Caerphilly byelection results in full
Andrew Sparrow
Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Adam Fulton.
The last time I was writing about Lindsay Whittle was more than 30 years ago. My first job in journalism was on the South Wales Echo, where I spent more than a year in the early 1990s in the Caerphilly office covering the Rhymney Valley. Whittle was leader of the Plaid group on the council at the time. Even then he was a veteran (he was first elected as a councillor in the 1970s) and he was a useful contact (friendly, approachable, decent, public-spirited), but not that useful, because Labour ran south Wales, and the idea that Plaid might ever replace them seemed fanciful.
Now Plaid seems to be on course to lead the government in the Senedd after the elections next year. Polling for the Senedd elections suggests Plaid and Reform UK will be the biggest parties, but neither are likely to get an outright majority, and Plaid has a much easier path to power, in some sort of alliance with Labour.
And Plaid’s prospects look even stronger if it can mobilise an anti-Reform vote, which is what seems to have happened in Caerphilly. A Survation poll earlier this month suggested Reform was narrowly ahead in the byelection. In the event, Plaid won comfortably. This is what the New Statesman’s Ben Walker posted on social media as the votes were being counted last night.
This is insane. Turnout 50%. Up on 41% in 21. Young Plaid organiser telling me of all the texts and DMs from apolitical friends that they’re turning out to stop Reform.
Here are the full results from PA Media.
Lindsay Whittle (PC) 15,961 (47.38%, +18.98%)
Llyr Powell (Reform) 12,113 (35.96%, +34.25%)
Richard Tunnicliffe (Lab) 3,713 (11.02%, -34.94%)
Gareth Potter (C) 690 (2.05%, -15.29%)
Gareth Hughes (Green) 516 (1.53%)
Steve Aicheler (LD) 497 (1.48%, -1.25%)
Anthony Cook (Gwlad) 117 (0.35%)
Roger Quilliam (UKIP) 79 (0.23%)
PC maj 3,848 (11.42%)
26.96% swing Lab to PC
Electorate 66,895; Turnout 33,686 (50.36%, +6.52%)
2021: Lab maj 5,078 (17.56%) – Turnout 28,914 (43.84%)
David (Lab) 13,289 (45.96%); Jewell (PC) 8,211 (28.40%); Mayfield (C)
5,013 (17.34%); Jones (Abolish) 1,119 (3.87%); Aicheler (LD) 787
(2.72%); Price (Reform) 495 (1.71%)
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The leftwing Labour group Momentum is also saying the Caerphilly result shows the party needs to change. Sasha Das Gupta, its co-chair, says:
The drop in Labour support in traditional heartlands can only be described as an existential threat to the Party’s future.
Labour will lose more strongholds across the country unless it starts implementing policies that will transform the lives of working class communities.
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Caerphilly result shows Labour must listen to voters about ‘speeding up pace of change’, UK minister says
Nick Thomas-Symonds, a Cabinet Office minister and MP for Torfaen in south Wales, told Times Radio that Labour’s defeat in Caerphilly was “disappointing” and that the party had “a very tough fight” on its hands ahead of next year’s Senedd elections.
He said voters were sending a message about “speeding up” change.
We will listen to the thousands of conversations that we had in Caerphilly about speeding up the pace of change.
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In an interview on the Today programme, Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, admitted that some of the party’s support in Caerphilly came from people who were voting for his party to keep Reform UK out. He said:
Of course, there was an element of tactical voting. Certainly keeping Reform out was a part of that. I spoke with Labour members yesterday who were voting Plaid.
But that was not the main reason for Plaid’s victory, he said.
There was deep, deep disillusionment with Labour … Plaid’s postive message was being embraced …
It was people who supported Labour in the past, and other parties, who were seeing that positive offer from Plaid Cymru and coming to us, not begrudgingly, but embracing what we are saying as offering an alternative for government from May 2026.
Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, speaking to the media at the Caerphilly count. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PAShare
Reform UK chair David Bull claims coming 2nd in Caerphilly on 36% ‘amazing’ result for his party
David Bull, the Reform UK chair, has described the Caerphilly byelection result as “amazing” for his party.
Even though Reform were beaten by Plaid, Bull said the rise in his party’s vote had been astonishing. He told BBC Breakfast.
In some ways disappointing for us, but actually it’s an amazing result on another hand, because actually we’re only four years old as a party.
