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A short clip from my full speech, which is available below, at the Reform conference in Wales. If you cannot here it make sure it is unmuted and your sound is on.
As I said a few days ago, when it comes to predicting what will happen in global politics we have a remarkably good track record.
We said Kamala Harris would be a disaster. We said Donald Trump would win by a landslide. We said Trump would do so while ‘realigning’ his coalition.
Back in July, we said the British Tories would collapse. We said the new Labour government would quickly be one of the most unpopular on record. And we said that Nigel Farage and Reform, like national populists across Europe, would surge, which they did, winning four million voters, five MPs, and taking one in four Tory voters.
Which is why today I feel confident in making another prediction.
Two years from now, in 2026, the same global realignment that just swept Donald Trump back into the White House, will deliver another seismic shock in British politics before going on to reshape the country’s politics at the 2029 election.
And where will this next shock, this next chapter in the realignment, take place?
Wales.
That’s right. Wales.
Why do I say this?
Because while Keir Starmer’s hapless Labour government is already widely unpopular in the polls, I simply do not believe that Kemi Badenoch’s Tory Party, which is still on life support, will be competitive across a large swathe of the country.
It will be in places like Wales, where there are major elections in 2026, as well as across England’s northern industrial Red Wall, and the coastal towns where millions of ordinary people, who are utterly sick of the Tories and what they did to this country, will turn to Farage and Reform as the realignment continues.
Much like it was Nigel Farage and the UK Independence Party between 2004 and 2015, the vote for Brexit in 2016, and the Brexit Party between 2016 and 2019, which swept through these areas over the last decade, breaking apart the once tribal bond between voters and Labour and cultivating the realignment.
I’ve never been wrong about this revolt before and I won’t be wrong this time. Trust me. Wales will deliver seismic change and underline how Reform is finishing ahead of the Tories in crunch contests that are usually ignored by much of Westminster.
The British people, in short, aren’t stupid.
Five years ago, they took a punt on the Tories, believing the likes of Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Dominic Cummings, and Kemi Badenoch when they said they would lower immigration, control our borders, defend our ways of life, reclaim our national sovereignty, and build an economy that works for everybody.
But then the people were betrayed —let down by a Tory elite class that’s shown itself to be more interested in serving its own interests than serving the country they were elected to represent. So people will not be making the same mistake again, especially in areas where the Tory brand is now completely and utterly toxic.
Why would they?
Why would they ever vote Tory again when, as I say in my full speech below, Kemi Badenoch just gave top jobs in her shadow cabinet to people who are fully opposed to to the British people regaining control over their own borders and laws by leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and the likes of Priti Patel, who completely ignored millions of ordinary people and broke her party’s own promise to the country by presiding over the wholesale liberalisation of the immigration system.
Does this look like a political party that has learned lessons and is now listening to the mood of the country? Of course not. It looks like the same old Tory party.
Which is why I agreed to share my thoughts and speak, once again, at a major conference for the self-anointed People’s Army. Under new leadership, Reform now has close to 100,000 members —nearly as many as the Tories— and had no problem filling the impressive Celtic Manor in Newport with more than 1,000 people.
I’m not a Reform member but I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think Nigel Farage and his movement are now asking the right questions —on taxation, immigration, our broken borders, our need to exit the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and push back much more strongly against the elite consensus in this country.
Which is why, last week, I joined with Reform’s five MPs to launch a national campaign, demanding that Keir Starmer and his unpopular Labour government start treating British taxpayers, workers, and families with the respect and decency they deserve by releasing and/or collecting information on how mass immigration is impacting things like crime rates, imprisonment rates, welfare, taxation, and housing, much like other countries in Europe do.
In short, I’m increasingly of the view that it’s Reform, not the Tories, that in many parts of these islands is now ideally positioned to become the major beneficiary of the realignment and a growing revolt against the old parties.
And Wales will be ground zero in this revolt in 2026. So, here’s the video of my full 30-minute speech and an exclusive photo gallery from the conference.
As always, let me know what you think in the comments.
Best wishes, Matt
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