Tuesday, May 26, 2026
One small step back from the precipice
It all started to go wrong for the smaller parties at the Caerphilly by-election, a first-past-the-post contest that saw Plaid Cymru hold off Reform to take the Welsh Senedd seat from Labour.
In that election, Plaid was seen as the best choice to stop the Welsh branch of Farage’s limited company from taking the seat, and from that moment all the opinion polls had the subsequent Senedd election as a two-horse race.
The only problem was that the elections on 7th May were not being conducted on the same basis. We had a new system – sixteen constituencies each electing six MSs using the closed list d’hondt method.
It was a change designed to help the two larger parties. It gave control of the lists to party apparatchiks rather than ordinary members and set a threshold of around 11-12% of the vote to even have a chance of getting elected.
The irony was that having designed the voting system, Labour plummeted in the polls and found themselves victims, rather than benefactors. The other parties suffered as well, because by this time Plaid Cymru were hammering the message that they were the only choice to stop Reform, despite the fact that even this PR system does not work that way.
The election campaign was frenetic. I have never had so many pieces of paper through the door, all promising the earth, none of them, including the Welsh Liberal Democrats, properly costed, or taking account of the projected tightening in public expenditure over the next four years.
From that perspective it was a resource-intensive election, which meant that the Welsh Liberal Democrats had to target their campaigning to what was winnable. This started off as working five of the new constituencies, but by the end we were focussing on three – Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd (incorporating Brecon and Radnorshire and Swansea East and Neath), Gŵyr Abertawe (incorporating Swansea West and Gower) and Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf (incorporating Cardiff North and Cardiff West).
Throughout the campaign, the polls had the Welsh Liberal Democrats on between 4% and 6% and projected to win between zero and three seats. Our only hope lay in intensive campaigning and getting our vote out.
One question that is consistently posed to our representatives by the Welsh media is why we are not doing as well in Wales as in England? This is a complex question, but essentially our support has never really recovered following the coalition.
One reason for that much of the output of our party is so English-focused, aimed at soft Tories in the home counties, which does not help those of us in a six-party system in a left of centre country.
I would argue as well that despite being a federal party, most of those in charge do not understand what that means, or how they should deal with policy and issues in the new landscape, and often they do not understand devolution. I have lost count of the number of statements from spokespeople that imply they are speaking for all of the UK, when in fact the issue is devolved. I do not except the leadership in that judgement.
The difficulty caused by Ed Davey was over a controversy that arose about our Welsh leader’s previous work as a social worker. Jane Dodds was accused of committing a “grave error of judgement” while working as a senior manager in the Church of England, because she failed for months to arrange a crucial meeting involving the sexual abuse of a young man by a Bishop.
Jane worked for the Church of England for a year from 2015 as part of a central team advising and supporting case managers throughout the country. At the time of the error, the bishop in question was already deceased.
Jane apologised for her error, but unfortunately, Ed Davey jumped in with both feet and, instead of leaving the matter to be dealt with by the Welsh Party, as should have been the case, he called for Jane’s resignation.
For too long Ed Davey's default position in any crisis has been to call for his opponent to resign. This is not a position he, himself, ever took over the Post Office scandal, and quite rightly, as he was one of a dozen ministers duped by the post office management into supporting their position.
It was not Davey's place to tell the Welsh Party what to do, nor to insist that Jane resign. His highly performative foot-in-mouth moment galvanised even sceptics to back the Welsh leader, with the result that Jane didn't go, and it put the party in an almost impossible position during the Senedd election campaign.
It was quite clear that if Ed Davey came to Wales, the entire visit would have been dominated by questions over his relationship with Jane Dodds. As a result, the federal leader’s involvement in our campaign was limited to a private meeting with activists. No media were invited and Jane Dodds found other campaigning work to do.
To be fair to the federal party they did provide substantial funding for the Welsh campaign, however it was not enough for us to get over the line as we would have wished to. In all 16 seats, our support was squeezed by the incessant two-horse race argument being promoted by Plaid and Reform.
Many long-standing Welsh Liberal Democrat voters in held wards went over to the Welsh nationalists to stop Reform. As a result, although our vote in the two target areas we missed out on was twice that of our national average, we failed to win a seat.
This left Jane Dodds in Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd. She secured the fifth seat with 11.8% of the vote and remains the only Welsh Liberal Democrat in the Senedd.
The new Senedd now has 43 Plaid Cymru members (35.4% of the national vote), 34 Reform MSs (29.3% of the vote), 9 Labour members (11.1% of the vote), 7 Conservatives (10.7%), 2 Greens (6.7%) and one Liberal Democrat (4.5%).
Forty-nine seats are required for a majority, so it is likely that Plaid Cymru will form a minority administration. This means that they will be looking to make deals to get every piece of legislation and every budget passed.
Meanwhile, Labour in a particular face an existential crisis. They have dominated Welsh politics for over a century, have never secured fewer that 26 seats in the former 60 seat Senedd, and have led the Welsh Government for 27 years.
Their appalling record in managing public services, especially the health service, and the economy has caught up with them, as has the massive unpopularity of Keir Starmer and his government.
In many ways things could have been much worse for the Welsh Liberal Democrats. We have taken a small step back from the precipice but remain in jeopardy. The need to rebuild organisation and support remains, but there are upsides.
Despite a small membership and activist base, the level of activity and enthusiasm the party managed to generate for this campaign was extraordinary. Even in the most hopeless of seats, members were out delivering leaflets, speaking to voters, attending debates and recruiting new workers.
Activity was mostly focused on key wards, providing a good base for tackling next year’s council elections. If we can maintain that work rate over the next 12 months, then there is a real chance that we can grow our local government base.
For now, however, there are by-elections to fight. Of the 96 people elected to the Senedd, some are already councillors and need to resign from the council to take up their place in Cardiff Bay. The campaigning goes on.
