Peter Black

This is my article for Liberator magazine about the 2024 general election in Wales:

It is no exaggeration to say that there was overwhelming relief amongst Welsh Liberal Democrats when the result in Brecon, Radnorshire and Cwmtawe came through in the early hours of Friday 5th July.

From a party which once held four Parliamentary seats in Wales we had been reduced to putting all our hopes into regaining this one, much enlarged, constituency in the hope of starting to regain some relevance this side of Offa’s Dyke.

And it was by no means a certainty that we would take it, either. The sitting Tory MP was well entrenched and the part of the Swansea valley that had been added to the seat was a Liberal Democrat black hole where both Labour and Plaid Cymru were strong.

There was to be no repeat of the 2019 by-election performance when the nationalists and Greens soft-pedalled so we could defeat the Tories and reinforce our opposition to Brexit.

This time, Labour in particular, had a popular local councillor as a candidate and thought they could win, while Plaid had a stake in doing well too. Everything depended on securing the tactical vote in the south of the constituency, while at the same time building on our recent local government success elsewhere in Powys.

Fortunately, we had a hardworking and impressive candidate of our own, while Reform did enough to suppress the Tory vote to enable us to cross the winning line.

There is though a warning in the history of this constituency, which also applies to the Liberal Democrats in the rest of Wales.

In the twenty-three years we have held the Parliamentary seat of Brecon and Radnorshire since Richard Livsey’s by-election victory in 1985, we have failed to properly consolidate our hold on the constituency. Only the 1997 result was comfortable for us.

A constituency that has been held that long should not have to rely on people from outside to come back time-after-time to re-establish the anti-Tory squeeze in the southern wards. There should have been regular campaigning going on in those areas and membership recruitment.

This is a lesson that the new MP and his team need to take on board. We now run Powys Council in coalition with Labour. The resources are there to build on recent successes. It is time that they were used to do that.

For the rest of Wales, it was very much business as usual. We lost twenty out of thirty-two deposits but gained two second places in Cardiff East and Ceredigion Preseli, albeit some distance away; seats that cover areas we once held. There was another reasonable result in Swansea West, where we added 50% onto our 2019 vote share, but really that was it for the Liberal Democrats.

This does not mean that things are all doom and gloom. One of the big issues for us during the general election campaign was the way that we were excluded from much of the TV and radio coverage. That was because broadcasters decided that balance meant they only had to give regular airtime to those parties who had representation from Wales in the House of Commons. They won’t have that excuse again.

The real game changer though, could come in 2026 when we have the Welsh Senedd elections as Labour and Plaid Cymru have completely changed the terms of this contest.

There will no longer be a hybrid proportional representation system. Instead we will have sixteen constituencies each electing six members of the Senedd using a closed list d’hondt system. That means that vote share is going to be very important.

On 4th July, the Labour vote went down in Wales by 3.9% from its 2019 baseline, which was described by some as its worst result since 1935. In contrast, Labour’s UK vote was up on its 2019 level.

Labour’s dominance of the Welsh constituencies was largely due to the Conservative vote dropping by 17.9%. The other big change was the 11.5% increase in the Reform Party vote from what the Brexit party achieved last time. There was also a small percentage increase in the vote for Plaid Cymru (4.9%), the Green party (3.7%) and the Liberal Democrats (0.5%).

In only three seats in industrial south Wales (Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, and Gower) did Reform not come second.

Already pundits are predicting that Labour will fail, for the first time, to be the largest party in the next Senedd. That though does not help the Welsh Liberal Democrats, whose current vote share falls short of what we need to secure a reasonably sized group of MSs.

The big unknown is the Reform Party. If they can maintain their momentum, they will have a sizeable presence in the next Senedd.

To get one MS elected in each of the new constituencies a party needs to secure at least 14% of the vote. That is a tall order for the Welsh Liberal Democrats in much of Wales, but it is not impossible.

There will be a lower turnout, and plenty of issues to campaign on, not least the disarray within the Senedd Labour group following the ousting of Vaughan Gething as leader, the very unpopular default 20mph speed limit, the cost of all the extra politicians they have foisted onto us and many local matters.

A good, focussed campaign in these new constituencies could well build on what was achieved on 4th July, but it will need hard work and commitment, and activists will need to start now.