In the final instalment of her three-part article, Planet Editor Emily Trahair channels a 2018 editorial to set out a way ahead for the Welsh left. To appreciate its full import, do read parts one and two.
Reading Reform’s Senedd manifesto in isolation, just like if you scanned all the right-wing posts of murky origin online, you would be under the impression that left-leaning parties have an almost exclusive focus on women and certain minorities. The Reform manifesto offers very little to improve life for the majority (and indeed Wales Governance Centre research concludes that their tax cuts would lead to deep cuts to public services and disproportionately benefit the better off). Rather it presents an onanistic hate-frenzy (or more age-appropriately, a heart attack) of ‘DEI non-jobs’, ‘migrant queue-jumpers’, ‘grooming gangs’, ‘political indoctrination’, ‘ideological capture’, landscape ‘blighting’ renewables, ‘exclusionary narratives’, ‘divisive identity politics’ and a sinister ‘gender ideology’…
Alongside some truly frightening proposals to impose their own ‘exclusionary narratives’ on schools, media and cultural organisations, there is pure farce. Check out page 32 where the concept of time itself has now been press-ganged into the culture wars, as if woke ideology has warped the laws of physics. There’s a constant siren-parp of invasive threat, from African swine fever and ‘lumpy skin disease’ from ‘afar’, to attacks on your very hearth in the form of ‘fireplace bans’… (Also, ‘exclusionary narratives’? A bit po-mo, surely, for a movement that characterises the Left as an over-educated elite distracted from bread-and-butter issues?) A partial way forward for the Left is to simply let people know what’s in their manifesto.
How to respond further? One mistaken move would be for Left activists (including those affiliated with Undod) to throw the baby out with the bath water in a panicked reaction to the Right seemingly gaining the upper hand in the culture wars: banishing proposals for policies that support women and minorities and amplifying only policies which are universal or based on class. This ‘Blue Labour’ model would abandon those who most need solidarity in a moment of real peril, converging with Starmerism in normalising a crueler and more unequal world.
However, another mistaken response would be for the Left to develop a siege mentality and simply preserve and defend narratives and politics of EDI as they stand, abandoning the vital ongoing work of reforming EDI into something not only more popular but more ethical, in parallel with foregrounding a strong focus on economic inequality – partly in recognition that it was certain misguided narratives of identity politics which contributed to support for the Far Right to begin with.
Having read the 2026 manifestos of Plaid and the Greens, I would argue that by and large both parties not only avoid these problematic responses but often further develop (yet occasionally diverge from) the alternative vision for ‘unity in diversity’ outlined in my 2018 editorial.
In short, the majority of both Plaid and the Greens policy proposals and the vast majority of their proposed spend, would be on measures aimed at helping the majority – or economic or generational groups: measures that go further than those of the current Welsh Government. Both promise to go far further than Welsh Labour in fighting for fair funding and greater powers from Westminster. (The Greens take a relatively more redistributionist approach within Wales than Plaid, with a greater focus on challenging landlords and corporations.) If successful, this could go some way in itself to draw the sting of grievance against groups perceived to be benefiting unfairly from the state and party policies.
Far less word-count and spend is dedicated to special provision or distinct acknowledgment of women and minorities in the two manifestos. However, not only have both parties rightly remained assertive in retaining and introducing measures to protect and empower women and minorities (the Greens especially so), but Plaid in particular has grasped the nettle to uproot disinformation and ‘divisive culture wars’ about party policies (e.g. regarding the nation of sanctuary programme and LGBT+ rights), and like the Greens’ promise to strengthen civic education and critical thinking in schools, propose improved teaching of political and media literacy.
However, are the two manifestos radical enough in combatting economic inequality? Furthermore would these parties have the political powers, capacity and financial levers to fulfil even the proposals outlined there and sufficiently enable life to be transformed for the majority? If they don’t, to what extent will voters tolerate the policies aimed at improving life for particular groups they are not part of? Here, the work of the electorate would begin after 7th of May if the Left wins, in pushing for the government to go further with regard to material inequality, and to remain an anti-Establishment force, asserting themselves more publicly against Westminster.
