Thursday, December 04, 2025
What will Labour do if Reform win the most seats in May's Senedd elections?
The website's Labour source told them: “I am absolutely shell shocked to hear that one of Welsh Labour’s most prominent and promoted candidates is openly talking about a Reform-led Welsh Government. This would shock a lot of people across the Welsh Labour movement. I know of nobody else in the Welsh Labour and Trade Union movement who thinks that a Reform government would be good for Wales."
It does not appear to be the case that Mr Thomas suggested in any way that a Reform government would be good for Wales, but the view that such an outcome would expose Farage's party as incompetent and therefore assist Keir Starmer win the next general election, is one that is held by other senior members of Welsh Labour.
I am told that there is a rift between the Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party and their Senedd members on this issue, with some MPs believing that should Labour end up as the third party in the Senedd, then they should refuse to do any deals, thus allowing Reform to form a government.
The reasoning is that a Reform government in Wales would be utterly incompetent, be seen to take its orders from Nigel Farage in England, will slash public spending, cut jobs and services, create chaos and misery, and stir up trouble against minorities, thus alienating voters across the UK.
This is called putting one's party's interests ahead of the nation's. Any mainstream politician who allows this to happen deserves all the opprobrium that will be coming their way.
But this is not the only rift between Welsh Labour MSs and the UK Labour government as this letter shows.
As Nation Cymru reports, the letter, signed by over a third of the Labour Senedd group, asks the Prime Minister: “Why is the UK Government directly funding Welsh Councils to fix bus shelters, reopen park toilets, and provide bins?
“As well as top-slicing funding from the Local Growth Fund – which we would have expected to have been passed to the Welsh Government as an EU successor fund – Pride in Place is being imposed using powers in the UK Internal Market Act 2020.
“Regeneration is a devolved matter. Yet UKIMA is being used to give the UK Government authority to provide financial assistance without requiring consent from the Senedd or Welsh Ministers.
“You will remember the Welsh Government brought a Judicial Review against the last UK Government because, in its view, the Internal Market Act represented an unwarranted attack on devolution.
“The Conservative legislation repealed parts of the Government of Wales Act 2006, reduced the Senedd’s legislative competence, and gave UK Ministers broad ‘Henry VIII powers’ to amend primary legislation, which could undermine devolution.
“For our own Government to then come in and use the very same powers to act in devolved areas is at best deeply insensitive, at worst a constitutional outrage.”
They added: “Not only is it wrong in principle to use the Internal Market Act in this way, the design of the Pride in Place programme by the Wales Office and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, has cut out the democratically elected Welsh Government in a policy area that is fully within its remit.
“Whilst there is a genuflection in the neighbourhood selection criteria to the Welsh Government policies, the UK Government is, nonetheless, requiring Welsh local authorities to seek Whitehall approval for spending that cuts across existing programmes.
“This is ineffective and wasteful, and no way to spend public money.
“If this was being done by a Tory Government, we would be calling for a judicial review. This must never happen again.
“Wales needs and deserves to be treated as an equal part of the UK and the UK Government has a responsibility to act to deliver this equality.
“Not only is it wrong in principle to use the Internal Market Act in this way, the design of the Pride in Place programme by the Wales Office and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, has cut out the democratically elected Welsh Government in a policy area that is fully within its remit.
“Whilst there is a genuflection in the neighbourhood selection criteria to the Welsh Government policies, the UK Government is, nonetheless, requiring Welsh local authorities to seek Whitehall approval for spending that cuts across existing programmes. This is ineffective and wasteful, and no way to spend public money.
“If this was being done by a Tory Government, we would be calling for a judicial review. This must never happen again.
“Wales needs and deserves to be treated as an equal part of the UK and the UK Government has a responsibility to act to deliver this equality. The signs are clear that the public understands this, we must demonstrate that we do too.”
All those promises of two Labour government's working in lockstep, delivering for Wales, have disappeared now Starmer and his ministers have got their hands on power.
Instead, we have UK Labour continuing the approach taken by the Tories, undermining devolution, refusing to hand over more powers, and taking responsibilities back off Cardiff Bay so they can control the agenda themselves.
The Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats Jane Dodds is quite right when she says:
“You cannot claim to respect Wales while designing Welsh programmes from Whitehall. It shows a deep lack of understanding and a worrying disregard for the Senedd.
“If Labour’s representatives in Wales have lost faith in Labour’s MPs in London, it tells you everything about how little grip the party has on devolution.”
