Welsh Labour must put a new Wales Bill in their Senedd election manifesto, argues Ben Gwalchmai.
As I write, it is Wednesday, June 18th, and I’ve woken up to the second poll showing Welsh Labour on 18% ahead of the 2026 Senedd election. Once could be a fluke, twice is a wake-up call. I’ve written in the IWA before about potential Welsh Labour strategy and I’ve attempted to ensure that lessons from Scottish Labour are learnt here.
As an unpaid carer and town councillor, I could list a hundred things that carers, councils, commentators, lawyers, nurses, teachers, professors of politics, and innovators alike are calling for, but what all the small things amount to is: a whole new Wales Bill.
Our First Minister Eluned Morgan is particularly suited to the task of a new Wales Bill: she helped lead the last one through the House of Lords. She did Wales proud then and she can do Wales proud again by making it a part of her 2026 manifesto. Yes, the devil will be in the detail, but English regions are now getting more devolved powers than ever before – how can Welsh or UK Labour then refuse it for Wales? When every single council in Wales is calling for the devolution of the Crown Estate, we must give them a timetable. We must follow the key recommendations set out by the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales (ICCFW) – the Sewell convention must be put onto statute as a proper Intergovernmental Mechanism, not solely Intergovernmental Relations. That’s to name but one of the recommendations in the ICCFW’s final report and they’re all vital to ensure the sustainability of Welsh devolution. Without them, we risk leaving the field open to Reform UK.
The promise of a new Wales Bill plus a needs-based and better funding arrangement would go a long way to assuaging accusations that Welsh Labour isn’t heard by UK Labour […]
The promise of a new Wales Bill plus a needs-based and better funding arrangement would go a long way to assuaging accusations that Welsh Labour isn’t heard by UK Labour: what better way for UK Labour to repay the 100+ years of Labour loyalty shown by Wales? But that isn’t all: it should be made clear that a new Wales Bill will be the beginning of the Confederation of the UK – let Mark Drakeford’s ‘four equal nations’ bloom into a new spring of renewal from a bill built by Welsh Labour in Cardiff. With all the Senedd and UK Labour representatives in Westminster, using their great majority to enable our parliament to become what Keir Hardie envisioned when he said ‘home rule for all’.
You may be asking: ‘how precisely would this lead to structural reform? How would any of that win an election?’ And you’d be right to ask. From a Millennial and Gen Z position that has seen through the ultimate fallacy of destructive neoliberal capitalist structures since 2008, what a new Wales Bill and eventually a new Confederated Constitution of Britain must do is this: it must give the Welsh Government the power and the levers to make sure no one goes without food, heat, or good housing. Nothing less. Yes, this means rent controls; yes, this means growing the state; yes, this is what will win votes – material change.
Syniadau uchelgeisiol, awdurdodol a mentrus.
Ymunwch â ni i gyfrannu at wneud Cymru gwell.
We have a great, growing body of university educated people who can’t make a decent living, can’t save, have little societal connection or support because austerity has killed it and they are getting angry. This is articulated well by Dr Dan Evans when he says ‘…the ‘graduate without a future’ is the voter politicians need to woo’ and ‘…the British middle-class dream is falling apart.’ Gen Z and millennials are burnt out by solastagia, by the neoliberal squeeze that saw the ladder pulled up before them, by a lack of offline community, and by our politicians offering nothing but crumbs – we are right to be angry. This anger is precisely why Welsh Labour needs a new Wales Bill in the 2026 manifesto. Without the powers to provide real material change, Welsh Labour will lose.
If you’re a lucky elder member of my generation, through foresight, privilege, or sacrifice, you may now own a home (by hook or by crook), but that isn’t the experience of the majority. The majority of millennials either live under exorbitant rents with bad conditions, or they live with their parent or parents. All we want are homes that we can afford and that we can make our own, with a quality of life that is affordable and fair. There are many people in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s, trapped in a doom loop of high rents, high bills and costs, just wanting to live a life where they are able to save up a little for a rainy day. But the systems in place at the moment do not allow it. Some of us want to demand, as James Connelly did, the earth – give us a house, a garden enough to grow food, and the earth beneath it, or watch as the masses become radicalised and revolutionary; who can blame them? The Thatcherite and Victorian structures that Britain operates under have not yet been undone by devolution, no matter the good work done since 1999. And will the radicalised come Welsh Labour’s way? Not without offering them more. Much more.