This would be a key role for Undod, especially. In an insightful, empathetic article on this blog, Catrin Ashton describes what it is that draws many voters in the Valleys to Reform. In relation to her points, readers of this blog – those rooted in their communities in particular – could open new channels of dialogue through Undod (in collaboration with the unions) to further pressure politicians to adopt devolved policies or Westminster campaign priorities that redress injustices against particular occupational/working-class groups in their area such as ex-miners and veterans, as well as those that concern more identity-based groups, and universalist policies.
However, Far Right-sympathising billionaires now own almost all the online platforms and much of the ‘legacy’ print and broadcast media consumed in Wales, which become mouth-pieces for the politics of Reform, with algorithms masterminded to target older, non-university educated demographics in particular with their propaganda; in addition to the age-old problem of an under-resourced Welsh media. In this environment how can the electorate even access accurate accounts of what each party is promising?
Returning to the points made by Catrin in her article as examples, was it as widely known in Wales in 2024 that not only Reform, but also Plaid Cymru had pledged in their general election manifesto to demand the UK Government give the miners the money that was withheld from them in the pensions scandal (until the government resolved this later that year)? An important role that many Undod-affiliated activists already perform in their communities is addressing disinformation and lack of information sources in local forums, whether Facebook and WhatsApp groups or community meetings. This can always be built on further.
To draw on Catrin’s article as an illustration of how this does not have to be in the ‘school ma’am’ liberal Left mode caricatured by the Right, this is not simply a question of promoting the progressive parties’ 2026 manifesto policies on, for example, community ownership of green energy, and proposals for coal-tip remediation, PFA decontamination and repurposing warm water from flooded mines as cheap energy sources for local people, but to open these ideas up to scrutiny and debate by communities which, in the context of the Valleys, as Catrin relays, have deep knowledge of energy systems and the ground beneath their feet. Furthermore, rather than simply branding all Reform supporters as repugnant or stupid, there is much to be gained from focusing ire against the Far Right parties, media and funders for brainwashing and scamming our elders in particular.
Strength in numbers: how campaigns to benefit the 99% can lock arms with those that uplift women and minorities
Universalist, identitarian and class-based understandings of society are, of course, not neatly discrete categories, however much the likes of Farage try to set them against each other. One of the proposals I made in 2018 was that ‘Rather than promoting them in isolation, progressive parties and broad-based activist movements need to conjoin [for example] women’s and trans rights repeatedly to universal principles of equality and freedom; and endorse extra provision for oppressed/particular groups expressly in conjunction with defending universal public services against ever-deeper cuts. The concrete benefits for the majority of free childcare and social care, for immigration, and for not engaging in racist, neo-imperial wars need to be reiterated again and again.’
Presenting ‘universalist’ and ‘particularist’ policies as an interlinked collage rather than in siloes is not simply a question of ‘messaging’, rather there is something innately ethical about this symbiosis.
Firstly, it helps reinforce how ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ are only constructs, albeit deep-rooted ones, which advantage some and disadvantage others. We are hybrids: not only are the majority of us experiencing the effects of economic inequality, but the majority of us belong to at least one other group which is marginalised in certain contexts.
Secondly, in creating a renewed model of majoritarianism which is a montage of unity in diversity that everyone feels a part of, they have a stake in its future, which can be worked towards as collectively ours through strength in numbers. Each uplifting the other. The Greens are particularly strong on this zoomed-out consciousness of struggles being interlinked in a wider ecology, as these words from Anthony Slaughter in Voice.Cymru show ‘there is no climate justice without social justice, without economic justice, without racial justice. They’re all interconnected’.
All this helps challenge the misguided notions that ‘identity politics’ is inherently individualist, competitive, cynical, divided up into de-humanising tick boxes, with minorities being a kind of remote elite who are given ‘special treatment’.
