Letter by Andy Ford
My regular email from Labour List today makes a comment about a catastrophic poll in Wales, which puts Labour in a distant third place. Next May, according to a disastrous poll by YouGov, Labour faces being wiped out in huge swathes of Wales,
The poll puts Welsh Labour in third place on just 18% (half the vote attained in 2021), well behind Plaid Cymru on 30% and Reform on 25%. One forecast by Cavendish Cymru projects Welsh Labour would fall to 13 seats, with First Minister Eluned Morgan set to lose her seat in the Senedd.
Should such a result play out, it would be catastrophic and a source of huge upset for Labour, the party that has led Wales for more than a century. With May looking like a crunch point for Keir Starmer’s leadership among some Labour MPs, a Welsh wipeout would put him in an extremely difficult political position.
However, Scottish Labour has also seen its fair share of polling woes, and yet Anas Sarwar proved the polls wrong when the party secured victory over the SNP in a recent by-election in Holyrood.
This alarming Welsh poll makes the Caerphilly by-election next month all the more important as a temperature check of the landscape Labour will face in Wales next year.
And they said Corbyn was unelectable!
“…and they said Corbyn was ‘unelectable'”,
What I dislike: Why did it take Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, to be thrown out of the Labour Party, before they then decide to form “Your Party”. Was it to keep-on being Parliamentarians? Nevertheless the ruling class need to be fearful, because when it’s launched with its new name and structures. Former Labour voters and others, will not only join that party but vote for it in their droves.
Oh! dear me. No sooner had I posted, that we now see a split. With Zarah Sultana claiming “that the party was being run by a sexist boys’ club”. They need to get their act together, because there are hundreds of thousands waiting to join that party, with millions more waiting to vote for its candidates at an election. But this is not the first time that Zarah Sultana has jumped the gun, and had bounced Jeremy Corbyn into forming the party before he was ready too.