Local election wipeout would see off Starmer, MPs say after Caerphilly rout | Labour

A wipeout of Labor in next May’s local elections would mean the end of Keir Starmer’s premiership, MPs have said, after the party suffered a crushing defeat in its traditional heartland of Wales.

Although Plaid Cymru defeated Reform UK to capture the Senedd seat in Caerphilly, the result revealed a dramatic collapse in Labor votes and led to fears in Westminster that Labor could fall into third place in Wales; This was a loss that would make the leader’s position unrecoverable.

In a town that Labor has controlled for over a century and still has one MP, it received just 11% of the vote, a negative swing of 27%. The humiliating result showed that the party was highly vulnerable to challenges from other progressive parties as well as Reform.

This has sparked renewed anger and concern from some Labor MPs; one of them condemned what they called a “totally incoherent” strategy at No.10. “Even if the national vote across Wales in May is on Caerphilly’s home ground, there is absolutely no way we can continue like this from now on,” said one senior backbencher.

“Obviously the parties in government are struggling in the by-elections, but when your votes reach this level, someone has to take responsibility for it. Everyone is miserable, everyone is hopeless. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious answer or successor that will get us out of this mess. But we are all very clear, we cannot continue like this.”

The May elections, which include contests for more than 1,600 council seats across England as well as the Welsh and Scottish parliaments, have long been seen as a potential turning point for Starmer; Some senior ministers predict Starmer could face a challenge if losses are particularly high.

In Caerphilly, Plaid Cymru’s Lindsay Whittle received 15,961 votes, more than 47% of the total vote, while the favourite, Reform’s Llŷr Powell, was almost 4,000 votes behind.

The loss was a blow to Reformation, especially after Nigel Farage made multiple trips to the region. But Powell said the race taught the party valuable lessons ahead of next May: “A big part of what we were trying to do here was master our campaigns. We trained a lot of people on our systems. We’re a grassroots campaigning party now.”

While Labour’s collapse was widely expected, it also brought practical difficulties (it currently holds only 29 of 60 seats in the Senedd, making it difficult to pass its budget) plus a more existential concern that the party would fail to respond to the challenges posed by Reform and, increasingly, other parties on the left.

Many Labor MPs are concerned that although similar levels of tactical voting may have delayed Reformation in some areas, the beneficiaries may generally be the Plaid in Wales, the Scottish National Party in Scotland and potentially the Greens or Liberal Democrats in some parts of England.

“Our strategy is based on the idea that we can unite progressive voters around the ‘Stop Reform’ campaign,” one MP said. “As long as you remain the most viable progressive party, that works. But if people start to think it could be another party, then tactical voting suddenly starts working against Labor and you’re going to be punished very badly.”

Some MPs said they had been excited by Starmer’s passionate speech to the Labor Party conference at the end of September, in which he talked about “fighting for the soul” of the nation against Reformation, but there was little to follow up.

“People want to hear not just what Labor is against, but what it stands for,” said one MP.

Another said: “Keir’s kidnappers, who somehow managed to get his head out of the hostage cell, took him back in and sent Shabana Mahmood to explain what we were going to do to people of different national origins living and working in the UK. This is completely inconsistent.”

Plaid’s victory was partly attributed to his clear and passionate appeal to the people of South Wales to reject the Reformation position on immigration.

Rhun ap Iorwerth, the party’s leader, said the people of Caerphilly had chosen “hope over division, progress over the tired status quo”. He added: “We are now the real choice for Wales, the only party that can stop billionaire-backed Reformation and deliver a better future for everyone. Wales is ready for new leadership.”

Farage, who did not take part in the count, said on social media that he expected Reform to get 12,000 votes and that it did, but that this was not enough in the face of “the complete collapse of Labor votes to Plaid”, which was partly due to the popularity of Whittle, who has been a local councilor for nearly 50 years.

Farage added: “Next year’s Senedd election is a two-horse race between Reform UK and Plaid Cymru.”

This is a vision reassured by many Labor MPs, with Downing Street saying that by-elections are “always difficult for incumbent governments”.

Another senior Labor MP said Thursday’s result should be a “loud alarm” for a change in leadership if it is repeated in May. “We can’t just drift along on autopilot through the winter,” they said. “The loss of Caerphilly is the direct result of the party losing touch with its own voters.”

Others have gone public with their calls for change. mainstream, new The centre-left Labor group, backed by Andy Burnham, described the outcome as a “tragedy but not a surprise”, adding: “As long as UK Labor governs without a clear vision and disconnected from its moral purpose and democratic socialist foundations, such losses will become more frequent.”

Speaking to the BBC after the result, Labor Senedd member Alun Davies criticized his party in Westminster for the way it talked about refugees and its “use of Reform language”.

But Cabinet Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said it was not a debate that could be ignored: “When it comes to the issue of small boats crossing the Channel and securing our borders, that’s because people have told us very clearly that that is a huge priority for them.”