As the year starts again in Cardiff Bay, Senedd members were back, wishing each other a Happy New Year, pulling up their seats in the canteen tucking into the day’s special of cottage pie.
Plaid Cymru decided to hold a first day back press conference and most of the questions from journalists were on one topic, the upcoming budget.
Mark Drakeford announced his draft budget in December saying it was a good news story. The Welsh Government Finance Minister said there was more money available to the Welsh Government to distribute thanks to the Labour UK Government and no government department having to make cuts. However it’s only good news if his party can get its spending plans approved by Senedd. And at the moment it doesn’t have enough votes. To get support for its spending plans, it needs the backing of either the Conservatives, Plaid Cymru, sole Lib Dem Jane Dodds, or rank outsider would be independent MS Rhun ab Owen.
The immediate response from Plaid Cymru’s finance spokesperson Heledd Fychan on the day the budget was announced was simple, when asked if her party would back the budget, she said simply: “No”. When he unexpectedly became Tory leader, Darren Millar, said he would not either. So it all seems to land with Jane Dodds, because a deal with the tarnished Mr ab Owen is surely too out there to even consider. Get the latest Welsh news headlines delivered free to your inbox every day
Mr ap Iorwerth told journalists his party hadn’t met once with Labour since the draft budget was announced to negotiate any budget. His message was that it is Labour’s problem. I think. Because despite repeating time and time again that his party didn’t plan to help Labour out, when he was asked by an ITV journalist what his red lines were, he gave them. He listed things that will be no surprise to anyone who has listened to Welsh politics in recent years. He wants the lost billions of HS2 to come to Wales, he wants the Barnett formula reworked, and he wants the Crown Estate devolved to Wales.
Those are all things that are not in the Welsh Government’s remit, they are UK Government matters, and Keir Starmer needs nothing from Plaid Cymru that would make any of those worthwhile. Eluned Morgan says she keeps raising HS2 with the Prime Minister and yet he seems to have indicated to his political ally he does not plan to revisit the complicated financial agreement that led to Wales missing out money from HS2, so why would he give it to an opposition group?
So why pick those things?
It might be that Plaid has decided it will not back the budget, no matter what Labour offers so why not pick the biggest stick with which to batter Labour with. Their policy could well be to show up Labour’s weaknesses in terms of electoral numbers. If that’s the tactic, and the budget fails to pass, Labour will try to make Plaid and its other rivals look irresponsible. Mark Drakeford has already said Plaid face a “day of reckoning” and that if it does not back the budget, it will mean Wales misses out financially. The First Minister has said that could mean the £1bn-plus Wales got in Rachel Reeves’ budget would be at risk. That is a heck of a gamble.
Mark Drakeford has said he thinks the Senedd will come together because it is none of their interests for there to be no budget. In an interview with WalesOnline on draft budget day, Mr Drakeford said: “I think it’s utterly baffling to anybody who’s listening and it isn’t serious politics. If you’re a party that aspires to be in government, you have to be a party that is prepared to do the hard work that being in government means. Gesture politics, and voting against something because it doesn’t give you everything you want, when it’s actually offering you quite a lot of what you say is needed is not serious politics and that’s the challenge for Plaid Cymru.”
When this was put to Rhun ap Iorwerth and he was asked if his party was serious, the Plaid Cymru leader said: “That sounds to me like a governing Labour party feeling they are entitled to have their budget passed, in whatever form it is put forward.”
The Ynys Mon MS said: “We’re very clear on this, we’re a party that takes our role very seriously on wanting to use our influence for the people we represent. We’ve shown in recent years our willingness to get government to do things it otherwise wouldn’t do by entering into a cooperation agreement, that came to an end, we can re-rehearse what happened around that but now we have Labour putting together its own budget and its responsibility to get it through.”
Mr ap Iorwerth repeated time and time again in his press conference that Labour had broken its promise to the people of Wales. “It’s become evidently clear to everyone that ‘partnership in power’ is a fallacy and Welsh Labour and their unwillingness or unpreparedness to challenge their masters in London is holding Wales back,” he said.