Gen Z and millennials are burnt out by solastagia, by the neoliberal squeeze that saw the ladder pulled up before them, by a lack of offline community, and by our politicians offering nothing but crumbs […]
And standing clearly against the cruelty of UK Labour’s cuts to disability welfare, with a clear plan of how to get a better deal for disabled people in Wales. Westminster’s choices for disabled people are not only holding us back, they’re harming us. Wales needs the powers and the funding to be able to solve its housing crisis, similar to how Spain is tackling theirs. We are beset by crises and without more powers, there’s no answer in sight. Most of us can look at the history of Nigel Farage and know his ‘Reform UK Ltd’ are liars, but the lies they tell speak to the problems that people feel: the governments don’t do enough and austerity is killing our society. Wales needs the structures to do great things and to end austerity, or the young and those suffering the most will lash out. Understandably.
Wendy Alexander could see some of the problems inherent in the early Scottish devolution settlement. Leader of Scottish Labour in 2007 and Convener of the Scotland Bill Committee in 2010, she recognised that from young anger must come greater power for Scotland – this is the primary lesson of Scottish Labour – but she also recognised that at a time of crisis, any greater power given must accompany material change. As leader, she set up the Camlan Commission and called for “a more balanced home rule package” including greater financial accountability and new tax powers. We in Wales don’t need any more commissions: we’ve only just had the ICCFW and their recommendations are clear. What they show, just as Wendy Alexander knew in her time, was that the current devolution settlement is holding us back.
Gofod i drafod, dadlau, ac ymchwilio.
Cefnogwch brif felin drafod annibynnol Cymru.
And for Welsh Labour, it’s losing us votes. That’s clear in the latest polls. Mick Antoniw MS sees it in the subtext of his recent IWA article, but let me be clear: we will do very badly indeed without going on the offensive. Though Wendy Alexander became leader after the SNP win in 2007 and she eventually left the leader role because of a donation (which we’ve had quite enough in Welsh politics, thank you), and a decaying UK Labour, Eluned Morgan’s fate doesn’t have to be similar. We can learn from Scottish Labour’s wins and their mistakes: we can and should embrace radical positions that challenge our UK Labour counterparts, just as Wendy Alexander did, but positions that go further in material change than ever before, and deliver more powers for Wales, just like 65% of the country wants. If Wendy Alexander had been able to stay on as leader, her bold constitutional positions would have led to Scottish Labour being at the forefront of discussions, when she wrote: ‘…if there are changes that need to be made to the constitutional settlement, we should not shirk them,’ it was clear she understood that the transfer of powers meant the transfer of possibility – the possible ways to help people, materially.
The only way to combat a potential Welsh Labour 2026 loss is to go on the offensive with a new Wales Bill. Go further than Plaid’s calls for the same powers as Scotland: go further by getting more powers for control of our airspace, more powers for our Welsh Treasury, and more than rectifying the ad-hoc asymmetry of devolution across the UK – we must push for a Wales Bill that reaches ever closer to the Drakeford Government’s position of ‘four equal nations’ than ever before, a bill which starts that Confederation process, and we must detail how each of these powers will come with accompanying monies, what that money will be spent on, and why all of it will be spent on people, not on subsidising businesses’ profits.
The Thatcherite and Victorian structures that Britain operates under have not yet been undone by devolution, no matter the good work done since 1999.
Go further than any lame Thatcherite Reform rhetoric and make it clear that Faragists are wreckers. With the right powers, Welsh Labour are builders. Specifically, builders of accessible, good, and government-owned housing that will enable young and old to live without a housing crisis looming over them. Specifically, builders of a new social security system which provides basic security for all and a fairer tax regime. Specifically, we should listen to our councils to deliver the devolution of the Crown Estate precisely because Welsh Labour is the party of devolution.
In short, the third Lesson of Scottish Labour is that we must have the powers to affect material change, we must improve people’s lives directly, we must communicate that the systems we operate under are connected to how much Wales can do, and we must improve all of it. Quickly. The best step towards that is a new Wales Bill in the Welsh Labour Senedd Manifesto for 2026.
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