Plaid won for several reasons. By all accounts, Lindsay Whittle was an excellent candidate. A local man who has stood for the party 14 times, his long record of campaigning as an activist and a councillor stands in sharp contrast to the far right carnival that came to town, and won't likely be seen again until next year's Senedd campaign begins. And also against the faceless suits that Labour typically favours as candidates. Also in Plaid's favour is their never having been tested with office, which is married to a centre left platform few would find objectionable. As the party's leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has ruled out pushing for independence, their offering is not that dissimilar to Labour's of the recent past. Which is handy, given Wales is the most Labour of the UK's constituent nations.
Or rather, was. For the other story of the night was the complete collapse of Labour's position. Since Keir Starmer won the general election, Welsh Labour's has nose dived. The dominance of the party, which endured during the Blair, Brown, Miliband, and Corbyn years is perched on a precipice. Recent polling indicates their precarity, and Caerphilly's loss - an unwavering stronghold for a century - underlines it. The 2026 elections are set on being a repeat of Labour's 2015 Scotland wipe out. Yes, Welsh politics has its own dynamic not entirely beholden to Westminster. The scandal around Vaughan Gething's resignation as First Minister, which involved a £200k donation from a businessman convicted of environmental offences, "coincidental" awarding of government loans to his companies, and fibbing to the Covid inquiry about the deletion of messages have all eroded the party's standing. But this crisis was compounded by the hapless, hopeless farce of Labour in Westminster. Polling suggests that Plaid's vote was overwhelmingly composed of former Labour voters, and there's no reason to believe this decomposition won't carry on eating their support. It couldn't happen to a nicer Labour leadership.
Returning to Reform, despite putting a brave face on it Farage and friends will be disappointed. Their chair, David Bull, boasted about how they went from nothing to 36% in the blink of an eye. Yes, but with the media pack doing their campaigning for them and their agenda dominating politics, they should have lived up to the hype. Which has led to speculation about the role of tactical voting to keep Reform out. In such a close fought contest, it's reasonable to assume this was a factor. But is this something we're going to see more of? By and large, council by-elections are seen not to matter, and here there is seemingly no evidence of this happening so far. This hasn't stopped the FT from speculating that this might save Labour's bacon. Or at least mitigate future losses.
I think this misunderstands the dynamics of protest voting right now. Because Labour are in government and have prioritised making the rich richer, scapegoating refugees and trans people, starving public services of funds, reinforcing the curbs on protest introduced by the Tories, attacking the most vulnerable, and parading their arrogance while doing so, they have unified a vast ball of opposition. If you don't want Farage or Farage-lite policies, why vote for the Labour candidate now there are viable alternatives? Be it Plaid, or the SNP, or the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens, or Your Party when it finally arrives properly. As Labour support has collapsed almost everywhere, banking on tactical voting to keep them in and Reform out applies to so few areas that, as strategies go, it's worthless. And that's before even attempting to persuade the voters the party has abandoned that they should come back. Tactical voting isn't going to work during the next round of second order elections, which means Starmer will be toast after May. But if by some horrendous miracle he weathers the fall out, for as long as he, right wing Labour, and their politics rule the party, the fate sure to befall them next Spring will keep repeating year after year, devolved government election after council election after parliamentary by-election. By the time 2029 comes Labour's support will have withered on the vine.
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6 comments:
Even for the author of a book about the decline of the Conservative party it is striking that you didn't even mention the tories going from 20 to 2 percent.
And it doesn't help that Starmer seems to prefer to be in the chorus in Egypt trying to pretend he had something to do with a 'ceasefire' or posing as leader of a coalition of the willing to stand up to Russia - so long as the USA backs him up. Nor do the US leadership help by continually saying the UK and Europe is irrelevant. He seems to think that being an international statesman will impress voters.
Nor does it help that many of their quickish decisions eg over Maccabi Tel Aviv, blow up in their faces and so many of their Ministers are poor at the job, though reliably right wing.
As you say, electoral defeat could not come to a more deserving bunch of chancers.
On a tangent, I do not see Your Party doing anything but disintegrating. A scan of the revolutionary press shows SWP setting up branches, CPGB PC trying to internve, RCP holding meetings to try and set some up, Socialist Party pushing to get in and so on. Their track record suggests YP will go the same way as RESPECT et al. No signiciant threat to Labour but a source of demoralisation to the non-revs who signed up with hope.
Even I find it hard to pretend they're any way relevant.
The Conservative Party "brand" does indeed seem to be about to disappear - hurrah. Unfortunately I predict that it will reappear before the next General Election simply rebranded as Reform , because Farage has always been a far right saloon bar Tory, wanting to lead the Tory Party , not some sort of radical system breaker. So, as Farage tries to put together a nationwide candidates list for the next election he will find the only viable, experienced, candidates, given the bonkers dross available within the existing Reform stable of eccentrics, will be existing Tory MPs , who, for Farage will do just fine . These Tory MPs will be all too willing to change their rosettes for those of Reform, as Conservative electoral wipeout , and their cushy MP careers, face oblivion.
This Tory Party mk 2 will be VERY nasty indeed , but given the hopeless mess of Your Party, and the very niche radical big city middle class appeal of the currently Left posturing Greens under the blatant opportunist Zak Polanski, this rebranded Tory Party could yet be a significant power in Parliament after the next General Election. The slippery Lib Dems will probably do very well out of this mess, with the electorate largely forgetting their dire role in the Lib/Tory Coalition under Cameron and Clegg .
Anon 9:26's comment on Starmer's preference for playing the global warmonger "statesman", rather than concerning himself with the tiresome problems of the UK, is all too true. The leading role the UK' s MI6 and UK special forces has played throughout the Ukraine v Russia NATO proxy war needs to be taken into account when guessing the possible political context of the next General Election. It is very possible, and just last week actually warned about by the Russians, that if the UK in particular continues to escalate its deep strike Storm Shadow and drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and chemical plants (and it IS UK technicians and our satellite nav which fires and directs these weapons, not Ukrainian soldiers), Russia will respond "appropriately" with its own escalation. If The Russians, for instance, hit the Pembroke Refinery in Milford Haven with a hypersonic missile in retalliation , which is increasingly possible, we will be in a very different, self inflicted, ball game , with likely a Tory/Lib Dem/ Labour National Government taking over. Unlikely ? Only to a UK population, along with UK Left , totally oblivious to the ever escalating danger Starmer and his US vassal fellow NATO/EU warmongers have placed us all in.
2 in every 3 disaffected petit bourgeoisie former Tory voters go to Reform, 2 in every 3 disaffected Labour voters go to the next most viable alternative (to the left of the Tories) in their area. Why not?
McSweeney's "strategy", if that's the right word for it, hinges on (1) England not having a single established viable alternative nationwide like the SNP and Plaid, (2) most English voters not having sufficient political awareness to take even the most perfunctory look at the voting characteristics of their ward (much less actually talk to anyone in it!), in order to identify the best-established local alternative. I.e. the assumption that English voters understand the system enough to try and vote tactically, but not enough to avoid the mistake of trying to do it based solely on what they read in the national papers, or perhaps on social media that can be easily astroturfed.
There are any number of sayings to the effect that one should never underestimate the gullibility of the general public, and the general public in England certainly have a fairly wretched track record (hence their current benighted state of being). But it's still a hell of a stretch.
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