Good morning. Labour has won every election for Westminster or the Senedd, the Welsh parliament, in Caerphilly for more than 100 years. A few hours ago, they finished third in a Senedd byelection, with just 11% of the vote. Instead, the people of Caerphilly will be represented in Cardiff by Plaid Cymru’s Lindsay Whittle.
In one sense, the identity of the victor is less significant than who the race was between: Plaid’s closest challenger was Reform, who many thought were the favourites to win. (Indeed, Nigel Farage turned up on polling day – but was nowhere to be seen at the count.) With Labour’s dominance under real pressure for the first time in a generation, these smaller parties of the progressive left and populist right have risen in their stead – and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that this is not a one-off.
Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian reporter in Caerphilly Steven Morris, is about what the result has to tell us about a broader pattern that threatens to upend the old political verities in Wales – and with them, the future of politics across the UK. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Economy | Rachel Reeves is considering raising income tax at next month’s budget to help reduce a multibillion pound shortfall, sources have told the Guardian. The chancellor is understood to be nervous about the political consequences of abandoning a manifesto pledge.
Grooming gangs | Five survivors invited on to the child sexual exploitation inquiry panel have said they will continue working with the investigation only if the safeguarding minister Jess Phillips remains in post. The intervention comes after four other survivors who quit this week demanded Phillips’ resignation.
Justice | The only British army veteran ever charged in relation to Bloody Sunday has been found not guilty of murder and attempted murder. The judge, who presided without a jury, said prosecutors had failed to prove guilt and that the passage of time – almost 54 years – had made the legal process difficult.
Russia | Vladimir Putin has said Russia will never bow to US pressure but conceded new sanctions could cause some economic pain, as China and India were reported to be scaling back Russian oil imports after Washington targeted Moscow’s two largest producers.
Books | The Booker prize foundation has launched a major new literary award, the Children’s Booker prize, offering £50,000 for the best fiction written for readers aged eight to 12.
In depth: ‘Two years ago you couldn’t have imagined Labour losing Caerphilly’
Caerphilly is a post-industrial town where Labour has dominated for decades. In 2021, the party had 46% of the vote in Caerphilly. In yesterday’s byelection, called after the death of Senedd member Hefin David, that vote share fell vertiginously. Meanwhile, the Tories plummeted from 17% to just 2%. The contest now is between Plaid, which won 47%, and Reform, who took 36%.
Some of that can be accounted for by traditional midterm blues. But the scale of Labour’s collapse, and that Plaid and Reform ended up as the two leading parties, suggests something larger is happening – and the consequences at May’s Senedd-wide election could be seismic.
“Two years ago you couldn’t have imagined Labour losing Caerphilly,” said Steven Morris, who was stood next to Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth and heard him gasp as the Labour vote share came in. “It’s an incredible decline, worse than they were expecting. They might have been able to fight off one of Plaid and Reform – but it’s very difficult for them to deal with the rise of both at the same time.”
Lindsay Whittle, Plaid’s candidate, is well-known locally: he has stood for the seat 13 times before, and lost every time. He was visibly moved as he paid tribute to David, who died suddenly in August at 47. “‘He will be a hard act to follow,” he said. “I will never fill his shoes, but I promise you I will walk the same path that he did.” Turning to the result, he said: “The big parties need to sit up and take notice. Wales, we are at the dawn of new leadership; we are at the dawn of a new beginning.”
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What does the result mean?
“It’s a fantastic result for Plaid and more comfortable than they could have hoped for - they thought it was going to be much tighter than that,” Steven said. “They had a very good local candidate who people knew and liked. The question now is whether they can replicate it across other parts of Wales.”
A recent poll suggested Reform’s popularity in the area was largely driven by those aged over 55, while Plaid, a Welsh nationalist party firmly to Labour’s left, hit 50% among the 18-34s. About 70% of those who backed the Tories in 2021 appear to have switched to Reform. (Of course, this is a poll from a week ago – the real voting figures may turn out to be different.) On the other hand, our Wales correspondent Bethan McKernan reports in this piece that most of those who have ditched Labour in Wales seem to be turning to Plaid, based on analysis by the Welsh Election Study.
