He has ended decades of political domination by the Labour Party in Wales and is on course to become the top elected politician in Cardiff, the Welsh capital. In elections this week he defeated Reform U.K., the right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage.
And while he says he has a “love affair” with the United States, that does not extend to its current president.
Rhun ap Iorwerth, 53, leads Plaid Cymru, a center-left nationalist party that prevailed in elections to the Welsh Parliament, known as the Senedd.
No single party achieved an overall majority under the proportionate system that Wales uses. But Plaid Cymru finished first with 43 out of 96 seats, while Reform came second with 34 seats. Mr. ap Iorwerth, who is expected to become Wales’s first minister, a rough equivalent to prime minister, has promised to reach out to other parties while ruling out any collaboration with Reform “because they are diametrically opposed to values that are at the core of who I am and what my party is,” he said.
In an interview before the elections, Mr. ap Iorwerth (his name is pronounced Rheen ap YORR-werth), said the growth of the populist right was “playing out in Wales as it is pretty much everywhere.”
“In the United States, it’s Trump,” he said. “We see it in South America, we see it across Europe, and it happens to be Nigel Farage’s Reform here in the U.K.”
Part of his pitch to Welsh voters was that a vote for his party was a vote to stop Reform. “Whilst I want people to make a positive decision to vote Plaid Cymru based on our policies on health and education, job creation and child care and standing up for Wales, there’s also a very, very compelling tactical reason to give a vote to Plaid Cymru: to keep Reform out,” he said.
Born in Tonteg, just outside Cardiff, Mr. ap Iorwerth, who speaks Welsh fluently, moved to the island of Anglesey, in the country’s north, at the age of 5. After studying in Cardiff, he spent around two decades as a political reporter and a radio and television personality with the BBC, mainly in Wales. In 2013, he was elected for the first time to the Senedd, becoming his party’s leader a decade later.
Sipping tea at a hotel in Cardiff recently, he predicted that dramatic political change was coming to Wales, a country of more than three million people. Even before votes were cast, it was clear that the Labour Party, after 100 years of winning elections in Wales, and after having held the Welsh first minister’s role for all 27 years of its existence, was facing defeat.
“It’s deep disillusionment with Keir Starmer’s leadership,” he said, referring to the British prime minister, adding that “this entitlement of Labour had to be brought to an end.”
The economics behind Plaid’s plans, which include cutting wait times for health care, expanding child care, improving skills and creating jobs, have been questioned by some. Mr. ap Iorwerth acknowledged they were ambitious but said he wanted to “push the boundaries of what Wales has achieved,” ending years of “missed opportunities and managed decline.”
And while his party, which was founded about a century ago, seeks independence for Wales, that goal is not at the top of the agenda for now. “This election isn’t about independence,” Mr. ap Iorwerth said. “There’s no referendum on independence.”
However, he said he hoped that Wales and Scotland — where the Scottish National Party, which favors independence for Scotland, finished first in elections — “can work together to seek more equity, more fairness, a new attitude from the U.K. government.”
Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, has established a rapport with President Trump, but Mr. ap Iorwerth is more openly critical of the administration and the war against Iran.
“I despair,” he said when asked about the international climate, adding that this was despite a “love affair with America” dating from the 1980s when his parents — both prominent campaigners for Wales’s language and culture — taught Welsh heritage courses at Keuka College in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
Mr. ap Iorwerth still visits the United States frequently, his father’s second wife is American (his mother died in 2012), and he says he would like to cultivate closer ties between Wales and the United States. He said his agenda was about domestic policy, but also about “raising our level of confidence as a nation.”
“We do that at home, but we do it internationally,” he said.
But he called on American political leaders “to show values of compassion that we currently aren’t seeing in the White House.”
“I’ve always admired America, but I have this real sense that leadership in America now doesn’t reflect those American values — that attracted me so much — of decency,” he said.
Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe.
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