Starting gun fired on crucial election as Wales’ parliament returns

Leaders of Welsh Labour, Plaid Cymru and Welsh Conservatives fired the starting gun on the 2026 election with heated exchanges in the Senedd on Tuesday.

Plaid’s Rhun ap Iorwerth claimed his party – which according to polls is vying with Reform for first place at May’s election – stood for hope, while Labour First Minister Eluned Morgan accused his party of trading in fantasies about independence.

Meanwhile the Tories’ Darren Millar demanded stamp duty be scrapped in Wales.

The Senedd has 10 sitting weeks before it is dissolved in April for the election.

Opinion polls suggest Labour’s decades long dominance is under threat, having won every domestic parliamentary election in Wales since 1922.

In fiery exchanges in the Cardiff Bay debating chamber, ap Iorwerth and Morgan both sketched out their upcoming election campaigns.

Ap Iorwerth opened by referring to a leaked Labour election strategy, which was reported as saying that “Reform define the anger and Plaid define the hope”.

“That is a very accurate summary, is it not, of the current state of play”, he said.

“I’m proud to lead a party offering hope when others seek to stoke anger and sow division”.

He accused Labour of talking itself into “irrelevance” and missing opportunities to stand up to Westminster.

Morgan hit back, saying: “I’m interested in hope. I’m not interested in fantasy, which is what we get from Plaid Cymru.”

She said her party made a “very significant announcement” over the Christmas break of a £2 cap on bus fares in Wales.

She picked up on comments from ap Iorwerth earlier in the day that his manifesto will “spell out how we will want to use our time in government to make the case for how we could do things differently in Wales… by taking more levers of power into our hands.

“You can call that independence, you can call it the road to independence, whatever,” he said.

Ap Iorwerth has ruled out trying to hold a referendum at least in the first term of a Plaid government.

Morgan said Labour was “the only party in Wales who believe in strong devolution within a United Kingdom context”.

Accusing Plaid of “fantasy economics,” she added: “If you want independence, you need to demonstrate how on earth you’re going to pay for it.”

Ap Iorwerth went on to accuse Morgan of settling for a “paltry sum” for rail investment in Wales, referring to the £445m earmarked in the comprehensive spending review.

He also accused the UK government of “trampling all over the devolution settlement by seeking to control how some funding is spent in Wales“.

“I am more than happy to talk about rail,” Morgan attacked back.

“Do I want more rail funding from the UK government? Damn right I do.

“Have I been silent about that? No, I have not.”

In his contribution to First Minister’s Questions, Tory Senedd leader Millar demanded that stamp duty for main home purchases is scrapped.

The levy is controlled by the Welsh government in Wales and is known as land transaction tax.

Millar said the tax is “robbing a generation of young people of the dream of holding the keys to their own front door”, accusing Labour of failing “to build enough new homes”.

Morgan said her government is “on course to deliver by the end of this Senedd term 20,000 new social homes”.

She accused the Tories of having taken a “sledgehammer to our economy” and talking Wales down. “Tory austerity caused the problems,” she said.

Millar said economists had described stamp duty as one of the “most economically damaging taxes that we have”.

But Morgan replied that most people do not pay stamp duty, and accused the Tory leader of “focusing on the richest parts of our community”.

Reform do not take part in first minister’s questions as the party only has one MS in the form of Laura Anne Jones.

On Radio Wales Breakfast earlier on Tuesday, Jones said her party had become popular without having “really” said what the party will do for Wales.

She said the country was in a “dire state”, adding: “We’ve got massive waiting lists. Our roads are in disrepair.”

Reform, she said, would be “centred around family, community, country and we’d get Wales back on its feet”.

She said it would be a party that listens to farmers and promised to centre the sustainable farming scheme of payments for farmers around food production, and stop planting trees in Uganda.

When asked who the party’s candidate was for first minister, Jones replied it would be “announced very shortly”.

“Just think how popular we are at the moment. We haven’t given you anything, really, in terms of what we’re going to do for Wales yet, and think how popular we already are.”

Pressed on whether she would lead the party, she said: “Whatever job I’m given, I’m going to do it 100%.”