“The hype is absolutely real when it comes to Reform in Wales… the plates are shifting in Wales like I think I’ve never seen.”
So says a former Tory adviser plugged into Welsh politics, who predicts Nigel Farage’s party could have a “storming night” at the Senedd elections in May 2026.
They are not alone in thinking Reform UK might engineer a huge upset in Labour’s Welsh heartlands next year.
According to Britain’s most eminent pollster, Professor Sir John Curtice, “if Reform are going to pull off anything spectacular in the next couple of years” the Senedd election is “their best prospect”.
In a prediction which will make Westminster sit up, Curtice believes that Reform could even win it. “Reform might just manage to come first,” he tells The i Paper. “Certainly at the moment they potentially could be quite significant players inside the next Senedd.”
A major Reform breakthrough in Cardiff Bay would not just reshape Welsh politics, but send shockwaves through Westminster.
It would provide Farage with a powerbase ahead of the next general election and lend credence to his claim that he could be the next Prime Minister, while plunging the two main parties of British politics into crisis.
The ex-adviser says: “There’s an absolute perfect storm for both Labour and the Conservatives in Wales, and therefore a perfect storm for Keir [Starmer] and Kemi [Badenoch].”
“If Reform have done so well that night, can Keir really turn round and say ‘I’m winning over the country’ if I’ve just lost in my own backyard. And can Kemi say ‘I’m bringing us back to power’ if I’ve just been trounced by Reform?”
Wales is polled less frequently than UK-wide voting intentions, so it is harder to gauge exactly how well Reform is doing there.
However, the most recent polls make ominous reading for the two main parties.A poll by YouGov last November put Reform neck-and-neck with Labour on 23 per cent, with Plaid Cymru one point ahead on 24 per cent and the Tories trailing on 19 per cent.
For their part, Reform have not been coy about their ambitions in Wales. Last year, Farage said that the campaign for the Senedd would be “by far our biggest priority” in 2026.
And Oliver Lewis, Reform UK’s Wales spokesman, has said that victory is “well within the realms of feasibility”.
Why Reform is optimistic about the Senedd
The party has reasons for optimism beyond the current polling numbers. First there is the fact that the Senedd uses proportional representation for its elections which means Reform can avoid the first past the post kicking it got in Westminster this year where 14.3 per cent of the vote got it just 0.8 per cent of the MPs. And it is about to get more proportional.
Secondly Wales was, of course, together with England one of the two nations of the UK which voted to leave the EU in 2016.
Farage-led parties have a track record there. In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Brexit Party finished as the largest party in Wales. And in May 2016, UKIP won seven seats in the Senedd. “We should remember that UKIP have managed to do well in previous Senedd elections, and to that extent, at least, there is form there,” Curtice says.
The ex-adviser goes as far as to say that the 2016 Senedd result was the “the canary in the coalmine” of what was to come weeks later with Brexit. The insider thinks that a populist groundswell could once again put Wales at the leading edge of British politics. “Everyone says they’ve learnt the lesson in SW1 right, but they haven’t. There’s a culture of ‘well our simple cousins in our poor coastlines and the nations and regions, they’ll catch up in the end’.
“Whether you like it or not, these coastal communities and these poorer communities are ahead of the politics in Westminster, well ahead of it.”
‘People have had enough of public services in Wales’
There are other reasons why Wales is fertile territory for Reform. Public services in the nation have unperformed for years, with one in five of the Welsh population on NHS waiting lists and standards in Welsh schools lagging behind the rest of the UK in international tests. “Public services – if you think it’s bad in England, you should see it in Wales,” the ex-adviser says. “People have had enough.”
The problem for the Welsh Labour Party is it cannot easily explain away these issues because it has been in government continuously since devolution began in 1999. For years, the party could at least kick against a Tory government in Westminster. But with Starmer in No 10, it no longer has this luxury.
Curtice tells The i Paper: “They will have the difficulty that they will be fighting against the backdrop of a UK Labour government, which at the moment is not particularly popular, and we’ve certainly seen the damage that that’s done to [Labour] in Scotland. They’re also having to defend their own record in Wales, and that you know is a difficult one.”
