Never has a Welsh Senedd election seemed so interesting; the Caerphilly by election marks a true turning point in history. It is the moment when the duopoly that has ruled British politics for the past century finally crumbled. The question was never: could Labour hang on in the face of a challenge from an up-start party? Many by-elections have asked this. Rather, the question was this: which up-start party could benefit from Labour’s demise? Voters have shown that they are just as determined to do to the Labour party what they did to the Conservatives at the 2024 general election.
This the Balkanisation of UK politics, and it is going to make the next general election the most unpredictable in history. We haven’t seen the end of two-way contests – our first-past-the-post system will make sure of that. But those two-way battles will not necessarily involve either Labour or the Conservatives. Instead, depending on the local demography, it could be Reform versus the Greens, the Lib Dems versus the SNP. Or it could be between parties which have yet to be founded. The UK political market has never been so open to new parties. The success of pro-Palestinian candidates in the 2024 election shows that there is a clear opening for an Islamic party. There is surely a market, too, for a shamelessly pro-migration party which would be capable of seizing some of our university towns. What about a libertarian party? I can see a Cornish independence party taking seats in that county – possible a Yorkshire one, too.
It is going to make election nights more colourful, but what will it mean for the business of trying to form a government? Polls currently suggest a huge majority for Reform. But does that seem more or less likely after the party was denied what looked a likely victory in Caerphilly? On the positive side, from Nigel Farage’s point of view, it shows that Labour is dead – and this after ruling Wales as a one-party state for the past quarter of century. One the negative side, it shows that voters might be prepared to gang up on Reform to try to deny it victory. It is improbable that large numbers of people in Caerphilly really want Welsh independence – the town lies at the outlet of the Valleys, where only 10 per cent speak any Welsh, while Plaid Cymru’s heartlands have tended to be in the north and west of the country, where Welsh-speaking is more common and the antipathy to English holiday home buyers has been much greater. On the other hand, many may well have plumped for Plaid as the anyone-but-Farage party.
On the positive side, Plaid Cymru is not going to be forming a UK government. The Caerphilly by-election has failed to boost the fortunes of any party which can deprive Reform victory at a national level. As things stand, the death of the political duopoly is going to favour Reform because the right is less Balkanised than the left. On the right, only Reform is rising up to take the Conservatives’ place, whereas on the left we have the Greens, the Corbyn/Sultana farce, the Lib Dems (who are a world away from the days of the Orange Book classic liberals of nearly two decades ago). Moreover, Reform at present is biting into the left-of-centre vote, too, by appealing to the formerly solid Labour working class communities in former industrial areas. Could that change? Maybe one day we will have an unashamedly neo-liberal, small government party picking away votes from Reform on the right. But for the moment, in spite of being denied victory in Caerphilly, the next election still looks like Reform’s to lose.
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