The UK’s ruling Labour Party has suffered a crushing defeat in local by-elections, losing a “safe” seat it had held for 107 years.
It lost the Caerphilly Senedd [Welsh Parliament] seat to the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru.
Lindsay Whittle, the 72-year-old lead candidate of Plaid Cymru, who had been a candidate 13 times before, secured 15,960 votes.
Reform UK, the right-wing party of Nigel Farage, came second, scoring 12,113 votes, up from 495 in 2021.
Welsh Labour came in a distant third, with 3,713 votes, representing a huge 27 per cent swing away from the party.
The result, declared in the early hours of this morning following a record voter turnout, marks the first time the party has been ousted from the area since 1918.
Caerphilly, a former mining stronghold synonymous with the party’s industrial roots, had long been a bastion of Labour support.
In his victory speech, Whittle said: “Wales, we are at the dawn of a new beginning. I look forward to playing my part for a new Wales.
“It’s better than scoring the winning try for Wales against New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup!”
He also paid tribute to his predecessor, Labour member of the Senedd (MS) Hefin David, whose death triggered the by-election.
“He will be a hard act to follow. I will never fill his shoes but I promise you I will walk the same path that he did, and I can pay no finer tribute to an excellent man,” Whittle said.
Welsh Labour said it was a “by-election in the toughest of circumstances and in the midst of difficult headwinds nationally”.
Nick Thomas-Symonds MP, Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office, told Sky News today that “frustrations” with the “pace of change” led to Labour’s loss.
“I’m not shying away from how disappointing the results is,” he said.
“What I found on the doorsteps was a real desire for more change, a frustration about the pace of change. That was coming through to me very strongly when I was speaking to people, I think that’s been reflected in the result.”
Labour MS and Deputy First Minister of Wales Huw Irranca-Davies said the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer must “get back to bread and butter things” such as addressing the cost of living, instead of focusing on immigration.
“We’ve got to get better,” he said.
Chairman of Reform UK David Bull told Sky News: “I actually think the problem for us was the MRP poll, which was released two or three days ago.”
MRP stands for Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification. It is a statistical modelling technique where a very large poll is combined with other sources of information such as census data to estimate, for example, the local levels of support for parties in a constituency.
“It showed us on 42 per cent, Plaid on 38 per cent and it changed some people’s minds,” Bull said.
“I’ve heard tales from Lib Dem supporters, even Tories, actually voting tactically for Plaid to keep us out.”
Since Wales had its own Parliament, effective from 1999, Labour has been the majority party there but, according to recent polling, Plaid Cymru and Reform UK will be the two biggest in Wales next year, when there are Senedd elections.