A UK Government source acknowledges that repelling Reform in Wales will not be easy. “It’s tough for [the Welsh Labour Party], they’ve been in power for a long time,” they admit. To make matters worse, Labour pushed through a new electoral system for 2026 – moving to a more proportional system in a Senedd expanded from 60 members to 96 – which should benefit Reform. “To say there’s buyer’s remorse now in the Labour Party is an understatement,” the ex-adviser says.
Labour’s woes in Wales
The Welsh Labour Party has suffered a series of controversies and crises in recent years. In September 2023, the Welsh Government switched the default speed limit on roads in built-up areas from 30mph to 20mph. Half a million people signed a petition calling for it to be scrapped. It prompted a review of the policy, with councils currently considering whether more roads can be switched back to 30mph.
However, data for the first full year of the scheme released last month found that around 100 fewer people had been killed or seriously injured on such roads compared to the previous year.
A bigger crisis saw Vaughan Gething resign as First Minister just four months after taking the job. Gething had been under intense pressure over a £200,000 campaign donation he received from a businessman convicted of environmental offences. The row resulted in him losing a non-binding vote of no confidence and a cooperation deal with Plaid Cymru breaking down.
There have already been some disturbing portents for Labour. At the 2024 general election, Labour saw their vote share in Wales drop by 4 per cent. Reform came second in 13 of the 32 Welsh seats in the election (the Tories were wiped out, winning nothing).
For the time being, Reform has scant representation in Welsh politics. But last summer, the party gained its first elected representatives when three independent members of Torfaen council joined the party.
One of them was David Thomas – a former Labour councillor who stood as a Brexit Party candidate in the 2019 general election. Thomas, who quit Labour in March 2019 in protest at a decision to raise council tax, tells The i Paper he was attracted to Reform by the party’s “thinking on fiscal responsibility” and “common sense policies”. “This party lines itself up with communities, which is what we’re very focused on – family, community, country,” he says. On his Labour background, he repeats the familiar refrain that “we didn’t leave the Labour Party, the Labour Party left us”.
Reform is facing an early electoral test this week in the form of a by-election in the Trevethin and Penygarn division of Torfaen council on Thursday. Thomas says there has been a Labour representative in the area “for around about 100 years” but he is “more than confident that we will win”. “Pretty much every single house we’ve knocked so far has been rampant for Reform,” he says.
Thomas also aspires to be one of Reform’s candidates in the Senedd election, and is equally bullish about the party’s chances there. “If the political swell continues for us, then yes, we will take that Senedd in 2026,” he says. Asked what policies Reform would bring to Wales, Thomas does not offer specifics beyond a general promise to turnaround services.
Reform ‘saying everything to everyone’
For the ex-adviser, the fact that Farage’s party is riding high in Wales is “not because of what they’ve done”. Reform is still “slightly speaking out of both sides of their mouth” – at once “pro-devolution” but also flirting with Trumpian ideas of “DOGE” (Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency) to take a chainsaw to government. “They’re saying everything to everyone at the minute,” the ex-adviser says.
For now, that ambiguity is suiting Farage’s party just fine. The more pressing question is how Labour and the Tories will respond. The ex-adviser says that – so far – neither party has a convincing answer on how to tackle Reform. “They are all slightly rabbits in the headlights,” the insider says.
Wales’s First Minister, Eluned Morgan, has said “there is nothing Welsh about Reform”, labelling it “an English focused party”. Reform does not currently have a leader for its Welsh operation, with Farage expected to retain his tight grip on power in the party by fronting the Senedd campaign. However, the ex-adviser is sceptical that seeking to weaponise Farage’s Englishness can work against Reform. “Don’t buy any of this, ‘it’s got to be a Welsh person’. The Welsh guys love Farage.”
Claims the Welsh NHS will not be safe with Farage
As in Westminster, it is likely that Farage’s past musings on replacing the NHS with an insurance-based model will be used against him. A spokeswoman for Welsh Labour told The i Paper: “Government is about more than snappy slogans coined by some stranger in Clacton.
“The Welsh NHS is not safe in Reform’s hands – Nigel Farage has said he wants to get rid of it. The people of Wales made the NHS, and now Reform wants to sell it off to the highest bidder.”
