Reform could yet come crashing down to earth
Analysing Welsh council by-elections may not be your idea of a good time (it isn’t mine, frankly) but one caught my eye last week. In the ward of Trowbridge in Cardiff, Labour lost the seat as the party’s vote share evaporated, down more than 30 per cent.
They came third, behind the Liberal Democrats who enjoyed quite a nice bounce, but it was Reform UK who stormed to victory with just under 40 per cent of the vote. They had never contested the seat before.
While Nigel Farage’s party continues to lead the Westminster opinion polls, next May’s elections for the Welsh Senedd are seen as a crucial test for Reform, and the polls – not to mention recent council by-election results – are causing considerable unease within Labour, which has won every Welsh election since devolution in 1999.
The latest poll of Welsh voters puts Labour in a dismal third place (14 per cent) while Reform is within a single percentage point of pack leaders Plaid Cymru, 29 per cent to 30, meaning May’s election in Wales is set to be the country’s most consequential vote for a quarter of a century. Changes to the voting system – moving fully to proportional representation – could also help Reform, giving them a better chance than the traditional First Past the Post system.
Let’s gloss over the fact that the electoral reform will also increase the number of Senedd politicians from 60 to 96 (there are many things wrong in Wales but an insufficient number of politicians isn’t one of them) and consider whether a strong showing for Reform would constitute proof of their ascendancy, or a high water mark.
Reform’s current poll lead is remarkable given the absence of firm policies and detailed plans. While even staunch critics would concede they don’t yet need to be marching around with a fully-funded manifesto in their pockets, the time will come when voters expect some details, and this will be risky territory.
We don’t yet know how Reform’s plan to effectively scrap the settled status of millions of legal immigrants has gone down with the public at large, but it’s certainly given Reform’s critics some ammunition. Meanwhile, flirting with Trump’s new ‘paracetamol causes autism’ theory could give people pause for thought. In other words, Reform could yet implode. The other parties could recover. Stranger things have happened in British politics.
Reform’s dominance in polls today is not guaranteed to turn into electoral success tomorrow.