Wales watching - The midweek briefing

Reporting by the Newsletter Team & Harvey John

Hello and welcome to another midweek briefing.

This week we have plenty to digest including the party with the most candidates not living in the area they are running for, some rather misleading leaflets, the Lib Dem manifesto and Eluned Morgan making a statement on Donald Trump.

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The Welsh Lib Dems launched their Senedd election manifesto on Tuesday. You can read the full document here.

The most recent YouGov poll predicts a rough election for the Lib Dems.

While Jane Dodds said last summer she was aiming for 10 MSs in this election (though the current messaging is that five would be the aim now), according to the most recent YouGov polling, they could win none at all.

Launching the manifesto at the Holiday Inn in Cardiff city centre on Tuesday, Ms Dodds promised more jobs for school leavers, extending the 30 hours a week childcare offer for children aged nine months to four years old, and increasing the rate of income tax by 1p.

What is probably most interesting is what they decided to put at the very top of the 48-page document:

“We believe that Wales is stronger and better off within the United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom is stronger and better off with Wales in it. The Welsh Government and Welsh taxpayers’ money should be focused on delivering for the people of Wales, not on pursuing separation from the rest of the UK.

“We will not spend a single penny of Welsh Government money on the independence agenda. Instead, we will fight for a much fairer deal and stronger voice for Wales within the UK. Welsh Liberal Democrats believe Wales should have much greater control over its own affairs through a federal UK where power is shared fairly across all four nations.”

This clearly demonstrates where the Welsh Dems see their niche ahead of this election. They are setting themselves up as the “sensible” voice of the centre. They are trying to appeal to two groups outside their core voters:

Dissatisfied Labour voters who find Plaid and the Green’s pro-indy stance unpalatable.
Tories who are turned off by their lurch to the right.

By making independence opposition their headline stance, they appeal to both these groups. They are really going hard on this. Every other page had “protect the NHS, stop independence” in the header.

One of the big policies announced was that they would increase Welsh rates of income tax by 1p to put £300m into social care. On the one hand, it is good to see that a party is being realistic about the scale of the crisis in social care and is willing to commit to something unpopular to try and tackle it.

However, like all the other manifestos we have seen, there are serious issues when it comes to costings. I will just leave you with this interview Jane Dodds gave with Channel 4’s Andy Davies (you really should follow him on X and Bluesky). The phrase “car crash interview” is used a lot, but I think on this occasion it was merited.

Training and talks on Welsh politics for your organisation

The next election is highly likely to mean a seismic shift in how Wales is governed. Will Hayward runs tailored training and talks for senior leadership teams all over Wales.

Following the election, if your organisation’s decision makers want to understand what has happened and where we are headed, email will@willhayward.co.uk for more information.

Reporting by Jack Davies

The final party lists have now been published so we now know for sure who is standing in each Senedd election constituency. What is interesting is how many candidates are sitting who are not from the area in which they represent.

Some parties are clearly finding it a lot easier to run candidates who actually live in their local constituency areas. In nine out of the 16 new constituencies, Plaid’s list consists entirely of people who live within the constituency boundaries, with only ten of their 105 candidates not residing in their chosen constituency.

For all the other parties, this is much higher – 39 of Reform’s 96 candidates (or 40.63%) live outside their constituency boundary, while for the Tories it’s 32 out of 97 (32.99%). Welsh Labour, the Greens and Lib Dems are all around the 20% mark. There is even one constituency, Afan Ogwr Rhondda, where none of the Tory candidates have addresses in the area at all.

Now, for some it won’t matter whether or not your preferred candidate lives in the area or not. In many cases, candidates who don’t live in their area do live nearby. There is nothing in the election rules that stipulate they must live in their constituency, nor should it impede their ability to do their job.

But it is entirely reasonable as a voter to expect a candidate to have some grounding and knowledge in the community they represent.

It has only been a couple of weeks since Reform announced their full list of Senedd candidates. Since then, they have seen a lot of drop outs (you can find our breakdown of candidates and our analysis here).

The party has now named its replacement candidates and filed its final lists. There are more than a dozen changes in total, including new candidates appearing for the first time high up on lists, others being switched from one constituency to another and some moving positions within the same area.

In Pen-y-bont Bro Morgannwg, four of their six names have already dropped out and been replaced.

Rolls Royce has secured up to £599m to develop the Wylfa nuclear power station.

