadership for Wales,” he told the IfG, “mustn’t just be a campaign slogan. It must also be seen through the lens of wider possibilities — unburdened by any loyalty to Westminster, which has held Wales back for too long.”
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