It has been frustrating to me, as a politics student from Wales, to see that coverage of the Senedd elections has been nationally overlooked in favour of local elections in England and the Holyrood elections. This is especially true for the Welsh Liberal Democrats, whose modest outcome of holding our only seat has hardly been discussed at all, both by leadership and its members.
The poor performance is the latest stage in a two-decade pattern of contraction that the party has consistently failed to fix. At devolution in 1999, the Welsh Liberal Democrats won six seats and entered government as a coalition partner, with Mike German serving as Deputy First Minister. They held six seats across the next two elections, in 2003 and 2007. Post-coalition, Welsh Lib Dem presence collapsed to five seats in 2011, and a single seat in 2016 which they retained in 2021 only by switching from a constituency to a regional list-seat. In 2026, the party holds one seat in a chamber that has grown from 60 to 96 members, meaning their proportional presence is smaller now than at any point since devolution began.
Internal party messaging attributes our underperformance to the “tough new electoral system” under the new d’Hondt system; I believe that this is an unfair characterisation of Welsh voters. Voters in Wales were not attracted to the Liberal Democrats due to an underdeveloped strategy, and a failure to communicate their strong governing record within Wales. Both issues are symptomatic of what could happen to the Lib Dems at the next GE if they fail to create a national strategy to secure votes, as opposed to the targeted seat strategy that has allowed us to win FPTP seats in Westminster and local councils.
A major error of the Senedd campaign was their decision to place opposition to Welsh independence at the centre of the party’s manifesto – literally titled ‘A Stronger Wales in a Stronger UK’. Although this position is consistent with the Liberal Democrats’ longstanding commitment to federalism, its salience within the Welsh political context is comparatively low.
While it likely secured them some votes in Brecon and Radnor, where opposition to independence is markedly higher than in much of Wales, survey data consistently indicates that Welsh voters prioritise issues of health, poverty, and the cost of living over independence. We were also aligned with more right-wing parties on this issue, to some detriment; any voter for whom unionism is an absolute and non–negotiable priority was, in the current political landscape, more likely to vote for the Conservatives or Reform UK. In this context, our emphasis on unionism was unsuccessful as it had a low issue salience and was unlikely to mobilise new support for the party.
The party’s focus on this is particularly frustrating given that the Welsh Liberal Democrats had a demonstrable governing record that went mostly uncommunicated. As the sole opposition MS whose support was required to pass the Welsh Government’s budget, Jane Dodds had successfully extracted many policy concessions from Welsh Labour. In February 2025, a deal worth more than £100m secured £1 bus fares for all 16 to 21–year–olds across Wales – a genuinely progressive and visible intervention in the cost–of–living pressures facing young people. The success of the scheme is evidence that Welsh Liberal Democrats, even if small, had been making major impacts within Wales. In the same period, they also achieved a ban on greyhound racing, additional funding for universal childcare, and the protection of the Heart of Wales rail line.
These successes should have been leveraged to demonstrate the party’s effectiveness, yet none of this appears to have reached the electorate. While canvassing in Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, I repeatedly encountered Lib Dem-voting households who could not name a single policy we had delivered in the Senedd. Many of those voters were also habitual tactical voters, which meant their support was never guaranteed. Under a more proportional system, they needed to see the Liberal Democrats as a credible option rather than the least-worst vote to block the extremes of Plaid Cymru or Reform UK.
This is a failure of communication that also extended directly into the manifesto itself. Published on April 14th – the last of the major parties to release theirs – the Welsh Liberal Democrat manifesto was financially ambitious, committing to £300m for social care, fully funded childcare from nine months for 30 hours a week across 48 weeks of the year, and a £400m town centres fund. However, these commitments were not accompanied by any published costing.
The absence of published costings was not unique to the Liberal Democrats; the Institute for Fiscal Studies judged all six major parties gave insufficient details about how their proposals for Wales would be funded. However, the Welsh Liberal Democrats occupied a uniquely exposed financial position by being the only party proposing to increase Welsh income tax; a 1p increase on income tax as an emergency measure to fund social care. In isolation, this was a defensible and principled position; social care in Wales is chronically underfunded to the point of acute crisis. In a period of major cost-of-living anxieties, the policy was vulnerable to criticism. More populist campaigns run by the Conservatives and Reform UK pledged to cut Welsh income tax; these were successful with voters despite being incompatible with the fiscal realities of Wales. This is not an argument against the policy itself, but it shows that such policies were not attractive to voters already financially constrained.
