With the Senedd Election set for Thursday you may well have reached the point where you just want it to be over and done with. Whisper it quietly, but that’s probably how a lot of knackered candidates and canvassers feel.
Nevertheless, there’s probably a lot of you who are still weighing things up, and wondering who you will vote for, or if you’ll bother at all. This listicle is for those of you in particular pondering placing an X next to the name Reform – or who know friends and family who are weighing up the possibility.
For full disclosure, I am not (currently) in a Party and have no desire to sway who you might vote for. However, I absolutely am going to suggest why you should not vote for Reform – assuming that you are not either filthy rich, a massive English nationalist, or so mad at the world you just want to see it implode.
I would have some sympathy for that, mind, because among other things I was one of the editors of a volume called The Welsh Way: Essays on Devolution and Neoliberalism that exposed just how badly the so-called “Devolution Dividend” has been frittered away.
The cost of living is soaring and everyone’s life seems to be getting harder – and successive Labour governments in the Senedd have seemingly done little to shield us from the worst of it. So if you are therefore feeling disenfranchised, pissed off and generally suspicious of Party Politics you are entitled to be. I also appreciate, as our excellent colleague Catrin Ashton has explained, why some communities are going to be even more angry than others.
Nevertheless, while such feelings and frustrations are totally valid, it is important to consider why voting Reform for so many of us would be biting off our nose to spite our face. It just won’t do us any good. In fact it’s likely to cause us more harm. And here are 10 reasons why.
1, They are not the Party of Change
I mean the name, and their whole shtick, suggests that they really should be about changing the status quo. But they are not. And don’t quote me, rather listen to the Institute of Fiscal Studies who say there’s nothing particularly new in their manifesto and that it echoes – wait for it – Conservative policies. Yes, the Conservatives, whose name tells us exactly what they are about: conserving things as they are and maintaining the status quo.
2, They are not “Anti-establishment”
A connected part of their shtick is the idea that they are the outsiders, the new kids on the block, the Party who are going to ‘shake it up’. This is neatly captured in their description of themselves as anti-establishment. Except, this is, to use a technical term, bollocks. They are both funded primarily (to the tune of £24 million – 67% of their income) by the corporate establishment – oil and gas industries specifically – whilst being stuffed to the gills with members of one of the biggest, most historic and powerful establishments known in the history of Britain.
3, They are packed full of Tories
Yes, you guessed it, they are stuffed with Tories. To repeat, the Tories. Yes, we know the ones. The Party of Churchill. Enoch Powell, and yes, one Margaret Thatcher. The Party that has shafted Wales remorselessly for decades if not centuries. Estimates of how many of their current English councillors are former Tories sits at around 75% whilst 5 of their 8 MPs are former blues.
And of course, their new shiny Wales leader (Dan Thomas, Lord Blackwood of Bath) is the former Tory Council leader of Barnet where his (failed) Thatcherite privatisation programme would have made even the Iron Lady blush. And last but not least, Nigel Farage was a Tory from a very young age because, to quote him directly, what Thatcher tried in the 1980s “really excited him”. Each to his own, Nigel old boy.
4, They are supported by the Global Elite
A further part of their anti-establishment act leans into the wider culture of conspiracy theories, positioning them in such a way as to attract those who are persuaded by these ideas, implying that they are somehow fighting against these nebulous global actors and of course that all-powerful entity, the ‘global elite’.
Of course the irony is that as well as being funded by a very tangible global elite (including one particularly generous crypto billionaire), they are tied up with some of the worst global actors. Remember Farage’s mate Nathan Gill who was the Welsh leader of their earlier outfit, UKIP, who is in the clink serving time for doing the Russians favours?
And that’s before we even consider Farage’s bully’s-best-friend relationship with the Orange terror and friend-of-Epstein that is Donald Trump, whose recent ‘strategic cooling’ in their bromance came as Farage clocked that being his ‘UK Whisperer’ was not doing his rep much good.
5, They are an English Party Limited Company
Don’t get me wrong. Some of my best friends are English. Some of the nicest chaps you’ll come across are from Shakespeare’s green and pleasant land. But what have we learnt about the English from being their neighbours for about 1500 years? You don’t really want them in charge of you if you can help it.
Yet that’s exactly what voting for Reform will do, put Farage in charge, and with no hint of any checks and balances in Wales. Because remember, it’s his company, not a democratic party, and as much as Dan will huff and puff about him being in charge, he and his ASs will always be beholden to an English multi-millionaire who thinks the Welsh speak a foreign language. Whilst not particularly scientific, I personally don’t have a very good feeling about this. What about you?