The company sourced the funding from the UK’s national wealth fund to design the small modular reactors (SMR) on Ynys Mon, in what will be the first SMRs in the UK.

SMR technology aims to produce nuclear power stations in factories, making them cheaper and quicker to install. Rolls-Royce has said Wylfa could create 3,000 jobs in the area with a further 5,000 in the UK.

The project remains subject to a final investment decision, which is not expected for several years, with the hope that the SMRs will be in place in the 2030s. It has been more than a decade since the last reactor at the old Wylfa site was shut in 2015.

Rhys ab Owen (left) and Russell George

Two politicians who were expelled from their parties are standing as independents.

Rhys ab Owen, who served as a Plaid Cymru member until his expulsion in 2024, and Russell George, elected a Conservative MS before receiving the boot last year, have, separately, announced they are standing in Caerdydd Penarth and Gwynedd Maldwyn respectively.

They will stand as independents.

Rhys ab Owen was elected to the Senedd in 2021, where he was elected to South Wales Central from the Plaid Cymru list.

In 2024, a standards watchdog found he had inappropriately touched and sworn at two women while drunk on a night out. Following a meeting with the Standards Committee Mr ab Owen admitted to the offences, which he’d previously denied. He received a six-week ban from the Senedd.

Russell George was elected in 2011 as a Conservative MS for Montgomeryshire.

He was suspended from the group in April 2025 after being charged with betting offences by the Gambling Commission, alongside former Tory MP for Montgomeryshire Craig Williams and 13 others. The charges are linked with alleged bets made on the timing of the 2024 general election. George denies the charges and the case is awaiting trial.

Given the current electoral system, neither man has a realistic chance of winning. So why are they bothering?

Well, if we are being cynical, it may be because of the following:

Former Senedd members can claim a winding up payment worth three months salary if they seek re-election and are unsuccessful. Additionally, they are able to claim a resettlement payment worth one month’s pay for every year they were an MS up to a maximum of six months’ salary.

If they do not stand for re-election they are only entitled to a winding up payment of two months’ salary and are not entitled to any resettlement payments.

Nothing signals election season quite like pushing past a fresh drop of party campaign leaflets every time you step through the front door.

The flyer for Lib Dem candidate for Cardiff Ffynon Taf, Rodney Berman, featured some interesting design choices.

If you thought for a second: “That must be a pamphlet for the Green Party?” – you’d be forgiven for the mix-up.

The inside claims: “100% of polls agree: Welsh Lib Dems CAN win here.”

This is a bold claim given that the latest polling shows the party getting wiped out across the whole of Wales. In the small print the leaflet said it applied to polls from May 2024 to mid-March 2026”… a week before the previous poll came out.

Labour First Minister of Wales Eluned Morgan has posted a video attacking Donald Trump and calling for the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) project in Pembrokeshire to be cancelled.

The DARC programme is a network of radars developed in Australia and the US as well as the UK to provide global monitoring of the skies. The Cawdor Barracks site in Pembrokeshire will host the plans.

In a statement on Wednesday, the First Minister said:

“I’m calling for the DARC defence project in Pembrokeshire to be halted.

“The United States under Donald Trump is not the partner it once was.

“Talk of targeting civilians, undermining our allies, and diminishing the sacrifice of our armed forces is not the conduct of a reliable ally.

“I believe in international alliances, I believe in collective security, but there is a clear difference between standing with our partners and giving a free pass to a US president who has threatened war crimes and shown contempt for our country.

“I’m urging the UK Government to halt our involvement in the Aukus radar project until we can be confident that these partnerships reflect our values, and our security interests.”

One wonders how much the fact that Ms Morgan is battling to keep her seat in the area has on the decision to post this statement.

There is an online Senedd Election Active Travel Hustings event tonight. You can sign up here.
The movement “Our House” is holding a “Chartist Mobalising Day” on April 24.
The union UNISON has written a report into Reform leader Dan Thomas called “Barnet’s outsourcing nightmare”. You can read it here.
Waterstones in both Cardiff and Swansea are going to be hosting events with Will where he will be taking questions and discussing his new book. You can sign up for the dates below:

– 6pm. Wednesday, April 22nd – Waterstones, Swansea

– 7pm. Thursday April 30th – Waterstones, Cardiff

If you have something in Wales you would like to be featured in this section feel free to send it along to ryan@willhayward.co.uk for consideration.

That’s all for today.

See you on Sunday for the weekend newsletter.

Wales watching – The midweek briefing

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