Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has sunk to a new low in popularity in its historic Welsh heartland, a poll reveals today.
Support for the party is at 22 percent, placing it behind the Tories (24 percent) and just four points above the Brexit Party (18 percent), according to the latest YouGov research.
The results are being blamed on Labour’s Brexit strategy and a “Boris bounce” in the country that voted to leave the EU in 2016 and overwhelmingly backed the Brexit Party in May’s EU elections.
Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon, said: “Labour’s strategy on Brexit has been disastrous. “Anuerin Bevan said if you stand in the middle of the road, you will get run down.
“We should have stuck to our guns and said we are the party that wants to leave the EU but we must leave with a deal.
“Or you could go full-throated for a second referendum, which personally I wouldn’t agree with, but it’s a strategy and it’s clear.
“But what you can’t be is all things to all people. The fall out of that is what we’re seeing now.”
He said that the level of support for Labour in Wales would return if an election took place after Brexit, when Labour can dominate “bread and butter” political issues once again.
“However if there is an election before the issue of Brexit has been resolved single issue parties will do well,” he said, reflecting on the simultaneous bounce for the Liberal Democrats (+4 percent) and Plaid Cymru (+2 percent).
Labour has historically dominated politics in Wales with party founder Keir Hardie, and former Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald and James Callaghan representing Welsh constituencies. Since 1998 it has also dominated the Welsh Assembly with all four of the body’s First Ministers coming from Labour.
Mr Kinnock said the party has also been squeezed by the popularity of incomer Mr Johnson, who has promised to take Britain out of the EU with no deal if necessary.
The Brexit Party has also scooped up Labour votes from those who backed leave in the referendum. Academic experts said the results were unprecedented for Labour and suggest Mr Corbyn and Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, are presiding over the demise of almost a “century” of power in Welsh politics.
Professor Awan-Scully added that Labour’s worst-ever results in any Welsh opinion poll shows they are in “very deep trouble in their historic heartland.”
He said: “Jeremy Corbyn ad Mark Drakeford now appear to be well on course to presiding over the destruction of their party’s near century-long hegemony in Welsh politics.”
A Labour source said: “Before the 2017 election, Welsh polls put us way behind Tories but under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership we won the majority of Welsh seats and achieved our highest share of the vote for 20 years.”
The polling comes as Wales becomes the scene of a knife-edge by-election on Thursday, that will put Mr Johnson on a majority of one if anyone but the Conservatives win.
The Liberal Democrats are currently favourites to take the Brecon and Radnorshire seat over Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
A by-election was triggered after Tory MP Chris Davies pleaded guilty to falsifying his expenses.