While there are contexts where particular groups need their own dedicated spaces and exclusive platforms, metaphorically locking arms together and communicating their struggles and needs as part of a broader picture in the wider public sphere can arguably help defend women and minorities: when their causes are spot-lit in an isolated way, they are often more vulnerable to attack, more likely to be presented as ‘other’ and thus, inadvertently, their humanity can be denied.
Plaid’s manifesto demonstrates seemingly conscious attempts to interweave their promises to women and minorities in with more universalist measures for everyone. Its social justice and equality section emphasises ‘united communities’ as well as particular ones, economic justice and fair work as well as minorities, and its Human Rights Act for Wales is a collage of universalist and targeted rights. The Greens take a similar approach, albeit with slightly more radical interventions to empower particular groups.
How to convey that everyone is allowed a sense of pride and self-worth?
Another part of the 2018 editorial emphasised how ‘qualities such as freedom, rationality and pride can be reclaimed from the Right. It can be demonstrated that anyone can feel proud of their culture, even straight, white men’. It suggested ‘harnessing’ the most ‘creative’ dimensions of gender politics for everyone: ‘the freedom to re-imagine yourself, to feel less alienated from the self you have to present to the world every morning’.
It called for inspiration to be taken from the recent promotion of Welsh women’s and minority histories to ‘help rekindle interest in people’s history more generally’ as a resource of resistance. Furthermore, what more effective way to fight Far Right disinformation than to conserve and revive Wales’ proud traditions and institutions of self-education for the working-class, Welsh speakers and women? This could be another crucial role for Undod.
While being cognisant of Wales being enmeshed in oppressive practices worldwide ‘a sense of pride and collective ownership should still be fostered about belonging to a culture which could again become characterised by solidarity with the oppressed.’ Plaid explicitly express this, with their references to Welsh radical traditions of ‘solidarity’ and ‘fair play’, and their call for Welsh history, arts and culture to be core parts of the school curriculum. The Greens, for example, call for a St David’s Day bank holiday. (However, as Adam Johannes has argued on Facebook, in a post from April 10th, the manifestos don’t go far enough in proposing internationalist, anti-imperialist measures that could be implemented even under the current devolution settlement.)
Left-wing politicians and activists should surely try to avoid talking about particular demographics (such as women and men) as being innately superior/progressive or inferior/reactionary, even in jest or exasperation at bigoted abuse. It’s arguably far more constructive to express how problems are innate to structures like patriarchy, capitalism and imperialism, which affect certain groups far worse than others, but are usually bad for everyone, one way or another.
As I put it in 2018, ‘progressive politics should not in the end be about essences which need to be deferred to, but about transformative values that anyone can adopt’. At its heart, to be on the Left should still be to love humanity as a whole, albeit a hard-bitten, worldly humanism which doesn’t underestimate what a gargantuan struggle it will be to win even modest gains over prejudice and inequality.
With leftists now caricatured as being on their ‘high horse’ as humourless finger-waggers, it’s sometimes beneficial for those outside their bubbles to see socialist activists and politicians admit to failures, to changes of heart, and having a laugh at themselves.
An (anti-)conclusion
However, having done a little hectoring myself here about how to communicate with fellow citizens, I’d also subscribe to the final of Orwell’s Six Rules for Writing: ‘Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous’. Aside from regarding incontrovertible hate speech towards protected characteristics, there surely should not be utterly inviolable directives about how we should relate to each other. Human identity and creativity are too boundless, contested and ineffable for that. The threats and possibilities we face are evolving too fast for us to respond only through commandments dictated in advance or the five-year plans of institutions… You cannot develop regulatory frameworks for the secular soul as you would control water quality standards. My points remain mere suggestions. While it’s vital that left-wing parties’ manifestos address issues of inequality; ultimately, ‘unity in diversity’ will require something more than what can be codified into bullet points – the building up of a wider, more empathetic consciousness through the everyday messiness of talking, living and working with each other, and struggling for common ends.