Plaid Cymru biggest party in Senedd, ending 100 years of Labour control

Plaid Cymru have won 42 seats in Wales’s Senedd election, putting the Welsh nationalists in position to form a minority government and ending more than 100 years of Labour hegemony. Polls consistently suggested Plaid Cymru and Reform UK were neck and neck in the race to become the biggest party under Wales’s new more proportional voting system. As in last year’s closely watched Caerphilly Senedd byelection, however, the contest was not as close as predicted. Reform has come in second, with 34 seats – up from 1% of the vote share in 2021’s election. Labour, for so long Wales’s political behemoth, has limped into third place with just nine seats in a 96-seat parliament. Victory for Plaid makes a Welsh independence referendum a future possibility, and means all three of the UK’s Celtic nations would be controlled by separatist parties, raising the prospect of significant constitutional disputes with Downing Street. Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid leader, had looked calm and confident as he arrived for his count at Venue Cymru in the north Wales seaside town of Llandudno, where the party won three seats, Reform two and the Tories one. In a speech after securing his seat, ap Iorwerth said it had been a privilege to serve the community he had been raised in – Ynys Môn, the island of Anglesey. He continued: “Today is about the future of our communities here and our nation as a whole. We have offered leadership locally as we offer leadership to all of Wales. …