As a smaller, regional party within a federal system, the Welsh Liberal Democrats are almost entirely reliant on the centre of the party for their policy development and finances. Our focus on winning ‘targeted’ seats in southern England has delivered real gains for us since 2024, but has left Wales without the sustained policy investment or financial infrastructure that a serious Senedd campaign requires. Without the support of the national party, Jane Dodds was left to carry the entire Welsh campaign largely alone; this was a considerable burden for any politician, and an unreasonable one for a leader also juggling the roles as an MS of the largest constituency in Wales, and the sole Lib Dem within the Senedd.
It feels almost contradictory to the nature of the Liberal Democrats as a federal party, and as a party that believes in greater devolved powers across Britain to neglect the Welsh party in this way. It is also short-sighted of the national party to dismiss the Senedd results as the unfortunate by-product of the new electoral system, especially during a period when the party seeks to re-evaluate their values and electoral strategy ahead of our 2026 Conference, and the next General Election itself.
If the Liberal Democrats are serious about being a national party rather than a collection of winnable southern English seats, the work of building that credibility must begin in the places where they are not necessarily primed to win. Wales – a traditional liberal foothold – should be the first step.
* Elsie Jones is a Liberal Democrat member and a Welsh Young Liberal.
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21 Comments
Let’s do some basic maths. A Liberal Democrat Government at Westminster would require a majority of at least 326 seats. If ‘The Party of Middle England’ won every single seat in Middle England at the next General Election it still wouldn’t have a majority at Westminster.
Is this understood by those running and leading the Liberal Democrat Party these days ?
“ Internal party messaging attributes our underperformance to the “tough new electoral system” under the new d’Hondt system”
When a political party scores less than 5% of the vote, getting anyone elected is always going to be tough whatever electoral system is used.
Why?
1. Because the whole election was framed as Plaid vs Reform, and a LOT of people voted tactically for the former. I couldn’t hold my nose to do so in the end, but wrangled with it, wondering if my wasted LD vote might prove costly.
2. Because we’ve never recovered here from the Coalition years, when we stopped being a ‘safe’ alternative to Welsh Labour. ‘Vote Lib Dem, get the Tories’. That ‘safe alternative’ role was taken up by Plaid.
3. Because we don’t have the numbers to do the leg work, knocking on doors, to rebuild. Or the money to send out multiple mailings, which other parties did.
4. Because the Senedd’s activities are so poorly covered by any media? London-based = zero and what’s left of the media in Wales barely focused on the Bay when it had the staff to do so, let alone now.
Did you ask voters to name ANY policy implemented by ANY party in the Senedd (beyond the 20mph limit!)? Or if they could name their existing members? Or say which powers altogether are devolved?
Cassie, thank you for commenting! I definitely agree with you on your points, I just wanted to add my own response!
4 – Specifically talking about what I heard ‘on the door’, a lot of voters who were planning on voting Lib Dem, or otherwise would have under an FPTP system expressed frustration that they had not heard about what the party had done for them in their area. I would say on average an prospective LD is less likely to be swayed by populist rhetoric then a voter for, say, the Reform party. With this in mind the fact that they were mostly unaware of Liberal Democrat stances on issues definitely swayed their vote. One such example of this was in talking to Welsh voters who are resistant to new overhead pylons for proposed wind farms in rural mid Wales. Multiple times voters expressed to me that the Lib Dems had no stance on this issue, despite us being staunchly opposed to them from the onset. This to me suggests that the Welsh Liberal Democrats could’ve benefitted from stronger party messaging on key issues.
My local party is amazing, and despite their small numbers worked incredibly hard to ensure we retained our Senedd presence. But they had little support from the national party. I understand the economic argument behind ‘abandoning’ areas that have little chance of winning, but conceding to getting less than 5 per cent in a national election is actively harming us. It makes us look irrelevant nationally.
Surely the answer is in the article. faced with a loathed labour administration which has presided over a failing NHS and a huge decline in standards in education Jane Dodds decided to keep them in power.
What effect did members in wales think this would have on our vote?
Jana, thank you for reading and commenting!