At the last election, we got 1.7% and this morning we got 36%. That’s a meteoric rise for us, and I think actually pretty unprecedented in modern political history.
Bull referred to the “decimation” of Labour’s vote, and said the Conservatives were “wiped off that electoral map pretty much completely”.
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Was Labour’s loss in Caerphilly ‘defeat for Starmerism’, or verdict on Welsh government?
There is some evidence that Caerphilly result will trigger a blame game Labour. In a post for the BBC’s blog, Gareth Lewis quoted a Labour source, speaking before the result was announced, as describing a loss in the byelection as “defeat for Starmerism not for first minister Eluned Morgan”.
There is probably an element of truth in this. Keir Starmer and the UK Labour party are more unpopular in Wales than Eluned Morgan and the Welsh Labour party.
But only up to a point; Welsh Labour is unpopular too. This is what Archie Bland says on this in his First Edition newsletter.
Part of the problem is specific to Wales: Labour has seen its support crater since the donations scandal that ended the premiership of first minister Vaughan Gething last year. But there is also a clear sense that the unpopularity of Keir Starmer’s Westminster government has rebounded on the Welsh party despite repeated attempts by leader Eluned Morgan to draw a line between the two.
The ominous precedent is what happened to Scottish Labour at Holyrood elections in 2007, when the Scottish National party emerged victorious, ending an era of Labour dominance. Nor will Labour be helped by a new voting system which it brought in itself, with every seat now being allocated on a proportional basis. And the scale of its defeat suggests that it is leaking votes to Reform as well as Plaid.
In his Substack byelection analysis Will Hayward also argues that Labour’s campaign in Caerphilly was terrible. He says:
If Labour sees this as anything other than the dire warning it is, they could end up with single digit seats in May. Their campaign was dire.
The woefully contradictory messaging on saving libraries (when it was a Labour council closing them) managed to both highlight their own failings and exhibit their total inability to take responsibility for any of the challenges Wales faces.
As I drove into Caerphilly for the count there was a giant electronic billboard that read “only Labour can stop Reform”.The last minute attempts to suggest that a vote for anyone other than them was a vote for Reform was divorced from reality.
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Archie Bland has a very good assessment of the significance of the Caerphilly result in his First Edition briefing.
Here is an extract.
The Caerphilly result is by no means an aberration, either in Wales or the UK as a whole. It confirms a persistent pattern: a surge for Reform at the expense of the Conservative party, and progressive voters – often disenchanted with Labour – coalescing around whoever is best placed to defeat them.
The pollster Luke Tryl noted that this is likely to operate in complicated and locally varied ways: “Whereas Labour were the party that was squeezed here, in contests where they are the main contender against Reform can they, even as incumbents, get disillusioned progressives to come back and back them tactically,” he wrote on X. He also noted that this effect will matter more in the next general election than the Senedd one, because a proportional system allows smaller parties representation from a lower vote share.
The big picture, [Guardian reporter Steven Morris] said, is that success for either Reform or Plaid would have been unthinkable not long ago. “It’s an incredible shift when you stand back. Labour will hope that they can start to build back a bit before a general election. But in many seats, it’s going to be a bunfight.”
And here is the full article.
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Will Hayward, the Welsh political commentator, says the Caerphilly byelection result confirms that the left-voting block in south Wales easily outnumbers the right-voting blog. In a post on his Substack blog analysing the Caerphilly result, he has posted this graphic.
Byelection voting Photograph: Will Hayward Newsletter
Hayward says:
This sums up Wales’ left of centre identity. Running on extreme right platforms doesn’t just alienate most of the voters, it actively makes them work against you.
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Caerphilly byelection result suggests Labour really is on course to come third in Senedd elections next year, John Curtice says
On the Today programme John Curtice, the leading psephologist, has given his take on the Caerphilly byelection result. Here are his main points.
The big question we were asking of this by election was, was it really the case that a Labour party that UK-wide is now at a record low of 20% in the opinion polls, and which in Wales saw its vote fall back last year, not least because of discontent with its record in Cardiff, particularly in respect to the NHS – did that mean that it was really the case, as some opinion polls have suggested, that Labour are potentially on course to come third in the Senedd elections next May, in a part of the country where once upon a time you did not really bother to count the vote, you just weighed it, Labour was so dominant? The firm, clear answer, from Caerphilly, to that question, is yes, it could happen.
