24JUL

Welsh Lib Dems leave Reform door open

3 min read

12:51UTC

Lowdown

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Key takeaway

Lib Dems cannot put Reform in power on the Senedd numbers, but they have declined to say they would refuse.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats published their 96-page Senedd manifesto in Cardiff on 14 April 2026, led by Jane Dodds, and declined to rule out backing a Reform UK First Minister in any post-7 May confidence vote. ¹ Headline pledges include £300 million for social care, free childcare from nine months, and a hospital repair programme, under the unionist title "A Stronger Wales in a Stronger UK".

The non-exclusion is rhetorical, not arithmetical. YouGov's Senedd MRP projects Plaid Cymru on 43 seats, Reform on 30, Welsh Labour on 12 and the Wales Green Party on 10 , inside a closed-list proportional system no Welsh voter has used before . A Reform-led Government at 30 seats would need 19 additional votes, and every route to 49 passes through Plaid or Labour in numbers the Lib Dems cannot supply. The statement does not change the maths; it changes what is on the record. No Welsh party has yet put in writing that it will not cooperate with Reform, and the Lib Dems are the first to make that formally ambiguous.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Wales has its own parliament, called the Senedd, which is elected on 7 May 2026. It uses a voting system (closed-list proportional representation) that usually produces no party with an outright majority, meaning several parties have to negotiate and agree to work together to form a government. The Welsh Liberal Democrats published their election programme on 14 April. When asked whether they would support a Reform UK First Minister (the Welsh equivalent of a Prime Minister) if the numbers worked out that way after the election, they declined to say no. This is notable because every other Welsh party has either ruled out cooperating with Reform, or has not been asked directly. The Welsh Lib Dems' answer keeps open the possibility, even though the projected seat numbers make it arithmetically almost impossible.

What could happen next?

Consequence
The non-exclusion is likely to trigger formal responses from Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour clarifying whether they will exclude Reform from government formation, creating a public record of coalition boundaries before polling day.
Risk
If YouGov's Senedd MRP projection substantially changes before 7 May and Reform outperforms, the Lib Dems' non-exclusion could become a live question rather than a rhetorical one.

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from United Kingdom

United Kingdom

LeftRight

Primary parallel: The 1999 inaugural Senedd election (the first under the additional member system) produced a minority Labour administration under Alun Michael after no party could form a majority. The experience led directly to the Labour-Liberal Democrat partnership government of 2000-2003, the first formal coalition in Welsh politics.

The structural precedent is that Welsh coalition formation after a close proportional result requires negotiations that begin before polling day, not after. The Welsh Lib Dems appear to be positioning themselves now for precisely those negotiations.

Counter-parallel: The 2007 Holyrood election produced a brief period in which the SNP negotiated with the Liberal Democrats for coalition support and was refused, leading Alex Salmond to form a minority SNP government instead. The Scottish Lib Dems' refusal to enter coalition with the SNP on independence grounds created the 'no formal coalition with' norm in Scottish devolved politics. The Welsh Lib Dems appear to be deliberately avoiding creating an equivalent norm in Wales.

Consensus view: Roger Scully at the Wales Governance Centre (Cardiff University) assessed the Welsh Lib Dems' non-exclusion of Reform as arithmetically irrelevant but politically readable: with the party projected at fewer seats than Reform needs to form a majority, their endorsement cannot supply the numbers for a Reform First Minister.

But the statement is the first indication that any Welsh party is willing to treat Reform as a legitimate coalition partner rather than a proscribed option, which changes the post-election negotiating frame regardless of the arithmetic.

Counter-view: Nation.Cymru's political editor Sîan Powell argued the Welsh Lib Dems' statement is a targeted appeal to their own unionist voter base rather than a signal of genuine openness to Reform cooperation.

Powell noted that Jane Dodds's framing, 'A Stronger Wales in a Stronger UK', is designed to attract Labour-to-Lib Dem switchers in Welsh constituencies who might otherwise hold their noses and vote Reform to express unionist sentiment. The non-exclusion of Reform is the price of not alienating that potential switcher group.

Key tension: Whether the non-exclusion represents a genuine shift in Welsh coalition politics or a tactical positioning statement that both Lib Dems and Reform understand has no practical consequence given the seat arithmetic.

Sources:ITV News Wales·ITV News Wales

Mentions:Liberal Democrats →Jane Dodds →Reform UK →Wales →Prima →Alex Salmond →Senedd →Wales Governance Centre →Plaid Cymru →Cardiff University →Holyrood →YouGov →Welsh Labour →Green Party →Scottish National Party (SNP) →Scottish Labour →

First Reported In

Update #4 · 22 Days to Go: Greens Take a Reform Seat in Kent

ITV News Wales· 15 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

YouGov MRP gives Plaid 43 seats, Labour 12

The Welsh Lib Dem non-exclusion of Reform cooperation is a signal directed at the MRP projection that gives Plaid 43 seats and Reform 30 (ID:2096).

Occurred 1 Mar 2026

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Wales Greens projected as Senedd kingmakers

Welsh Lib Dem refusal to rule out Reform cooperation comes in the same week as the YouGov Senedd MRP projecting Wales Greens at 10 coalition-forming seats (ID:2316).

Occurred 11 Apr 2026

Read story →

This Event

Welsh Lib Dems leave Reform door open

A rhetorical signal, not a coalition route. Welsh Lib Dems declined to exclude Reform First Minister support on manifesto day.

Different Perspectives

Reform UK

Reform lost Old Catton, the Norfolk seat it won by 1,006 votes ten weeks earlier, to the Conservatives on 16 July, while holding second in both other 16 July by-elections it did not previously hold. The party's May intake already undershot MRP polling by 38%, evidence its local base is thinner than its seat count suggested.

MHCLG / Steve Reed

Reed confirmed 38 new unitaries for 14 counties on 16 July but held back West Sussex and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, saying further time was needed. The department locked in the areas it was confident defending and paused the two it was not.

Local Government Association / litigating councils

Harlow's judicial review, filed 22 July, makes it the fifth council suing over reorganisation, joining Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Portsmouth, with none yet granted a full hearing. New LGA chair Eamonn O'Brien's 7 July intervention now sits behind their case, arguing the timetable itself risks statutory services.

Local Government Association

New chair Eamonn O'Brien broke the LGA's neutrality on reorganisation for the first time since December 2024, telling the incoming prime minister the 'unprecedented scale' of disaggregation risks statutory services and asking him to adjust the LGR timetable, aligning the sector's institutional voice with the judicial review claims Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk have already filed.

Incoming Burnham government

Burnham secured 349 of the backing the NEC's 81-MP threshold required by 13 July, becoming Labour leader on 17 July and prime minister on 20 July without a members' ballot. He now inherits the LGR timetable the LGA wants him to adjust and a finance bill his own backbencher, Liam Byrne, is trying to harden further via amendment NC34.

Rupert Lowe / Restore Britain

Lowe called Farage's Clacton contest a 'Reform-sponsored media circus' and kept Restore Britain out of it, pledging instead to stand in the second by-election he expects the Harborne inquiry to force later this year. The boycott doubles as a signal that Restore Britain, not Reform, will contest the 'real' vote.