For the last few weeks, most of my time has been spent campaigning for my boyfriend Owen in the Welsh Senedd elections on 7th May. I've temporarily given up my various jobs to focus on this. It's still early days at this point (Owen's candidacy hasn't even been formally registered yet) but on the whole the campaign is going really well.
Owen is an independent candidate focussing primarily on social care, disability rights and support for the most vulnerable. Regular readers will know about how he stood for Parliament in the 2024 General Election for the constituency of Monmouthshire, primarily because none of our local politicians, irrespective of what party platform they were standing on, were properly representing those with disabilities. Owen and I had spent a number of years campaigning to save Tudor Street Day Centre in Abergavenny, a campaign that was eventually successful in part because of Owen's election campaign (Owen was never really in danger of winning, but Monmouthshire was a tight marginal between Labour and the Conservatives, and his candidacy meant that Labour had to significantly improve their campaign to avoid getting the Tories back in).
As I discussed in my new year blog, Tudor Street Day Centre is now being run horrifically badly, there's been one of the most grotesque abuses of power there that I've ever seen in my life, and local politicians have been just as unhelpful as they were when we were trying to save it from being demolished. This is a big part of why Owen has decided to stand again, having previously never intended to do another venture into politics. It's two years later, and things for the most vulnerable people in our local area have not particularly improved - in fact, there's an argument that they've got even worse. Hence Owen deciding to stand for the Senedd, the constituency of Sir Fynwy Torfaen.
The logistics of standing in the Senedd are a little different to standing for Westminster. One of the major differences is that in the Senedd, the voting system is different. There's something of a strange version of proportional representation - everyone gets just one vote, there are six seats in the constituency to be won, and how many a party wins depends on how many votes they get. This makes things more democratic in one respect, but in another means that you cannot specifically choose which candidate to vote for - you vote for a party, and then the party decides who will fill the seat. I am personally not too keen on this, as I regularly champion voting for a person, not just a party - party leaders change, manifestos change, and who you felt like voting for at the time may in time turn out not to have been worth it. I always say that you should ask yourself when casting your vote, 'How much do I trust this candidate to represent my best interests?' With the Senedd elections, you can't do that, and that's a problem. However, it does give an independent candidate like Owen a slight advantage - if you vote for an independent, you do know where your vote is going. In our constituency this is also the case if you vote for the Green Party, because there is only one Green candidate - Ian Chandler.
Ian Chandler was also the Green Party candidate in 2024, and is the Cabinet Member for Social Care, Safeguarding and Accessible Health Services. You would think that with a job title like that, it would be extremely counter-productive to stand against them. Both Owen and myself would far rather be out campaigning for Ian, especially given the Green Party's recent phenomenal success at the Gorton and Denton by-election. Unfortunately, our personal experience of Ian has not filled us with confidence that they truly have an understanding of what the most vulnerable people need. They have consistently proven themselves difficult to contact, obstructive and lacking in empathy, to the extent that they once used the Nazi slogan 'final solution' at a public council meeting in the context of discussing where disabled people should go. I think this was more a slip of the tongue than an intentional dog-whistle, but I still think it demonstrates a distinct lack of recognition about how that might make vulnerable people feel, some of whom were actually in the room at the time. I like the Green Party, and have been impressed by Zack Polanski's leadership - but if I have a fault with the Green Party, it's that their candidates can be quite hit-or-miss, and whether they're worth voting for really depends on where you live. This actually is the opposite to the Labour Party's problem, where candidates are not allowed to stand if they are in slight disagreement with the leadership on anything. I hope the Green Party makes gains in the Senedd in general, and I think they have a good chance of doing so - but they do not deserve to gain a seat here.
The party that across the UK people are most concerned might make gains is Reform. What I can say is that at the time of writing, Reform have not actually announced any specific candidates intending to stand. I presume that Reform candidates will be announced soon, but it does seem quite odd given that every other major party, and even some minor parties, announced their candidacy a long time ago. I would suspect that they're struggling to find anyone - I recall in 2024, for about a week the Reform candidate on the website was constantly changing, before Richard Tice's office manager Max Windsor-Peplow was finally announced. Windsor-Peplow came to all of one hustings, before failing to show up for any others, or to the vote count, or to respond to any emails (he still came third out of nine). It's early days, but from personal experience I haven't really come across anyone on doorsteps who has expressed interest in voting Reform. Owen has come across a few, but not many. I haven't yet seen evidence that Reform has as much popularity in my area as the media would have us believe.
