https://arab.news/mpaza
Wales rarely makes the international news headlines. However, last week it produced a political earthquake that saw the UK’s ruling Labour Party lose an election in Caerphilly for the first time since 1910.
Labour has dominated Welsh politics for much of the past century, even keeping much of its support there in 2019, when the party lost many parliamentary seats in the so-called red wall in the English North and Midlands. But last Thursday’s Caerphilly by-election for the Senedd (the Welsh legislature in Cardiff), triggered by the death of a Labour legislator, saw the left-of-center nationalist Plaid Cymru party win 47 percent of the vote. In second place was the right-wing populist Reform UK, led by Brexiteer Nigel Farage, with 36 percent.
The three parties that have governed in the UK Parliament in Westminster since the 1850s secured less than 15 percent of the vote. Labour won 11 percent, the Conservatives 2 percent and the Liberal Democrats only 1.5 percent.
The reason the result could be hugely important is that opinion polls point to growing momentum in Wales for Plaid Cymru and Reform ahead of next May’s Senedd ballots to elect 96 legislators. This would be a pattern-breaker, as Labour has been the largest party in the Cardiff legislature since devolution was initiated more than a quarter of a century ago under Tony Blair’s government.