6, They are not a party of the Working Class
It’s difficult to tell exactly where the idea came from that an English spiv who went to public school and whose professional life has been dedicated to finance, and making money out of people with a lot more finance than him, might have ever created a party for the working classes. But we are where we are.
Suffice to say this one is not just bollocks, but ascends to the next category of “utter bollocks”. Sure, he throws in a few lines about reopening mines, fighting for the miners’ pension and firing up the steel works again, but given who he is, the people who are paying him, and also their policies – that our friends the IFS suggest will leave lower income earners substantially worse off – he is definitely not in it for you, your family, or your community.
7, What little record they have in office is pretty dire
Reform benefit inordinately from never having been in national power either in the Senedd or Westminster. It is therefore incredibly easy to slag off the opposition and to make out they will bring improvements because they don’t have their own record of compromises, disasters and embarrassments to be referred to in debate.
However, if we look at the councils where they (or their ilk) have held power, the signs are not good. Look up their record in Staffordshire or Nottinghamshire, or the record of one of their high profile politicians during his Tory leadership of Barnet Council (oh, sorry, I may have mentioned that earlier). We await the results of Kent Council’s ‘casino economics’ although they already have succeeded in breaking their pledge to bring down Council Tax by actually increasing it.
On a wider scale, it would be wise to look at the Tory rejects who have joined their ranks in Westminster – the same Tories who spent a good few years making a disaster of everything with their reverse-midas touch. The prospects for success are not good, even on their own terms.
8, They are fully-paid for Grifters
Not to labour the point here but I will reference again Farage’s call to reopen the mines and his pledge to fire up the Port Talbot blast furnace once more. WTF. And now he’s rowed back on that, what do he and his peeps in Wales have to offer? SFA.
Again, we need to consider where all the anti net-zero stuff is coming from and why they’d spout pipe dreams about re-industrialisation. Follow the money as they say, and the folks at the Good Law Project explain a lot when they state “Reform is less a political party and more a very highly paid public-facing lobby group for oil and gas interests.”
Three quarters of their income since 2019 has come from climate deniers and fossil fuel interests, and in that context it makes a lot of sense that they vow to “scrap net zero”, end subsidies for renewables, approve oil and gas exploration and bring back coal, and lift the fracking ban.
The prospect of which leads us to consider the impact of drilling in the Welsh countryside and the real rural priorities of Dan Thomas and his buddies when cosplaying as farmers. Can Wales and its already fragile environment – which is increasingly at risk of flooding due to the climate change that Reformers often deny – afford less protections and the undoing of bodies such as Natural Resources Wales?
9, Farage the Racist.
The testimony is there for all to see. Obviously it doesn’t bother a lot of people in the same way it did twenty years ago as we’ve seen it normalised for so long by Farage and vast swathes of the political establishment. But it’s still racism, it’s still wrong, it’s still the harbinger of all types of other intolerance and hatred, and by any measure of a decent person (which most Welsh people are according to my scientific investigations over 40+ years of exchanges) it definitely should not be a vote winner. In fact, it should put you right off.
10, They won’t make our lives better.
If there is a bottom line, where we think about voting for our own benefit, then we should be in no doubt, given that they 1) won’t change anything for real 2) are not anti-establishment 3) are funded by members of the global monied elite 4) are full of Tories 5) are run and owned by an English spiv 6) aim to attack working class interests 7) have been incompetent when in power 8) are shysters with 9) a racist for a leader (who has some pretty dubious views about the Welsh to boot), then it’s a fair bet they will not be making any of our lives in Wales better anytime soon. Unless perhaps you are pretty damn rich.
Where next?
So where does that leave you if you were considering Reform but are having second thoughts, and are left with no options because you aren’t persuaded by the rest of them?
In that case one suggestion is registering your dissatisfaction by going to the election booth and spoiling your ballot (you can even write some amusing profanities if you need some catharsis, and want to put a smile on the face of those doing the count), then go home, keep an eye out for the results, and when you find out who the 6 members are for your super-constituency, hold them to account. Go to their surgery hours, express your frustration, ask them for help with your issues.
You will find out that at least some of them will be good people who are eager to help and will want to hear from you. These are the politicians who we should lend our support to, and these are the people who can make a difference to our lives. If enough of them are encouraged into doing their job properly, it is actually quite possible that the Senedd can start to deliver on its promise, and life may get a little better for us all.