As Shaun Ennis wrote about his frustration about the lack of progress in the North of England by our party, he should be lucky that he isn’t living in Wales.
As a party and a movement that was once the dominant voice of Cymru, seeing our leader Jane Dodds eke through the sixth seat in Brycheiniog Tawe Need at last week’s Senedd election showed what a parlous state the party is in Cymru at the moment. Overall, the situation has not improved since 2016 where our votes remain low and the number of seats won to match. We were lucky indeed to have Jane Dodds, who was a very effective debater and is well regarded by the community she serves and her party in general. But there was no escaping the facts she expressed frustration and dismayed that the party (once a bastion of Welsh politics) has been relegated to the peripheral.
I applaud the efforts by my fellow party activists and campaigners who spend years or decades within their communities pounding the streets, knocking on doors, campaigning in the local community. But when the time came for these communities to vote in the Senedd election, many of them went the other way and voted for Reform, who had candidates expressing horror for having the honour of being elected a member into the Senedd because they were assured by the party that they were paper candidates.
They are now led by a man who left his homeland over thirty years ago and was until very recently the Conservative Group leader in Barnet Council. Given the history of Nigel Farage’s numerous parties, we will look forward not to five years of holding power to account but a term of infighting, rifts, splits and no-doubt shaking down the Senedd for every penny they can get.
The debate on how we can challenge Reform should be welcomed and how we can support those who left Labour and Conservatives is continuing and is welcomed, but the party has yet to understand why its continuing to fail to gain popularity in its former heartland of Wales. The success of Plaid in this election shows that Cymru and how the country sees itself is shifting beneath the feet of our party.
I remember many years ago when during an evening of leaflet stuffing, I politely asked why we don’t have bilingual (Welsh and English) leaflets thinking that we were sending them out to areas of Cardiff which had a high degree of Welsh speakers like other parties including Labour.
The response was confusion on why we should waste space to explain our policies around street parking rather than reflecting the increasing importance by many of our potential voters on the language and anyway “they understand English don’t they?” In this election, Plaid Cymru (and their bilingual leaflets) won by a landslide in the City.
The party once struggled for attention in the British wide media has now been able to ride a new wave of adjacent online news services and movements that have popped up across Cymru over the last 10 years. Anyone with TikTok can see that many Plaid supporters are no longer the bearded middle-aged men with woollen pullovers and names that English speakers struggle to pronounce but younger generations well beyond its traditional base, who are first time voters and are attracted to its radical politics.
Welsh Labour was partly successful in the last 25 years because it has embraced its Welsh identity, making it distinctive against the wider UK party. The Welsh Liberal Democrats need to do the same and embrace a wholly distinctive Welsh Liberal identity and philosophy, based on its history in Cymru and the communities it has served for generations. It will need to see the new realities of Cymru of the 2020’s and how its people see itself. I do not propose for the party to don a Bucket-hat and learn the words for “Yma o hyd” , however just saying “Dem Rhydd Cymru” and place a small Welsh flag on a poster is no longer enough.
* Alun Eurig Williams is a Liberal Democrat, originally from Denbighshire but now lives in Cardiff. He has stood twice as a paper candidate for Cardiff City Council.
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10 Comments
I read the manifesto of the Welsh Liberal Democrats for the recent elections and my thought at the time was that the title – A Stronger Wales in a Stronger UK – sounded more like a Tory manifesto with its emphasis on maintaining the Union. Was that the intention?
As a democrat, I have long thought that our position on both Welsh and Scottish independence should be to oppose breaking up the UK into separate countries but, at the same time, to support the right of the Welsh and Scottish peoples to have a right to a referendum on independence should 60% of the elected members in either parliament vote to support a request to the UK government for permission to hold such a referendum.
Maybe adopting this more democratic approach towards the issue of independence would gain us more support in Wales than it would lose?
‘For the year ending 30 September 2025, the Annual Population Survey estimated that 26.9% of people aged three years or older were able to speak Welsh.’ (Source gov.Wales). Ie, 73.1% don’t speak the language. Only 24.2% said they could read it.