Of the other parties, none have really garnered much support on the doorsteps. The one that seems most popular is Plaid Cymru, in the sense that more people I've spoken to have expressed interest in them than in any other party (which still isn't a great deal of people). To be fair, I can't really criticise Plaid Cymru at the moment - when people express interest in them, I normally say something along the lines of, 'Well, I can tell you why an independent candidate is better, but to be fair they probably are the next best option.' I've had a few Tories, but more out of loyalty than because they're actually especially popular. But the really fascinating one is Labour.
To be clear, I can't immediately recall anyone I've spoken to on a doorstep who has definitively said they're going to vote Labour. This is a significant change from 2024, in which trying to battle the Labour surge sometimes felt like swimming against the tide. I don't believe this change is altogether unexpected though; polls consistently show Keir Starmer and his Government as one of the most unpopular administrations the country has ever had. In 2024, people wanted to get the Tories out by whatever means possible; in two years, Labour has absolutely squandered the good will people were willing to offer them. Labour is offering very little to the people of Sir Fynwy Torfaen, and what they're saying (if anything) simply isn't washing.
But it's not just people's reactions to the Labour Party that have been fascinating at this election. It's the Labour Party people's behaviour itself. In 2024, in spite of not really having faith in her as a politician, Owen and I ended up actually becoming quite friendly with our now MP Catherine Fookes. I haven't been desperately impressed by her in Parliament, she is an uncontroversial yes-woman who never does anything the leadership wouldn't want (this is evident from her page on TheyWorkForYou, which states that she's voted the same way as the majority of the rest of her party in 98% of instances). She still hasn't responded to my open letter about protecting juries, although she did vote to abolish them in Parliament. But I will say in her defence that she is a genuinely kind person, who has never been anything but polite and respectful to Owen, threatened to boycott a hustings that he wasn't invited to, and praised his campaign in her acceptance speech. Since she won the seat, she and Owen have somewhat stayed in touch, and she's always been encouraging of anything he's done in the community.
There has been very little encouragement like that from this cohort of Senedd candidates. On the contrary, none of them have responded to any emails Owen has sent them (in 2024 there was quite a friendly email thread between all the candidates, keeping one another aware of the different events and hustings and so on). Labour agent Peter Marsh-Jenks has actively been hostile to Owen, both in person and in public. He left a comment on an article about Owen's candidacy saying, 'Typical independent candidate, me me me me me' (which doesn't make sense anyway - aren't candidates meant to talk about who they are and what they'll do?) There was also a deeply unpleasant personal interaction between Peter and a canvasser, that I myself witnessed. We've done as much as we can to encourage disabled people to be part of our campaign and to fight for their own rights - too often, these kinds of people are completely disincentivised to take part and participate in the political process. One of our campaigners is an extremely dedicated young woman who we've become good friends with. On this occasion, she knocked on a door which turned out to be the home of Peter Marsh-Jenks. He very rudely and aggressively said to her, 'Do your research, love, I'm the Labour agent!' and slammed the door in her face. Both of us were quite taken aback by that. It is not the job of our canvassers to find out where the Labour agent lives, and it is rude and disrespectful to speak to someone on a doorstep like that, particularly if (as this canvasser was) they are visibly disabled. I was disgusted and appalled by this behaviour, and I think the fact that someone who behaves like that can hold a senior position on a Labour election campaign speaks volumes about what Labour's priorities actually are, and the fact that they do not have the best interests of the community's most vulnerable people at heart.
As unpleasant as that experience was, I am really hopeful that it's a reflection of how badly Labour is performing. More than support for any particular party, what I have had quite often on doorsteps is people saying 'I'm not voting because I don't trust any of them', and I've responded to that by nodding and saying, 'Yes, I completely understand why you feel that way. That's why my boyfriend is standing, because he didn't want to vote for any of this sorry lot either.' And I've had some really interesting conversations from that, some people who actually did seem to be considering voting independent after initially not planning on voting at all. A week is a long time in politics, and we still have six and a half weeks to go, so I'm certainly not predicting anything; but I am cautiously optimistic that it is possible for Owen to win. The increased warmth from members of the public, and substantially increased hostility from the other candidates (particularly Labour) demonstrate that something has shifted. People don't want shiny and dishonest centrism. They also, contrary to popular belief, don't want nationalism and fascism. People want ordinary folk who are prepared to listen and understand them, and I really hope we see that reflected in the result on 7th May.
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