I definitely agree that the new d’Hondt system made it difficult! As a Liberal Democrat I staunchly believe in an Alternative Voting system, and the new electoral system in Wales is far more proportional to what Voters want to have in power, as opposed to whom they do not.
With this in mind the failure of the national party to develop a strong strategy for Wales, and to support them as they did in Scotland means that they were almost destined for failure. Furthermore there hasn’t really been any analysis of our underperformance made by the party, as they did for their successes in Scotland and England (Or if they have, they haven’t been published to members!) I think it is short-sighted not to acknowledge the factors that have led to Liberal decline in Wales, and to leave the party to its own devices at a point when it was struggling during a major and nascent election.
Percentage of the vote share:
1999: Constituency vote 13.5% and regional vote 12.5%
2003: 14.1% and 12.7%
2007: 14.8% and 11.7%
2011: 10.6% and 8%
2016: 7.7% and 6.5%
2021: 4.9% and 4.3%
2026: 4.5%
Things have been going down for a while now. It deserves more attention really.
I found it very difficult to know who to vote for this year. There was a fear of Reform, a feeling that the best of the Lib Dems manifesto could be found elsewhere and that such a strong rebuke of even the smallest hint of an independence conversation. On the other hand, the manifesto was mostly good and a fantastic local candidate.
I don’t know what happens next but it’s pleasing that there are several young Welsh Lib Dems posting on this site. It gives me hope.
Those new,young Welsh Libbers , MUST be supported by the Main party to build for the future.
One thing left out here is that we were overtaken by the Welsh greens for the first time ever. Even the coalition wasn’t enough to cause that to happen in Wales! (unlike Scotland and London)
Not only did this happen nationally, it also happened in one of our target constituencies in Cardiff, were it not for which we’d have gained a second seat, instead the Greens got two seats.
The Welsh Greens also have trouble with lack of coverage and getting squeezed by voters who don’t understand PR, but this didn’t stop them!
The party in Wales receives a very generous settlement from the Federal Party each year, far more than its tiny membership warrants.
At the end of 2022 the previous President commissioned a report – at great expense – into why the Welsh party was doing so poorly, staff turnover was high and membership was declining. It was never published.
Unfortunately between 2017 and the present day, there has been enormous resistance to investing time and effort into campaigning and training. Few areas use Connect. A winnable by-election in Lampeter was lost because the council group refused to allow any campaigning on a Sunday. The idea of standing a “full slate” in council elections is greeted with horror in almost every local party.
One of the many ideas promoted by Jane Dodds during her narrow leadership victory in 2017 was scrapping targeting. She told every hustings that the party would no longer target its resources at winnable seats, but would instead spread them out across every local party. This was highly dubious in terms of electoral strategy but popular with armchair members.
Curiously, that’s not how the party approached the elections of 2019, 2021, 2024 and 2026 when Dodds’ own berth of Brecon & Radnor again had the lion’s share of campaign spending and staff time.
Born and brought up in South Wales, I get the feeling people in Wales more than England are centre-left generally, yet because of cost of living they would now strongly oppose that policy of an increased income tax. Likewise now was the wrong time to lean towards Labour. Although I now only have contact with 2 people (though I campaigned in Brecon/Radnor on 3 days at the previous by-election) I must ask, would it not be better to have proposed a fairer tax system that uses more tax on unearned income and the very rich?
@Ynys Mon Man, it is not just about money but human support. I have said many times in the last 2 years our MPs need to spend more time going around the country including Wales helping local Lib Dems reach outside their party fold. Time in Parliament should be limited to certain national issues and their own constituents’ concerns, because much of the good speeches they make there get no publicity outside the party.
Nigel Jones, I am puzzled by the view put forward by many (not just you) that a visit from an MP, no matter how high-profile, will do anything to turn around the fortunes of a moribund local party.
What instead happens is that a tiny number of the faithful gather in the back room of a village hall or a Liberal-aligned pub and listen to a speech. Perhaps they pay £10 for the privilege. Then they all go home.
I posted on here in plenty of time about how the new electoral system could have been used to Lib Dem advantage if only the party understood how it worked. Running the usual “it could be any-party” campaign is a recipe for disaster. The seems to be no confidence or belief in Lib Dem values and policies. As someone who was motivated by visiting MPs to campaign more for values and ideals one believed in, I think Ynys Mon Man make the opposite point to that intended, you need a message that people want to see put into action – clean rivers, social care sorted, these resonate for a reason.