Bi-lingual leaflets are fine, but don’t confuse Plaid’s success with either the language or a desire for independence. Plaid took votes from the left, and to ‘keep out Reform’.
Welsh Labour held on for so long because the Tories were in power in Westminster. Is all.
Shwmae Alun. You might not be aware, but a substantial majority of our leaflets in this campaign (and indeed for the past year) have been fully bilingual. There may be many reasons why we didn’t cut through, but I don’t think that was one of them this time.
It would be good to embrace a Liberal identity, which means talking about things others talk about – a wealth tax, nationalising water, human rights for all, including in Gaza and the USA. There might then be a chance people will know “what do the lib dems stand for” I think we get the idea that Starmer was elected on the platform things are so bad I want to change them but not so anyone notices. If you can’t afford to rent, if your marginal tax rate is 50%+ if you want to see a thriving town centre it means standing up to the billionaires. We’ve had 20 years of no growth for 90% of the population, if the answer was wealth creators. i.e. billionaires, we have tested that to destruction. They are destroying the economy and the world yet it is the answer from reform. Lib Dems should be making mincemeat of them, instead they don’t take them on.
“For the year ending 30 September 2025, the Annual Population Survey estimated that 26.9% of people aged three years or older were able to speak Welsh.’ (Source gov.Wales). Ie, 73.1% don’t speak the language. Only 24.2% said they could read it.
Bi-lingual leaflets are fine, but don’t confuse Plaid’s success with either the language or a desire for independence. Plaid took votes from the left, and to ‘keep out Reform’.
Welsh Labour held on for so long because the Tories were in power in Westminster. Is all.”
Thanks Cassie – There is a growing feeling that, as a party, we are simply missing the mark. Following the Senedd election across various social media platforms, the volume of pro-Plaid content was staggering. They have cultivated a powerful public and social presence, led by charismatic figures from a younger generation. This is not only driving support, but actively converting people into voters, and we have no equivalent response.
“The Welsh Liberal Democrats need to do the same and embrace a wholly distinctive Welsh Liberal identity and philosophy, based on its history in Cymru and the communities it has served for generations.”
Though the post used a historical example of use/non-use of the language, I felt this was the point being driven at.
Welsh Lib Dems share of the vote has been going down since 2007 in the Senedd elections. There does need to be some re-thinking and acceptance that stagnation would be an improvement.
When writing in English, the country is called Wales.
Bilingual leaflets are no doubt essential in Wales, wherever you are, but hinting to Anglophone Welsh people – the substantial majority – that they are not “properly Welsh”‘ for not using/understanding the Welsh language is not the way to win hearts and minds.
@ Chris Bertram It has now become a political statement in itself to use Cymru in English. Usually it is the supporters of Welsh independence who use it. They are following the same divisive path which led to Irish independence. After the creation of the Irish Free State, Ireland was called Eire even in English. I am aware that there should be an accent over the E. It is my laptop that prevents it. The name Eire dropped out of use when Ireland became a republic. It took the 1998 Good Friday agreement to persuade the UK Government to use Ireland in all circumstances. We seem to be going through the same painful gestation for a new name for Wales in English. I imagine that the contrarian view of using Wales instead of Cymru when writing or speaking Welsh would be treated with contempt. I must try it to see what is the reaction.
@Gwyn Willliams – it is a political stance that we should distance ourselves from. We do not seek Welsh indepemdemce. Furthermore, trying to appear more Welsh than Plaid Cymru would be a fool’s game, they will always beat us hands down at that one. Let’s try being a Liberal voice in Wales instead, and embrace both language traditions instead of trying to emphasis one over the other.
I’m not sure that trying to be more Welsh than Plaid, or even as Welsh as them, has much mileage. They will always beat all-comers at that hands down. We should acknowledge that Wales has two language traditions, English and Welsh, and respect both equally. Also, we are not a party that advocates Welsh independence.
We could always try emphasising our Liberal tradition, I suppose. Worth a try, do you think?