Friday, January 02, 2026
Will 2026 be a crunch year for Reform?
Coincidentally (or not), Nation Cymru published an article on new year's eve by Desmond Clifford, a former head of office for the Welsh First Minister, which demands to know why Labour is undermining the devolution they created, and which very much reflects the hopeless position Welsh Labour are currently in as a result of their own actions, but also, of course, the impact of Keir Starmers government.
The Guardian interviews Yuliia Bond, a a Ukrainian refugee who has settled in south Wales, who says she could not remain silent as Reform tried to win a Senedd seat in the Caerphilly by-election.
Nigel Farage’s party was confident it could win the byelection, especially as Labour, the dominant party in Wales for a century, appears to be in freefall. However, an energetic campaign by the Welsh nationalists, Plaid Cymru – and people like Bond – kept out the rightwing party:
“Members of our Ukrainian community spoke up,” Bond said. “We challenged the disinformation because we didn’t want our neighbours to be misled into resenting us. I didn’t want people to turn against us because of lies. So I spoke up and others did, too.
“Reform UK tried to create panic and hate with tactics used not only in the UK, but by far-right political parties all over Europe and across the world. The messages they used in Caerphilly didn’t feel local. They felt imported – like someone copied a script from another country and dropped it through our doors.”
...
“Their biggest mistake was assuming that people here have no critical thinking,” Bond said. “They thought nobody would check the facts. They assumed that refugees are not just vulnerable, but somehow stupid. That is not true. We may have escaped a war, but we are not stupid. We understand policies.”
The paper says that one of Reform’s key claims was that the Welsh government’s nation of sanctuary scheme showed both it and Plaid supported a “mass immigration agenda” and “asylum seekers” were receiving “preferential treatment”, but the claim did not hold water as more than 80% of the nation of sanctuary money has been spent on supporting Ukrainian refugees:
Bond spoke to the Guardian in the “gratitude orchard” in Caerphilly, planted by members of the Ukrainian community in the town as a thank-you for the warm welcome they have received.
She said the arrival of Reform had put pressure on Ukrainian people in the area. “Vulnerable people should not have to carry this burden. Yet, during the election, we had to raise our voices first. Only later did support come – from local residents, politicians from different parties, and local media.”
There are full Senedd elections in May when Reform has hopes of becoming the largest party in Wales.
Bond said people campaigning against Reform in Wales in May and in other elections across the UK had to challenge the party’s messages swiftly and with conviction.
“As a Ukrainian, I know how dangerous disinformation can be. The war in Ukraine did not start with weapons. It started with disinformation, propaganda and lies that prepared the ground for violence.
“Disinformation must be challenged early, strongly and clearly, because hate spreads faster than facts. The two months of that byelection were truly exhausting. We just had to survive it. But we survived together, and that is why the hate campaign failed in Caerphilly.”
This article is important because it shows that Reform's misinformation and propaganda can be challenged and defeated. However, Farage's party is still poised to exploit a rich vein of disillusionment across Wales, as is made plain in the Independent. They went to Merthyr to test the public mood there:
Dotted around Maesteg are smaller villages such as Caerau, which was identified in a 2019 Welsh government report as the fifth most deprived area in Wales. Rows of grey-coloured social housing stretch down the valley, while its formerly grand Station Hotel remains abandoned after a police raid in 2021 found weapons and drugs.
Driving along the winding roads between the two Rhondda valleys, little remains of the coal mines that formerly blighted the countryside. For over a century, Labour have been able to rely on the support of these former mining communities to propel them into power in both Westminster and the Senedd.
But while the terraced houses remain, loyalty towards Sir Keir Starmer’s party has all but vanished, with Wales’ first minister, Eluned Morgan, now facing an uphill battle to regain trust ahead of the May elections.
...
“The Valleys and west Wales are two of Europe’s most deprived regions,” Joe Rossiter of the Institute of Welsh Affairs said. “They had a lot of infrastructure spending from the EU and it’s not led to the economic transformation of those communities, really.
“When that money is gone, where is the scale of investment that is going to provide long-term jobs in the future? The Welsh government don’t have the money to do that.”
As of October, polls currently show a two-horse race between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, with Labour trailing dismally in third place.
“If those polls come to fruition, that is a fundamental realignment of Welsh politics and will see the end of Labour being prominent for over 100 years,” he said.
The Caerphilly by-election shows that where Reform's untruths are tackled head-on then they can be beaten. The elections in May however, will not be a standard first past the post contest like that by-election. The new system means that parties final seat tally will largely reflect the proportion of the electorate who vote for them.
It is not therefore a straight Plaid-Reform contest. How the other parties perform, especially in competing for the crucial sixth seat in each constituency, could determine which will be the largest party, possible coalitions, and who will be providing the next First Minister.
Farage has earmarked May's elections as a key stepping stone on his party's journey to power. That means 2026 is not just a crunch year for him, but it is a crunch year for Welsh democracy and the UK as a whole, as well.
If we can learn the lessons of the Caerphilly campaign, and how people rallied behind those being scapegoated by Reform, then we can defeat the politics of hate and division they preach.
