Voters go to the polls on Thursday in a crucial by-election in Caerphilly, south Wales, which is being seen as a bellwether for the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and the collapse in support for Labour.
Labour has dominated politics in the area for more than 100 years.
However, if Reform pinches Caerphilly’s Senedd (Welsh parliament) seat – it is in a two-horse by-election race with Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru – it will buttress its claim to be on course to win the next UK election.
Polls suggest the battle between Reform and Plaid may go to the wire.
RM Block
A recent Survation survey of Caerphilly voters had Reform on 42 per cent with Plaid on 38 per cent. Labour was in distant third place on just 12 per cent in its former stronghold.
Plaid, however, could benefit from an element of anti-Reform so-called “tactical voting”, where supporters of other parties back the Welsh nationalists to keep Reform out.
Either way, the result and the heralding of change will underline the dramatic realignment that is under way in Welsh and UK politics, with many voters now rejecting the two big parties, Labour and the Conservatives.
Farage has campaigned heavily in Caerphilly, an old coal mining town in the valleys north of Cardiff. The valleys region is one of the most economically disadvantaged in Britain, home to many of the kind of white working class voters that Reform usually targets.
Plaid Cymru, meanwhile, is marginally in front of Reform in Wales-wide polls, in advance of a full round of Senedd elections next May.
Labour, also a distant third in those polls, has led successive Welsh governments since devolution in 1999. But Plaid and Reform now seem to be in a fight to be the biggest party in the next Senedd.
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The Caerphilly by-election was called after the death in tragic circumstances in August of the sitting Labour Senedd member, Hefin David. The opening of the inquest into his death heard he was found by his sister hanging at his home, according to a BBC report. He was the partner of Wales’s minister for higher education, Vikki Howells.
Plaid’s candidate is veteran local councillor Lindsay Whittle, who has contested the Caerphilly Westminster seat 10 times since the 1980s, while this is his seventh run for the Senedd. However, senior Plaid figures told The Irish Times this month at the party’s conference in Swansea that they felt he had a real chance this time, with Labour’s support collapsing and some voters worried by the rise of the anti-migrant Reform UK.
“Our activism in Caerphilly shows that the enthusiasm is there for our party,” said Helen Fychan, a Trinity College Dublin-educated Plaid member of the Senedd.
[ The Irish Times view on Welsh politics: change in the valleysOpens in new window ]
Deputy Plaid Cymru leader Delyth Jewell, who is from the area and also a member of the Senedd, said the by-election was “generating excitement” in the party. The party believes it could snatch the seat from under the nose of Reform, especially if there is a low turnout – Reform’s base is also motivated and it does well in high turnouts.
“This moment is the test for the Wales we want to see in future,” she said this month at the conference in Swansea. “Plaid Cymru versus Reform – I can’t imagine two more extremely different visions for our nation.”
The youthful Reform candidate, Llyr Powell, has repeatedly homed in on the issue of migration during his campaign, even though Caerphilly is one of the areas of Britain least touched by the issue.
On Wednesday, he urged his supporters to turn out in big numbers: “This is our chance for real change.”
For Labour, it may signify change of a different sort. Rumours have swirled in Westminster that a dire Senedd result for the party next May could even threaten the position of UK prime minister, Keir Starmer.
The Caerphilly by-election is being watched closely in Wales, and from afar.