“Reform are very good at getting people who don’t usually vote to turn out,” Steven said. “I don’t think it’s been about people tossing a coin between Plaid and Reform – Plaid have been keen to stress all the time that they’re the absolute opposite of Reform, and more left than Labour.”
For Plaid, Bangor university political scientists Marc Collinson and Robin Mann write for the Caerphilly Observer, victory “demonstrates that [their] message resonates beyond its rural and Welsh-speaking heartlands”. But there may meanwhile be a sense that running Reform a close second would have been a more useful result. Will Hayward, who writes a column about Welsh politics for the Guardian, made this case in his newsletter:
A Reform win in Caerphilly will scare the hell out of many people in Wales. They will be desperate to vote in a Senedd election to prevent Reform winning or at least to stop them forming a government. If Plaid are visibly the main opponent to Reform in Wales, it will be huge for them. Their messaging is trying to make this case … Ultimately the fight isn’t who holds the Caerphilly seat for eight months, it’s who governs Wales for four years come May 2026.
Still, the result will raise real questions about Reform’s ability to win big in Wales if progressive voters unite against them: the New Statesman’s Ben Walker posted on X noting a record high turnout for a Welsh parliament byelection, 50%, and saying that a young Plaid organiser described “all the texts and DMs from apolitical friends [saying] that they’re turning out to stop Reform.” ap Iorweth proclaimed the victory as a sign that the scale of their ambition is realistic: “We as a party are in a place where we are setting sights on leading government from next year.”
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What were the big issues during the campaign?
In this excellent dispatch from Caerphilly during the campaign, Steven reports that local issues took a back seat to immigration, even though that is not a devolved issue, and 97% of the local population was born in Wales. (For a sense of Reform’s focus on the issue, see their local Facebook page, with ads noting Rhun ap Iorwerth’s observation that some areas need more immigration, and accusing Labour of presiding over “nearly double the population of Caerphilly” in “illegal immigration”.)
But as is often the case, that may be a proxy for more fundamental concerns about bread and butter issues like the cost of living and the functions of the state. “People are fed up with declining public services,” Richard Gurner, the editor and publisher of the Caerphilly Observer, told Steven. “I think the feeling is that Reform and Plaid represent the potential for change.”
Immigration is just a “very clear, strong message for Reform,” Steven said. “But Plaid’s win suggests that in the end it was issues like the cost of living and education that were playing on people’s minds.” ap Iorweth also implied that tactical voting may have been a factor, noting “the element of wanting to stop Reform and showing that we could stop Reform here in Wales.”
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Why is Labour doing so badly?
Labour has been the largest party in Wales at every general election since 1922; it has won every Senedd election since devolution in 1999. If nothing changes before May, that history is about to come to an abrupt and painful end.
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.
“Nobody is likely to get a majority,” Steven said. “You could imagine Plaid working with Labour, the Greens, and the Lib Dems if they get a few seats, to put together a coalition. It would be harder for Reform to form a government.”
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Is this result part of a bigger picture?
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, Steven 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.”
What else we’ve been reading
In 2005, the Guardian documented the births of 10 babies from across Africa to capture a snapshot of the continent with the world’s youngest population. Twenty years on, it is lovely to read about what those babies, now adults, are doing today. Aamna
In this interview with Tim Burrows, Dev Hynes – who records as Blood Orange – reflects on how returning to his childhood home in Essex inspired his fifth album. “Physically, you’re bigger,” he says, of returning to his old bedroom. “But the space is the same. The memories are the same.” Archie
A peek at rightwing profiles on X might have you believe London has turned into a scene from the next Mad Max film. But as Aditya Chakrabortty deftly writes, there is indeed a crime wave in the city – one of illegal houses in multiple occupation. Aamna
News of Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman’s departure from Strictly Come Dancing was so seismic that the BBC actually liveblogged it. Mark Lawson has a good piece asking whether the recent spate of scandals precipitated their exit - and it what it means for the show’s future. Archie
If, like me, you are dreading the thought of catching any winter bugs, you’ll find this guide from Sarah Phillips on how to stay healthy really useful. Aamna
Sport
Europa League | Aston Villa suffered a Europa League humbling as they were beaten 2-1 by the Dutch minnows Go Ahead Eagles in Deventer. Danny Röhl discovered Rangers’ problems run deeper than their former manager Russell Martin as they were blitzed 3-0 by Brann in Bergen.
