AFTER 26 years of Welsh Labour rule, the political tectonic plates in Wales are shifting towards a major earthquake with Plaid Cymru and Reform UK heading the polls.

For months now, the Welsh and English nationalist parties have been neck and neck in the opinion polls at around 30 per cent, with Labour dropping to a jaw-dropping 14 per cent.

Consistent Barn Cymru polling conducted by YouGov for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University shows the Labour vote switching to Plaid, while the Conservative slump has mainly gone to Reform, with less extreme voters choosing the Liberal Democrats.

Of course, these are opinion polls and a lot could change before the Senedd election on May 7 2026, which means that all parties are feverishly campaigning in the Caerphilly by-election on October 23.

The poll projects that the result in Caerphilly would see Plaid on top with 35 per cent, ahead of Reform on 29 per cent and Labour trailing in third on 24 per cent.

With every announcement about another Tory defecting to Reform, Welsh voters could be forgiven for seeing Reform as a Conservative tribute act.

Doorstep comments to campaigners in the Caerphilly Senedd by-election show the story about former Reform Wales leader Nathan Gill’s admission in court that he took Russian bribes while a member of the European Parliament has hit the far-right party’s support.

Certainly, Reform was rattled enough to issue a legal letter to Welsh Labour to delete social media posts linking its by-election candidate Llyr Powell to former MEP Gill, who he worked for.

Powell denies knowing about the payments made by Russia to Gill, saying his employment ended before the offences took place.

At a TUC Cymru conference last month, called to combat the rise of the far right in Wales, Stand Up to Racism’s Kevin Courtney, a former general secretary of the National Education Union, called for unions to advise their members in Caerphilly to vote for Plaid to stop Reform.

Unions in Wales are increasingly reading the electoral runes and are seeing Plaid as the best-placed progressive party to form a government in 2026. 

Certainly, the Welsh nationalist party’s economic strategy for Wales, published this spring, has many policies the unions could support.

Luke Fletcher is the architect of that strategy, and in his four years in the Senedd, he has already transformed the party’s relationship with the trade union movement in Wales.

While his party’s hopes for gaining votes from Labour rest on Fletcher’s economic strategy, Star readers have been shocked by the news that the leftwinger is unlikely to be elected next year. 

Fletcher is third on the Plaid list for the new super constituency of Pen-y-Bont Bro Morgannwg — Bridgend and the Vale of Glamorgan, and only a political earthquake would see him elected.

Welsh Labour’s travails in the polls reflect the damage done to the party’s reputation after former first minister Vaughan Gething clung to office after revelations that he received donations of £250,000 from a convicted criminal.

The defence of the hapless Gething by Labour ministers gave voters parallels with Boris Johnson, and the accusation that politicians serve their own interests first.

Certainly, the scandal has given the country three different first ministers in under two years and started the slide in the polls.

Welsh Labour has also finally woken up to the electoral damage that Sir Keir Starmer’s antipathy to devolving the Crown Estate to Wales and improving levels of funding to Wales.

In an attempt to stymie Plaid’s campaign for Fair Funding for Wales, the Welsh government has announced an expert panel to set how the Crown Estate can be devolved. 

Westminster has been invited to take part in the panel’s deliberations, but it remains to be seen whether Starmer will accept the opportunity to try and help First Minister Eluned Morgan’s increasingly desperate attempt not to be the first Labour leader to lose an election in Wales.

The signs of Starmer’s government altering its antipathy towards devolution are hard to see after the recent decision to keep Wales out of any say in appointing the chair of Welsh language broadcaster S4C.

Media minister Ian Murray rejected the Senedd culture committee’s call to have “a formal involvement,” saying the current system provides sufficient scrutiny and accountability.

Powers over broadcasting lie with Westminster, but the Senedd committee argued it is an “anomaly” that powers over S4C do not reside in Wales.

This seeming blindness to the needs of Wales could see Labour slide from its position of hegemony in Wales to irrelevance, as happened to Scottish Labour after the Scottish National Party won power.

Former first minister Mark Drakeford said Northern Ireland gets better funding because of the danger of sliding back to violence, and Scotland also receives more money than Wales because of the independence threat.

The smart political money is on a Plaid government with Welsh Labour propping it up in an electoral alliance. 

That could give Labour some ministerial positions, but would shut it out of key decisions to take Wales forward.

If Plaid are at the helm in Wales, the party could see a strategy of butting heads with Westminster on funding and powers as the path towards independence.

The Caerphilly by-election result will show whether the polls are correct, but until then, election fever reigns supreme.

Wales reporter David Nicholson will be covering the Plaid two-day conference and is looking forward to chatting to delegates about local campaigns and stories.