The big question is how far Plaid would be willing to take this. In America, the public is used to stalemates between Republicans and Democrats in Congress which mean spending plans do not get passed. There are systems in place called temporary continuing resolutions to keep programmes running at year-before levels.
In Wales, this is new territory. Would the public blame the governing party for being unable to govern. Or would they buy Mark Drakeford’s line and blame the opposition parties for asking for concessions beyond the Welsh Government’s powers.
Under the protocols in Wales, if the Welsh Government’s annual budget motion does not pass by the start of the financial year the budgets of the Welsh Government and its directly funded bodies would revert to 75% of the previous financial year. The budget for 2024-25 was brutal for Wales, a year where almost every department had cuts.
The First Minister says that without a budget the £1bn of money promised to Wales by the UK Government at risk. She tried to put pressure on the other parties in plenary on Tuesday, January 7, that the the £100 cap to people in terms of domiciliary care would only continue “if” a budget passed. She told Mr ap Iorwerth that reform of the Barnett formula would not be granted by the UK Government if the Senedd chamber “turned down an uplift of £1.3bn”. “There’s no way they will take us seriously,” she told him.
Plaid Cymru would say that Labour is the party of government that it is responsible for passing its spending plans and if it can’t get agreement to do so then only it is to blame. But the risk to Plaid is that the public responds to chaos in Cardiff Bay with disillusionment, anger and a protest vote at the Welsh election in May 2026. Everyone knows the name of the party most likely to benefit from that. It’s led by a man called Nigel.
Will Plaid change its mind the nearer the crucial vote comes? When asked if Plaid’s position would change if, in say February there is no deal with any other party, Mr ap Iorwerth answered: “Remember that we’re not saying nothing, we’re making it very clear what we believe we’re holding this government to account for. I refer again to the ‘partnership in power’ that we were told would make a real difference to the outcome for Wales following Keir Starmer’s election as Prime Minister. Two Labour governments would together be able to deliver for Wales in a way a Conservative government in Westminster working with a Welsh Government wouldn’t.
“Where is the signal that this partnership in power is delivering?”
Asked again if his party’s position could change to ensure a budget passed, he said: “We’re not in a position where we’re seeking a deal on the budget. Labour is in a position where it’s presumably thinking how it will get a budget through, these are questions you should be asking Labour”.
The question was then asked in a different way, with Mr ap Iorwerth asked if Jane Dodds, the most likely person to back a deal with Labour, decided not to do so, would his party be prepared to allow a budget to fail to pass in the Welsh Parliament.
“This is a question that you have to put to Labour, there are things they could do to get cross-party support in the Senedd.”
“I will make our position clear, we have a vision for government we will be putting to the people of Wales in May 2026, we’re focussed on that, Labour are in government and they are focussed, presumably on how to get their budget through, those are questions for Labour at this point”.
But then he produced red lines that he said would lead his party to the negotiation table. “Two particular elements that we’re really looking to Labour to deliver on is a) the promise of billions of pounds of HS2 funding so we can make an investment in our infrastructure, plus, more generally, the kind of clean slate of funding for Wales including getting rid of the outdated Barnett Formula that Carwyn Jones was talking about when he was First Minister. Labour were all keen to change when they were in opposition at Westminster. Show us now that when you’re in power you’re ready to get to grips with those issues and what that can mean in terms of spending envelope we have for Wales and we can talk. We’ve made this very very clear, we’re waiting”.
He said that if “the government would talk seriously about £4bn then of course we’ll sit down,” he said. “Let’s see a commitment to get rid of the Barnett formula, let’s see the Crown Estate being devolved, these are things we’ll talk about, currently there is nothing to negotiate”.
So far Jane Dodds has stayed quiet on her plan. We have asked Jane Dodds for an interview to hear where she stands on the budget, they will, if she grants it, potentially be very important words indeed.