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He said the fall in Labour’s vote share in the Caerphilly byelection, at 35 points, was its biggest ever in a Welsh election.
Labour’s share of the vote was just 11%. It fell by 35 points. That’s the biggest drop that Labour have ever suffered in a by election in Wales. Labour are in severe trouble in Wales.
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He said the byelection showed the Conservatives, the other traditional leading UK party, were also in big trouble in Wales. Their vote share was just 2%.
Reform will be disappointed at coming second, with 36%, but I don’t think we should run away with the idea that this, in any way, suggests that Nigel Farage’s bubble is burst.
The truth is, 36% is pretty consistent with the 30 to 33% support that Reform have been getting regularly in the opinion polls.
It’s just that that isn’t going to be enough to win an election if you’re facing a strong alternative, which in this case was Plaid.
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Caerphilly byelection results in full
Andrew Sparrow
Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Adam Fulton.
The last time I was writing about Lindsay Whittle was more than 30 years ago. My first job in journalism was on the South Wales Echo, where I spent more than a year in the early 1990s in the Caerphilly office covering the Rhymney Valley. Whittle was leader of the Plaid group on the council at the time. Even then he was a veteran (he was first elected as a councillor in the 1970s) and he was a useful contact (friendly, approachable, decent, public-spirited), but not that useful, because Labour ran south Wales, and the idea that Plaid might ever replace them seemed fanciful.
Now Plaid seems to be on course to lead the government in the Senedd after the elections next year. Polling for the Senedd elections suggests Plaid and Reform UK will be the biggest parties, but neither are likely to get an outright majority, and Plaid has a much easier path to power, in some sort of alliance with Labour.
And Plaid’s prospects look even stronger if it can mobilise an anti-Reform vote, which is what seems to have happened in Caerphilly. A Survation poll earlier this month suggested Reform was narrowly ahead in the byelection. In the event, Plaid won comfortably. This is what the New Statesman’s Ben Walker posted on social media as the votes were being counted last night.
This is insane. Turnout 50%. Up on 41% in 21. Young Plaid organiser telling me of all the texts and DMs from apolitical friends that they’re turning out to stop Reform.
Here are the full results from PA Media.
Lindsay Whittle (PC) 15,961 (47.38%, +18.98%)
Llyr Powell (Reform) 12,113 (35.96%, +34.25%)
Richard Tunnicliffe (Lab) 3,713 (11.02%, -34.94%)
Gareth Potter (C) 690 (2.05%, -15.29%)
Gareth Hughes (Green) 516 (1.53%)
Steve Aicheler (LD) 497 (1.48%, -1.25%)
Anthony Cook (Gwlad) 117 (0.35%)
Roger Quilliam (UKIP) 79 (0.23%)
PC maj 3,848 (11.42%)
26.96% swing Lab to PC
Electorate 66,895; Turnout 33,686 (50.36%, +6.52%)
2021: Lab maj 5,078 (17.56%) – Turnout 28,914 (43.84%)
David (Lab) 13,289 (45.96%); Jewell (PC) 8,211 (28.40%); Mayfield (C)
5,013 (17.34%); Jones (Abolish) 1,119 (3.87%); Aicheler (LD) 787
(2.72%); Price (Reform) 495 (1.71%)
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The Caerphilly result has shown how progressive tactical voting can be harnessed to fend off Reform UK, according to a pollster.
Luke Tryl, the UK director of polling group More in Common, posted on X:
Scale of Plaid win in Caerphilly is significant, not least because of what it says about the potential for progressive tactical voting in (relatively) high turnout elections to block Reform. Voters in this race knew it was a Plaid-Reform contest and voted accordingly.
So will this be the case in more seats and more importantly whereas Labour were the party that was squeezed here, in contests where they are the main contender against Reform can they, even as incumbents, get disillusioned progressives to come back and back them tactically.
For Reform this places a greater premium on growing their support pool and reaching more “soft Reform voters, turning out a highly motivated base clearly works in fragmented local council elections but isn’t alone enough in the face of tactical voting.
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Updated at 01.16 EDT
Labour now ‘a dying beast’ in Wales, says Plaid’s byelection winner Lindsay Whittle
Plaid Cymru’s winning candidate has been quoted as telling Labour after his victory that it is “definitely a dying beast”.
“You’d better get back to the drawing board, I would suggest, and think again because you are on your way out.”
Lindsay Whittle made the remarks after being asked what message the Caerphilly result had sent the party, PA Media reports.
