If any seat has a claim to be part of Labour’s electoral heartland, it is Caerphilly. Labour’s electoral dominance there reaches all the way back to the creation of the constituency in the 1918 UK general election, when Alfred Onions became the the first of many Caerphilly Labour MPs. This pattern has heretofore been replicated in Wales’s devolved elections, where the seat has always returned a Labour member.
This gives a sense of the blow dealt to Welsh Labour in the Senned byelection held there on October 23. Plaid Cymru candidate Lindsay Whittle, a man who has stood and failed to win in the constituency in 10 Westminster elections going back to 1983, won the Caerphilly Senedd seat with 15,960 votes to Labour’s 3,713.
In one sense, this was a surprise result. Reform’s Llŷr Powell was the bookies’ favourite to take the seat and Whittle’s vote share was well above what pundits and analysts had anticipated. Labour’s third place finish was widely predicted but, ultimately it undershot even the dismal expectations set. Plaid Cymru’s 11.4% margin of victory over Reform was greater than Labour’s entire vote share.