Cricket | India beat New Zealand to secure the last Women’s Cricket World Cup semi-final spot. India finished 53 runs in front under the DLS method to end their run of three consecutive defeats.
Rugby | The Premiership Women’s Rugby season begins at the Stoop on Friday, hoping to harness the buzz from England’s Rugby World Cup triumph against Canada, which saw an unprecedented number of attendances and a huge rise in TV viewers.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now
TV
Nobody Wants This | ★★★★☆
We reunite with Noah (Adam Brody) and Joanne (Kristen Bell) in season two, after the latter pledged to convert to Judaism, changed her mind, broke up with her rabbi boyfriend, but the pair decided to stay together anyways. Can the two lovebirds make it work? The question of conversion continues to hover around Joanne and Noah’s romantic bliss. The chemistry between Brody and Bell remains electric. With a respectable joke rate and a steady stream of keenly observed details, Nobody Wants This is easy to buy into and easy to love. Rachel Aroesti
Music
Lily Allen: West End Girl | ★★★★☆
It has been seven years since Lily Allen last released an album. Her latest, West End Girl, feels like an unstoppable act of personal exorcism, picking through the collapse of Allen’s second marriage with such vivid, grubby detail you imagine the lyrics were vetted by a lawyer. The songs skip through Latin pop, R&B, and electronic dancehall. Whether West End Girl gets the recognition it deserves remains to be seen, but it is undoubtedly a divorce album like no other. Alexis Petridis
Film
Hedda | ★★★☆☆
Hedda is a ridiculous, intense, and despairingly sexual film inspired by Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Chekhov’s dictum about the gun in act one. Transplanted to a 1950s English estate, it’s a feverish riff on gender and race, complete with bizarre cod-British accents. Tessa Thompson plays Hedda as a sensual manipulator who marries mild academic George Tesman (Tom Bateman) for comfort and throws a lavish party where her ex-lover, Eileen Lövborg (Nina Hoss), unexpectedly appears. What follows is a game of mischief, desire, and destruction. Peter Bradshaw
Game
Keeper (PC, Xbox ) | ★★★☆☆
The world of Keeper looms from the screen like a dream coloured by psilocybin, rendered like a 1980s fantasy movie filled with charmingly handmade practical effects. It is an action-adventure with the lumps and bumps of life’s imperfections, created by Double Fine, makers of Psychonauts 2 and Broken Age. Even stranger than the setting is the protagonist: you play as a lighthouse, coming to appreciate this gleaming ecological fantasia by shining its beacon about the environment. Lewis Gordon
The front pages
“Reeves ‘discussing an increase to income tax’ in November budget” says the Guardian, and the i paper elaborates: “Reeves in talks on 1p income tax rise – risking Labour manifesto pledge to fill £30bn hole”. The Financial Times has “Asia refineries weigh curbing Russia oil after US sanctions”. “Quitterball” is the Metro’s headline about the Strictly hosts signing off, and “We are strictly done dancing” says the Express. The Mirror runs with “Hand of hope” after the king and the pope prayed together. “Grooming inquiry may be off until next year” reports the Times. “Now end the witch hunt” – that’s the Daily Mail after an ex-paratrooper was cleared of Bloody Sunday shootings. The Telegraph joins in with “Stop the show trials for veterans”.
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
The funniest wildlife pictures have been shortlisted for this year’s Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards. Among the contenders is an airborne squirrel caught mid-jump, appearing to throw in the towel “arms wide, in total surrender”, according to photographer Stefan Cruysberghs.
Andrey Giljov captured two lemurs that look as though they are in the middle of a yoga class – one seemingly instructing the other with “perfect enthusiasm, reaching high to embrace the universe”, according to Giljov.
Another standout is Jessica Emmett’s beautifully composed shot of two lizards locked in what looks like a tender hug. Emmett, who has limited mobility and often uses a scooter to pursue her photography, said the pair were actually fighting, though she said the photo makes it look like “sweet, affectionate snuggles”.
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until Monday.