The constituency’s new member of the Welsh parliament also said:
You are on your way out after 100-plus years. The Labour party, I’m afraid, now is definitely a dying beast.
It is a dying beast. They can go and lick their wounds but most dying beasts peacefully leave us.
Plaid Cymru’s poll winner Lindsay Whittle (centre) and leader Rhun ap Iorwerth (centre left) celebrate the byelection win on Friday. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 01.41 EDT
Plaid Cymru garnered a little over 47% of the vote in Caerphilly against Reform UK’s 36%, with Labour a distant third, says BritainElects.
In a post on social media the poll aggregator put the percentages at:
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Plaid 47.4%
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Reform 36.0%
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Labour 11.0%
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Conservatives 2.0%
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Greens 1.5%
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Liberal Democrats 1.5%
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Gwlad 0.3%
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Ukip 0.2%
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Updated at 00.27 EDT
Plaid’s byelection win comes as a vote on the Welsh government’s budget is ahead and causing concern for the Labour administration.
Now Labour it will have only 29 of the 60 seats in the Senedd and deals will have to be made to get the 2026-27 budget through.
When passing its last budget in March, the Welsh government needed the vote of an opposition member to get it passed by a slim margin.
As Steven Morris has reported, Labour’s standing in Wales has dropped off a cliff since Vaughan Gething stepped down as first minister last year amid a donations scandal.
His successor, Eluned Morgan, has tried – but so far failed – to draw a line between Welsh Labour and the increasingly unpopular UK party.
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Updated at 23.56 EDT
Returning to Lindsay Whittle’s acceptance speech after his big win, the Plaid Cymru candidate also said he had been “absolutely heartened” by the number of young people involved in the campaign.
Across the entire constituency, people not interested in politics have been – I’ve had selfies taken before, I’ve never had this.
At that point he addressed Cardiff and Westminster directly, saying “we’re telling you we want a better deal for every corner of Wales”.
Lindsay Whittle (centre) speaks a after being declared winner of the Caerphilly byelection. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA
Whittle, who will represent Caerphilly in the Senedd, said:
The big parties need to sit up and take notice. We’re at the dawn of new leadership, we’re at the dawn of a new beginning, and I look forward to playing my part for a new Wales.
And in particular, for the people of the Caerphilly constituency, I thank you with all of my heart. This is better than scoring the winning try for Wales against New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup.
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Returning now to comments from Labor’s Huw Irranca-Davies, its most senior figure at the Caerphilly count also said the party needed to do “some really rapid reflection on the reasons” for its defeat.
I think we need to get back to focusing on those bread and butter issues, things such as cost of living, the money in people’s pockets, jobs and opportunities for young people here but also the quality of the towns, the environment.
Irranca-Davies, the deputy first minister of Wales, criticised Reform for focusing on immigration, saying the byelection campaign had been “characterised by messages of division and discord from one particular party”, and insisted Labour would fight back.
We’ve always been good at running an energetic election campaign. We have loyal volunteers who will come out and they will work the streets in a way that no other party will do. We’ll have the in-depth conversations.
Irranca-Davies also said Labour needed to remind people that Welsh Labour defended them when the Tories were in power in the UK government. Now Labor had “a compelling and serious forward offer here in Wales, helped by the UK government”, he said.
We’re starting to turn the corner. Our challenge is in the next six months saying to people, things will get better, hope, aspiration, and we can do it when we have two governments working together. And that’s our challenge, and it’s a big challenge.
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Updated at 00.33 EDT
Welsh Labour’s leader, Eluned Morgan, says it has “heard the frustration on doorsteps in Caerphilly” and that it takes its share of the responsibility for the byelection loss.
A statement from Morgan, the first minister of Wales, said:
This was a byelection in the toughest of circumstances, and in the midst of difficult headwinds nationally. I want to thank our candidate, Richard Tunnicliffe – a good man who stood because of his desire to serve his community.
I congratulate Lindsey Whittle on his victory tonight. He returns to the Senedd, continuing his many decades of elected service to people in Caerphilly.
Welsh Labour has heard the frustration on doorsteps in Caerphilly that the need to feel change in people’s lives has not been quick enough. We take our share of the responsibility for this result. We are listening, we are learning the lessons, and we will be come back stronger.
Eluned Morgan at a Welsh Labour party conference in June. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 22.28 EDT
