\n<\/p>\n
A wipeout for Labour in next May\u2019s local elections would spell the end of Keir Starmer\u2019s premiership, MPs have said, after the party suffered a crushing defeat in its traditional heartland in Wales.<\/p>\n
Though Plaid Cymru beat Reform UK to capture the Senedd seat in Caerphilly, the result highlighted a striking collapse of Labour\u2019s vote, prompting fears in Westminster that Labour could be reduced to third place in Wales, a loss that would leave the leader\u2019s position unrecoverable.<\/p>\n
In a town that Labour has controlled for more than a century and where it still has an MP, it secured just 11% of the vote, a negative swing of 27%. The humiliating result showed that the party is highly vulnerable to challenges from other progressive parties, as well as from Reform.<\/p>\n
It provoked renewed anger and concern from some Labour MPs, with one condemning what they called a \u201ctotally incoherent\u201d strategy within No 10. \u201cIf the national vote across Wales in May is even in the ballpark of Caerphilly, there\u2019s absolutely no way we can carry on like we are after that,\u201d one senior backbencher said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, parties in government struggle in byelections, but when your vote collapses to that extent, someone has got to take responsibility for it. Everyone\u2019s miserable, everyone\u2019s despondent. It\u2019s not as if there is an obvious sort of answer or successor to get us out of this mess. But we\u2019re all pretty clear, we can\u2019t just carry on as we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The May elections, which include contests for more than 1,600 council seats across England, as well as for the Welsh and Scottish parliaments, have long been seen as a potential crossroads for Starmer, with some senior ministers predicting he could face a challenge if losses are particularly steep.<\/p>\n
In Caerphilly, Plaid Cymru\u2019s candidate, Lindsay Whittle, received 15,961 votes, more than 47% of the total, while Reform\u2019s Ll\u0177r Powell, who had been the favourite, was almost 4,000 votes behind.<\/p>\n
Result graph <\/p>\n
The loss is a blow to Reform, especially after Nigel Farage travelled to the area more than once. But Powell said the race had taught the party valuable lessons before next May: \u201cA big part of what we were trying to do here is to master our campaigning. We\u2019ve trained so many people up on our systems. We\u2019re now a grassroots campaigning party.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Labour collapse was widely expected, it has brought practical difficulties \u2013 it now holds just 29 of the 60 Senedd seats, making it harder to pass its budget \u2013 plus a more existential worry that the party has no answers to the challenge faced by Reform and, increasingly, other parties on the left.<\/p>\n
Many Labour MPs are worried that even if similar levels of tactical voting can hold off Reform in some areas, the beneficiaries could often be Plaid in Wales, the Scottish National party in Scotland and potentially the Greens or Liberal Democrats in parts of England.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur strategy is based on the idea we can unify progressive voters around a \u2018stop Reform\u2019 campaign,\u201d one MP said. \u201cThat works so long as you remain the most viable progressive party. But if people start to think that it\u2019s maybe another party, then suddenly that tactical voting starts to work against Labour and you get punished really badly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several MPs said that while they had been buoyed up by Starmer\u2019s passionate speech to the Labour conference in late September, in which he talked about leading a \u201cfight for the soul\u201d of the nation against Reform, there had been little to follow this up.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want to hear not just what Labour stands against, but what it stands for,\u201d one MP said.<\/p>\n
Another said: \u201cHaving managed to somehow stick his head outside the hostage cell, Keir\u2019s captors have got him back inside and have sent out Shabana Mahmood to explain what we\u2019ll do to people of different national origins who live and work in the UK. It is totally incoherent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plaid\u2019s win was being put down in part to its clear, passionate call for the people of south Wales to reject Reform\u2019s stance on immigration.<\/p>\n
<\/span>The Plaid Cymru leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth (left) walks to the Senedd in Cardiff with Lindsay Whittle after the byelection victory.<\/span> Photograph: Matthew Horwood\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Rhun ap Iorwerth, the party\u2019s leader, said the people of Caerphilly had chosen \u201chope over division and progress over the tired status quo\u201d. He added: \u201cWe are now the real choice for Wales, the only party able to stop billionaire-backed Reform and offer a better future that works for everyone. Wales is ready for new leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n Farage, who did not attend the count, said on social media that he had expected Reform to get 12,000 votes, which it did, but that this was not enough in the face of \u201cthe total collapse of the Labour vote to Plaid\u201d, something he said was in part down to the popularity of Whittle, who had been a local councillor for nearly 50 years.<\/p>\n Farage added: \u201cThe Senedd elections next year are a two-horse race between Reform UK and Plaid Cymru.\u201d<\/p>\n This is a vision shared by many Labour MPs, who are unlikely to be reassured by Downing Street\u2019s words about byelections being \u201calways difficult for incumbent governments\u201d.<\/p>\n Another senior Labour MP said Thursday\u2019s result, if replicated in May, \u201cshould be a blaring alarm\u201d for a change in leadership. \u201cWe can\u2019t just drift through winter on autopilot,\u201d they said. \u201cThe loss of Caerphilly is the direct result of the party losing touch with its own voters.\u201d<\/p>\n Others were public in their call for change. Mainstream, the new Andy Burnham-backed centre-left Labour grouping, called the result \u201ca tragedy, but not a surprise\u201d, adding: \u201cSo long as UK Labour governs without a clear vision, detached from its moral purpose and democratic socialist foundations, losses like this will only become more frequent.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to the BBC after the result, the Labour Senedd member Alun Davies criticised his party in Westminster for the way it had been speaking about refugees and \u201cusing the language of Reform\u201d.<\/p>\n But the Cabinet Office minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said this was not a debate that could be ducked: \u201cWith regard to the issue of the small boats crossing the English Channel and securing our borders, that is because people are saying to us, very clearly, it\u2019s a huge priority for them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A wipeout for Labour in next May\u2019s local elections would spell the end of Keir Starmer\u2019s premiership, MPs have said, after the party suffered a crushing defeat in its traditional heartland in Wales. Though Plaid Cymru beat Reform UK to capture the Senedd seat in Caerphilly, the result highlighted a striking collapse of Labour\u2019s vote,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3580,1346,134,2755,414,1347,2640,17830],"class_list":{"0":"post-30356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-keir","10":"tag-labour","11":"tag-local","12":"tag-mps","13":"tag-starmer","14":"tag-survive","15":"tag-wipeout"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}