The Welsh Conservatives meanwhile still seem to be trying to ignore Farage’s party. When asked how the Tories plan to counter them, the response did not mention Reform at all. A spokesman for the Welsh Tories said: “For 25 years, Labour has run Wales, and the results speak for themselves: NHS waiting lists have soared, unemployment has risen, and school standards have fallen. Instead of addressing these failures, Labour has focused on policies like the default 20mph speed limit, a ban on new road construction, and wasting over £100m on extra politicians.
“The Welsh Conservatives will be setting out a clear plan to cut waiting times, boost the economy, and drive up education standards. We are serious about governing and will be offering properly costed, well thought out policies – not soundbites.”
It is still possible the wheels could come off Reform in Wales. The past experience of UKIP serves as a cautionary tale, with the contingent elected in 2016 collapsing into infighting over the course of the Senedd term (see box).
Quality control of candidates for the 2026 election will also be a challenge. Thomas says that vetting will be done “very, very carefully, so whoever does get through has some form of ability”. But Farage is no stranger to selection scandals. At the general election, Reform were forced to drop a number of candidates after racist or offensive comments came to light. The ex-adviser believes that the expanded Senedd will pose “a big ask” for all the parties in finding 96 candidates, but Reform could be particularly vulnerable to “cranks” slipping through the net.
How infighting can hit an insurgent party in Wales
In May 2016, UKIP was riding high in Wales after winning seven seats in the Senedd.
However, within a couple of months the party’s Senedd members had descended into open warfare amid a power struggle over leadership of the group. The group got through four leaders in two years and by 2019 had just one member left in the Senedd, with the others quitting to sit as independents or joining Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
In the 2021 Senedd election, UKIP suffered a complete collapse of support, finishing seventh with about 1 per cent of the vote.
Under the Senedd’s new electoral system, it would be theoretically possible – but very unlikely – for one party to win an outright majority, meaning parties will have to govern together. This could pose the biggest hurdle for Reform. Curtice says: “The crucial thing will be, will anybody be willing to work with them in the Senedd? And will they be able to turn whatever representation they get into getting their hands on the levers of the Welsh Government? That’s much more difficult.”
The chances of Reform governing Wales in coalition
Of course, this will also pose dilemmas for other parties. Morgan has said she thinks going into coalition with Reform will be a “red line”. If Reform outperform the Tories, would Badenoch be able to stomach her party being a junior partner? The Tory ex-adviser says that some Welsh Conservatives are thinking the previously unthinkable: “It could end up next year that Plaid Cymru – the nationalists – and the Conservatives, could get together to block Reform.” While “there are Welsh Conservatives who would do that deal”, the insider says that it would be anathema for many Welsh Tory unionists and would probably fatally split the party.
If Reform were to achieve a deal, it would be the first time a Farage-led party would hold power in any UK nation. It is possible his problems could start there. As the ex-adviser says it is “quite a jump from being an armchair general to actually running the government, running the health service”. If Reform made a mess of it, it could dent Farage’s credibility across the rest of the UK, hurting his chances in the next general election. The ex-adviser thinks it might suit Reform better to become the main opposition. “Strategically that would probably be a better outcome for them rather than an incredibly bright firework that burns out quickly. Farage, instead of saying ‘I can become Prime Minister’, people would turn round and say, ‘well you can’t even run Wales mate’.”
However, others are wary of the argument that government could be a poison chalice. “People may say that if Reform get in that it will show the public how bad they are at running things, but I remember that argument being made about the SNP when we lost Scotland,” the UK Government source says. “Decades later they’re still there. If your strategy is based on losing power then you might need to reassess.”
While Reform have momentum, the Senedd election still is over a year away, and lots could change. Plaid Cymru could end up being the chief beneficiaries of Labour’s misfortune. Perhaps Labour will hold on after all.
But whether it is in Cardiff Bay or Westminster, Curtice believes the formula for containing Reform is the same.
“Turn around the economy and improve the state of the health service,” he says.
“These are the fundamental challenges. This is what the electorate is looking for. These are the challenges that the Labour Party was elected to deal with.
“The question is whether that can be turned around.”
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