Wales has stopped voting Labour - and Sir Keir Starmer should be worried
In Caerphilly Labour won just 11% of the vote - down from 46% in 2021
"People are fed up of Labour, they are sick and tired of it," Cullan Mais, the former shoplifter and current youtuber told me in central Cardiff last week.
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“Everyone voted Labour literally.
"I voted Labour, my family voted Labour, my grandparents and so on. And up the valleys especially. Labour has always been a stronghold that people are just sick of."
Mais did not get a vote in the Caerphilly by-election last night where Labour won just 11% of the vote (down from 46% in 2021), but he will get a vote next May when seat in the Sened (Welsh Parliament) is up for grabs.
And that is part of why what happened last night matters so much.
Read More: Labour hammered in Caerphilly by-election as Plaid Cymru sees off Reform UK threat
Yes, by-elections can be outliers. Yes, there will be a different voting system in place next May. But the way votes were cast last night can tell us an awful lot.
It was Labour’s first defeat in the area for 100 years. Plaid Cymru won 47% of the vote. Reform UK won 36%. Labour won 11% and the Conservatives won just 2%.
And last week, as well as going to Caerphilly - we went to Barry, Port Talbot, Carmarthen, Cardiff and Wrexham, to see if what we were hearing as people prepared to head to the polls was mirrored elsewhere.
And it was.
Overwhelmingly people were fed up. Keen for change. And willing to try voting for something new - even if that new was mostly untested.
The range of issues affecting them included the feeling their towns were getting worse, the cost of living, the educational system, the economy and immigration.
Some there suspect what is needed - and what is likely to happen - is the end of the two main parties' dominance and instead a European style coalition with a number of parties banding together to create a workable majority.
As part of my whistlestop tour in Wales last week, I spoke to First Minister Eluned Morgan who insisted she had the “opportunity and time to make sure that we can turn things around by May next year.”
When I asked if the by-election and the elections next May could be a perceived confidence vote in Sir Keir Starmer, she replied: “Look, I think we'll all have questions to answer, but we're not there and I'm not accepting that that's where we're at.”
But that increasingly feels like the consensus in Westminster. That if there is a disastrous set of elections, the result in May will lead to - at the least - a challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, and - at the most - the end of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.
And while there may be glimmers of hope in these results, like that Reform UK did not win and the high turnout showed voters came out to stop their victory, six months is not a long time for Labour to turn things around in Wales.
And as one senior Welsh labour source asked: “If they’re not voting Labour here - where are they voting Labour?”
A question, presumably, that will haunt Sir Keir Starmer.