The long-awaited 2026 Senedd election is now upon us. This is our one chance in five years to tell those in charge, definitively, what we think of their record, and to actually enact some serious change, beyond the superficial “consultation” and “listening” they all say they do between elections.

Anything related to the NHS, education, environment, housing and transport, among other things, is on the ballot. This election isn’t about immigration or bin collections. It is about Wales, and who will stand up for us.

Back in 2021, Wales was in a sort of ‘Labour Mania’. Mark Drakeford was at the peak of his popularity for going against Boris Johnson during COVID, we were in the midst of a tremendous vaccine rollout, and the focus was on recovering the NHS, economy and the nation at-large, from its greatest crisis since the Second World War.

Now it’s our turn to judge them on that.

NHS waiting lists remain longer than they were in May 2021, and the Welsh Government has failed to accomplish its rather unambitious target of bringing them below 600,000 by March 2026. The lists continued to grow well into 2025, and have only recently started to come down. Ambulance and A&E waits remain worse than target levels. Over 10,000 people spent over 12 hours in A&E in March alone.

We continue to lag behind the much of the rest of the UK economically, with businesses continuing to struggle, poverty rates creeping back up after a promising couple of years post-pandemic, and average earnings remaining near the bottom of the UK ranking.

I’m not going to tell you who to vote for; I haven’t long decided myself.

What I am going to tell you to do, however, is to look at the state of the country around you. Look at our NHS, look at our schools, our environment, our transport network. Just about any devolved matter. Really look at it.

If you’re considering for Labour, I implore you to ask yourself, in light of everything, do you really think it’s all good enough? Is this as good as it gets? And do you really want four more years of this?

Do you really want to vote for the party of Vaughan Gething, and his dodgy donations and disappearing messages? The party which has been in power for 27 years but whose only tangible achievement in that time is free prescriptions?

When they remind you of what you have and tell you to be grateful, don’t lose sight of what they’re trying to distract you from.

I have to address Reform UK, too. Their popularity is built on a genuine and sincere dissatisfaction with the state of Labour’s Wales and UK, but do you trust them to do any better? Nigel Farage doesn’t care about Wales. They can’t be trusted to run the handful of councils they control in England, so how can they be trusted to deliver for a country? They are populists, they will ‘drain the swamp’, so to speak, but they won’t make Wales a better place. If you vote Reform and expect them to sort out immigration, prepare to be disappointed. It’s not devolved.

Plaid Cymru will stand up for Wales, that’s for sure, but don’t forget how they propped Labour up. Whenever Labour have asked, Plaid have been there for them. They worked together to give us this abominable electoral system. Under Rhun ap Iorwerth they have tried to distance themselves from Labour, but it’s hard to see past the co-operation agreement.

Deciding how to vote was not an easy task for me, but it was an essential one. Balancing the ideas of what is a very weak talent pool is difficult.

Whoever you decide to vote for, think about it carefully, like Wales’ future depends on it, because it does. This isn’t as good as it gets.

Whatever your plans on Thursday the 7th of May, take just a few minutes out of it to do your civic duty.

For Wales’ sake, vote.