The numbers from Cardiff Bay are still settling in for the Welsh political establishment. On 7 May, Reform UK took 34 of the 96 seats in the Senedd, becoming the second largest party in Wales overnight. After decades in which Welsh politics meant a permanent Labour majority and a polite argument with Plaid Cymru about how big it should be, the entire system has been blown open.

From Zero to Thirty-Four in One Night

Reform UK had no seats in the Senedd before this election. Not one. By the end of the count we had thirty-four. That is not a protest vote. That is not a grumble. That is the Welsh people walking into the polling station and choosing, in their tens of thousands, to bury the political class that has run their country since devolution.

Labour, which has governed Wales without interruption since 1999, was reduced to a rump. Eluned Morgan, the First Minister, lost her own seat. Welsh Labour grandees who had been measuring up new offices were instead clearing them out. The Conservatives, who once thought of themselves as the natural opposition in Wales, finished behind us in seat count and well behind us in vote share.

Why It Happened

Wales has been told for twenty-five years that devolution would mean better schools, a better NHS and a more confident national identity. What it has actually delivered is the worst school results in the United Kingdom, the longest NHS waiting lists of the four nations, and a Senedd that spent its time picking fights with Westminster instead of fixing potholes. The Welsh people have noticed.

Reform UK ran on the same things we run on everywhere: lower taxes, controlled immigration, no more 20mph blanket speed limits, an end to net-zero zealotry that punishes people who drive a van for a living, and a refusal to apologise for being British. Welsh voters did not need a focus group to understand any of that.

The End of the One-Party State

For a generation, Welsh Labour treated the Senedd as a private fiefdom. The new electoral system — closed lists, six-member regions — was meant to lock the old establishment in for another decade. Instead it has handed Reform UK a parliamentary group large enough to shape every debate in Cardiff Bay for the next five years. Plaid Cymru may have ended the night as the largest party, but no Welsh government can now be formed without confronting the fact that one in three seats belongs to us.

Plaid will spend the summer working out whether to govern with the diminished Labour remnant or strike out alone in a minority. Either way they will face an opposition that is genuinely opposed, rather than the gentle Tory hand-wringing they have been used to.

What Comes Next

The job in Cardiff now is to behave like a serious party of government in waiting. That means showing up, scrutinising line by line, refusing the easy theatrics and proving that Reform UK politicians can do the boring, painstaking work of holding a devolved administration to account. We will push to scrap the tourism tax, restore parental choice in schools, end the war on motorists, and demand that the NHS in Wales is judged by the same standards as the NHS in England.

The Welsh earthquake of 7 May is also a warning to Westminster. If Reform UK can go from zero to thirty-four in Cardiff Bay, it can do the same at a general election. Labour and the Conservatives can keep telling each other this is a flash in the pan. The voters of Wales just told them otherwise.