A reimagined Welsh Parliament takes shape.

Beneath the majestic red cedarwood funnel of Cardiff Bay’s 20 year-old Senedd building, a reimagined, plumper Welsh Parliament is taking shape.

Sweeping tiers of newly-recycled oak desks are topped in translucent protective wrapping. The intermittent sound of drilling echoes around yet-to-be rendered walls, and the £4m refit of this elegant circular Siambr (debating chamber) continues apace.

A move lampooned loudly in some quarters, Wales is making space for more Senedd politicians – 96 instead of 60, to be precise.

You’re reading InDepth: A weekly long read from Channel 4 News offering quality analysis and insight, diving deeper beyond the headlines

The voting system is changing. So, too, the constituency map (it will have just 16 “super constituencies”). A major electoral shake-up is happening.

And aptly so, you might think, for what could be the most dramatic – and consequential – election since Welsh devolution began.

Groundhog days

Rarely, if ever, has a Welsh Parliament election attracted so much interest.

Until now, Wales-wide electoral groundhog days have been as rhythmically predictable as the dawn gridlock around Newport’s M4 Brynglas Tunnels.

Tick, tock… vote, biggest party = Labour… Tick, tock… vote, biggest party = Labour… and so on, decade after decade.

On a UK level, the Tories still cheer their rich history of winning elections, but in truth, Labour in Wales are the global giants of this specialist field.

Labour has won the national vote, uninterrupted, in every General Election in Wales since 1922, and every Senedd election since powers over health and education, among others, were devolved in 1999.

Longest winning streak

Cardiff University researchers have worked out that it’s the longest winning streak of any political party in the democratic world (only the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico came close, Dr Jac Larner found, and not all of their contests were democratic).

But are the wheels about to fall off this century-spanning, vote-hoovering juggernaut?

As socially embedded as Labour has been in Wales – and as much of an enduring comfort blanket Wales has been to Labour – the relationship has rarely looked so rocky.

The most recent Wales-wide poll (YouGov for ITV Cymru Wales & Cardiff University) ranked Plaid Cymru first (37%), followed by Reform (23%) and the Greens (13%), with Labour limping in fourth on just 10%.

Earlier this year Labour was routed by Plaid Cymru in a Senedd by-election in its old stronghold of Caerphilly.

Plaid Cymru supporters celebrate as the Welsh nationalist party stripped Labour of the seat of Caerphilly.
Would humiliation trigger rebellion?

If – as many already believe – Labour faces humiliation in Wales on 8 May, then it wouldn’t just mark a seismic political moment in Wales.

Many believe it would likely also trigger rebellion in Westminster.

Notwithstanding other results in England and Scotland, what price would Sir Keir Starmer pay to stumble out of May’s electoral fallout as the Labour leader who, after all this time, ‘lost Wales’?

Labour’s First Minister in Wales, Eluned Morgan, is channelling the old ‘fighter not a quitter’ vibe with increasing zeal. Aware of the electoral threat posed by Plaid Cymru (seen in a poll last year as the ‘best party to stand up for Wales’), she’s now calling for Wales to be given more powers in a ‘new deal on devolution’.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, right, with First Minister of Wales Eluned Morgan. Image credit: AP

In a speech just last week, she called on Westminster, in its “next chapter of devolution”, to correct what she described as “historic problems” over rail infrastructure funding in Wales.

But, so deep appears the disillusion with Labour in both Cardiff and Westminster, few are expecting a sudden Morgan-inspired revival.

‘Dial is shifting’

“The dial is shifting”, Plaid Cymru’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth told his party last year.

“The hourglass will soon be turned.”

The Welsh nationalists sense an historic opportunity in May. They know they’re already tapping into an electorate deeply frustrated with the state of public services in Wales.

But their claim to be the most potent Welsh foil to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK (a tactic clearly deployed in Caerphilly) appears also to have caught the eye of many on the left willing to lend their vote.

Reform, meanwhile, grab effortlessly from the conveyor belt of Tory defections, and look well placed for a bonanza of Senedd seats.

Majority

The quest to form a government after these elections could be intriguing.

With a new voting system eschewing its previous first-past-the-post element and now based entirely on a form of proportional representation, it’s highly unlikely any party will get the required 49 seats to win a majority.

The subsequent contest to identify ‘the winner’ could be morally complex, as Professor Laura McAllister pointed out recently in the Western Mail:

“Should Reform UK emerge with either the largest vote share or most seats (but not both), should it have the right to try to govern? Or should a progressive left-leaning bloc (which could easily outnumber Reform and the Welsh Conservatives), of Plaid, the Greens, Labour the Lib Dems, have this opportunity?”

In fact, the most recent YouGov poll suggested Plaid Cymru could even win enough seats to govern with the help of just the Greens. Notably, both are pro-Welsh independence.

‘Political peril’

Eluned Morgan claims others need to wake up to this “moment of political peril” for the union. Her tone is increasingly alarmist about the notion of Wales following Scotland in electing a nationalist government. Opponents of Plaid litter their attacks with the label of ‘separatists’.

Rhun ap Iorwerth in turn, eager not to alienate unionist voters, maintains this “isn’t an independence election” (ruling out a referendum in any first term). But you can be sure his rivals will present it otherwise, and loudly.

In the Senedd chamber, the hi-viz brigade criss-crosses the newly ‘raked’ floor, past the central spot where an embedded curved glass sculpture called ‘the heart of Wales’ once sat proud.

It had cracked through age and so had to be removed. Labour will mobilise hard to avoid a similar fate in May. But where once their dominance was all but a foregone conclusion, the sense of upheaval hangs heavy in the air.

Thanks for reading the latest edition of our InDepth newsletter. Subscribe below to keep up to date with Channel 4 News on Substack.