Caracatus – everybody understood how the electoral system worked. The problem is that the party in Wales has shrunk to the point where it is not capable of campaigning across even a single parliamentary constituency, let alone two!
A general cluelessness/hostility to campaigning is the reason the party is very strong in a constituency like Eastleigh (which voted Leave) but lost all its councillors in the similarly-sized Monmouth, which voted Remain.
A balanced and fair assessment of the Senedd campaign. Unlike in Scotland, Wales has not as yet polarised into for and against Independence camps. The Welsh Liberal Democrat position made the party the fourth Party of the Union after Reform, Labour and the Tories. But its demand for increased public spending made it the fourth Party of the left after Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Greens. Those of us who are much maligned centrist voters need a costed plan to assess how realistically the Party’s promises can be kept. The Labour Party realised this a week before election day and published some cobbled together costings. However this was too late to save them.
Looking forward David Chadwick MP has already challenged the Welsh Health Minister over the failure of Welsh patients to be treated in Herefordshire and Shropshire hospitals were there is spare capacity. At the same time as the Minister announces an extra £146 million for the Welsh NHS.
@Simon McGrath nobody on the doorstep thought that our budget deal was’keeping Labour in power’. It did not come up at all. Remember that, unlike Wimbledon, Wales is a left of centre country. Our failure, as the article says, was not selling what we had achieved in that deal, campaigning on a cockamany platform of ‘not a penny on independence’ against the grain of the views of most Lib Dem activists, and failing to have a compelling narrative of why the Lib Dems are relevant as the sixth party in a six party system. Getting squeezed between Plaid and Reform didn’t help either. There was definite movement towards both those parties in the last two days which, in the case of those choosing Plaid, could well have cost us two more seats.
We shot ourselves in the foot. We asked for key campaign messages in late summer last year. We got nothing until April. Building a campaign on a message vacuum especially in a very competitive multi-party system was asking for trouble. And it is difficult for a small band of volunteers to work even harder to make up for these weaknesses. Ironically, the best recent result for the Welsh Lib Dems was the Euro elections in 2019 when we had such a message!
And I go back to my point, the Lib Dems and Greens between them polled around 12%, they could have won a seat in every constituency, 8 each, 16 in total, but they would rather had 3 between them. Oh such purity. And who would the extra 13 seats have come from and what extra relevance would the parties have in the Assembly?
It should have been obvious that trying to win a PR elections with tactics designed for FPTP would mean ending up with 1 seat. It should also be obvious that PR alone won’t save the Liberal Democrats.
Just a couple of comments. The messaging wasn’t helpful. First of all, the Party tried to position itself as the opposition to Reform. When that became untenable, it switched to positioning itself as the opponents of nationalism – but Plaid overtly did not campaign on a nationalist ticket (whatever they are in reality).
Also, the Party has a serious problem with activists, or rather, the lack of them. To my mind the Welsh Party has become increasingly libertarian in outlook, and has alienated some activists (particularly women) who were willing to do the grunt work to get other people elected.
You are right to demand the federal party invest heavily in Welsh campaign infrastructure. However, as Executive Officer for Policy Development, your characterisation misses the internal reality. First, Wales is a nation, not a region, and we are not “entirely reliant” on London. My committee inherited a broken central template alongside a total collapse in preparation left by my predecessor. This manifesto was my baby; we pulled off an eleventh-hour rescue mission to manually write in progressive policies like the Royal College of Care Workers, the School Leavers’ Guarantee, and expanding £1 bus fares to under-25s. Second, the critique regarding a lack of costings is frustratingly detached. I sorely wanted full costings published, but our hands were completely tied by extreme time constraints. Finally, claiming Jane Dodds carried the campaign “largely alone” is deeply unfair to the Welsh board, committees, and grassroots activists who worked their socks off. Jane faced a massive public burden, but she was backed by an army of dedicated volunteers doing the heavy lifting. Your conclusion stands: we need urgent federal funding. But the bottleneck wasn’t a lack of vision or effort in Wales – it was that a national volunteer network was forced into emergency triage instead of being given the early, professional tools we need to win.