23AUG

Welsh Lib Dems leave Reform door open

3 min read

19:09UTC

Lowdown

← Back to Reform loses three wards, wins Clacton Jump to analysis ↓

PoliticsDeveloping

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

Ian Davidson, Acting Returning Officer for Clacton

Davidson's office printed a 90cm ballot paper for the record 34-candidate field, with nothing in electoral law capping candidate numbers or the £500 deposit each pays. He expects the paper's size to raise printing costs and slow the count into the early hours, a strain that follows from the major parties' boycott, not from turnout.

Scottish Labour members

Members now choose between Michael Marra and Joe Fagan after Monica Lennon fell one MP nomination short of the three-MP, three-MSP threshold, a bar set by MPs and union officials rather than the wider membership. Whoever wins takes office having faced only one rival on the members' ballot.

Labour Party

Labour gained Penistone East from Reform on 20 August but lost Harraby South to Reform the same night, a wash that undercuts any claim of momentum. The party can point to beating Reform in a genuinely fought contest, but not to a pattern running only in its favour.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats took two of Reform's May wards, Almondbury on 13 August and St Neots Eynesbury on 20 August, the latter on a 29.8-point rise in their own vote share. Both results let the party claim it is the beneficiary when voters turn against Reform, not Labour or the Conservatives.

Reform UK

Reform UK can point to winning Clacton unopposed by the other major parties and to taking Harraby South from Labour, a ward it had never previously contested. That gives the party two results to cite even as three previously held wards changed hands elsewhere in August.

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin's John O'Dowd ruled out a Stormont walkout on 11 August despite calling the DUP increasingly difficult to work with, closing a question Conor Murphy had left open a fortnight earlier. Only Sinn Féin or the DUP can collapse the joint First Minister office, so the denial gives up the party's own leverage in budget talks.