Caerphilly

The Caerphilly by-election was supposed to be Reform UK’s crowning moment in Wales. A safe Labour seat, a disengaged electorate, a populist party riding high on anti-immigration sentiment and promises to “fix” the country. The media had spent months portraying the constituency as a hotbed of Reform support, a microcosm of a wider rightward shift sweeping through the South Wales Valleys. Nigel Farage pitched up, did his thing, and waited for the inevitable victory. Instead, he got humiliated. And somewhere in the rubble of his campaign, Labour is discovering that it might not have a Wales left to govern.

Plaid Cymru’s Lindsay Whittle won decisively with 47.5% of the vote. Reform UK’s Llŷr Powell came second on 36.1%. Labour’s Richard Tunnicliffe came third, third, with just 11.1%. The turnout was 50.4%, up from 44% in 2021, suggesting voters believed their votes mattered. This wasn’t a nail-biter. This was a demolition. Labour had held this seat comfortably for years. It’s the kind of seat you don’t expect to lose in a by-election. And yet here we are.

Reform went into Caerphilly convinced they had momentum. Farage campaigned heavily. The party spent money and effort. The conditions seemed right, an economically struggling area, traditional Labour voters feeling left behind, a populist message about immigration and “bringing back control.” The media’s consensus was that, on paper, it should have worked.

It didn’t.

And that matters more than people realise, because what happened in Caerphilly exposes the limits of far-right populism in Wales.

This election has proven that there is a quiet majority of people who find Reform’s policies and rhetoric to be disgusting. When voters had to make an actual choice about what kind of politics they wanted to endorse, that majority showed up and said no. Most people, when presented with a genuine choice, don’t want the obsessive focus on immigration as the root of all problems. They don’t want the culture war theatrics. They don’t want to be associated with the toxicity that comes bundled with the package.

And it is toxic. Powell himself comes with baggage. He worked as a constituency caseworker for Nathan Gill, the former UKIP MEP who pleaded guilty in September 2025 to eight counts of bribery for making pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament.¹ Powell refuses to say when exactly he worked for Gill or when he last had contact with him. He claims he found out about the crimes “through the press like everyone else,” but the link raises obvious questions about judgement and vetting. What did Powell know, and when?

The public response during the campaign was telling. When Politics Joe interviewed Powell on the streets of Caerphilly, a local resident approached and refused to engage, calling Powell a “fascist” on camera.² Powell dismissed it as “name calling,” but the incident captured something real about how many voters saw Reform’s candidate and what he represented.

During the campaign, Powell and Farage didn’t shy away from the extremists. They gave interviews to Voice of Wales, a far-right media outlet banned from YouTube in 2021 for racist content.³ The group, run by Dan Morgan (who was convicted of fraud in 2023 for his role in a PPI scam that stole millions) and Stan Robinson, has close links to Tommy Robinson and has provided coverage for anti-asylum protests and racist demonstrations. When mainstream political figures platform organisations like this, it sends a signal to the people on the violent edge of the far right that they’re part of the conversation now. Last Saturday, while the campaign was still running, a far-right thug showed up at a Stand Up to Racism demonstration at the Tommy Cooper statue with a golf club and a stanley blade. That’s not rhetoric anymore. That’s the logical endpoint of normalising this stuff, playing out in real time. That’s what happens when you build a political movement on grievance and anger and refuse to distance yourself from the people on its violent margins.

Voters noticed. They understood what was happening. When faced with a choice between that and something else, they chose something else. What Reform has built is brittle. It’s dependent on Farage as a personality, it’s defined entirely by opposition rather than proposition, and its appeal has a ceiling. Farage was conspicuously absent once defeat became obvious. That tells you something about how seriously he takes the project when it isn’t winning. Internally, Reform is fracturing. Powell’s faction is at odds with disaffected Conservative defectors and grassroots members. Success papered over these cracks. Failure exposes them. Come the 2026 Senedd elections, that tension could split the party wide open.

On a different note, Labour’s collapse is not the straightforward tale of incompetence that some are painting this morning. During the years of brutal Tory led cuts, they protected public services, fought to keep funding flowing to schools and hospitals when Westminster was slashing budgets. Whilst I accept the argument that they have not done enough to materially improve people’s lives, for me at least, the problem sits firmly at the feet of the Westminster branch of the Labour Party. The problem is Keir Starmer. The problem is that the Labour Party has abandoned the people who care about socioeconomic justice, and Welsh voters are noticing.

It’s worth remembering that the valleys built the Labour Party. They built it with a purpose: to better the lives and living conditions of the working class. That was the entire point. Labour wasn’t supposed to be just another party competing for power, it was supposed to be the vehicle through which working people could actually improve their circumstances. But somewhere along the way, that purpose got lost. Labour is no longer seen as the best way of achieving that goal, because it actively seeks the approval of big business and the millionaire political donor class. When your priority is reassuring wealthy donors and corporate interests rather than materially improving working people’s lives, you’ve abandoned your purpose. And voters in places like Caerphilly, whose communities built this party, notice.

The local campaigners, many of whom I know personally and am good friends with, have been let down by the UK Labour Party leadership. When the party leadership sends no one to campaign in a safe Labour seat, it reads as contempt. When Starmer’s unpopularity is so toxic that local candidates avoid invoking his name, voters understand the message: the Westminster party has nothing left to say to them. The campaigners tried to defend public services while Westminster itself cuts spending. They were left to rely on scaremongering about Reform rather than being able to articulate why people should believe Labour still stands for anything. UK Labour has walked away from the politics of socioeconomic justice, chasing the centre ground, triangulating endlessly, offering nothing that excites or inspires the people who spent decades voting Labour because they believed the party was on their side.

If this result is replicated nationally at next May’s Senedd election, Labour could be reduced to a handful of seats. That’s not hyperbole. That’s the logical endpoint of the trajectory it’s on, and it didn’t have to be this way. The party needs to understand something urgently: Caerphilly won’t be the last if things don’t change. More results like this are coming. Not because Welsh Labour has failed, but because UK Labour has abandoned the ground beneath its feet. The people who care about socioeconomic justice, about making people’s lives better, about actually using political power to reduce inequality, those people are leaving. And they’re not coming back unless Labour remembers what it’s supposed to be for. The irony? Labour’s own changes to the electoral system could accelerate its decline. They’re turkeys who helped sharpen the axe. Come May, a more proportional voting system will give disaffected left-leaning voters somewhere else to go. And unless Westminster changes course, they’re going to take it.

Which brings us to Plaid Cymru. They’ve consolidated support among left-leaning voters and reaffirmed, for now, that Wales is a centre-left nation. This result gives them momentum heading into the Senedd election and positions them as the main alternative to a failing Labour establishment. The Greens stand to benefit too. Many Labour voters are looking for a political home, and Plaid and the Greens are well-positioned to catch them.

You hear a lot about populist uprisings and disengaged voters waiting to be mobilised by charismatic figures promising simple solutions. There’s some truth to that. But Caerphilly showed something else: the quiet majority is still there, still centre-left, still uncomfortable with extremism, still willing to engage in genuine democratic politics rather than the performance politics of populism. Reform went into this race thinking they’d tapped into something deep and permanent. Turns out they’d tapped into something loud and obnoxious. The difference matters. When given the choice, people choose not to endorse ugliness.

That’s worth noting, because it suggests there’s hope. Not naive optimism, plenty can still go wrong. But genuine, grounded hope that Wales remains fundamentally centre-left and resistant to far-right politics.

The Caerphilly by-election is a symbol of profound political change. A party that assumed dominance is in geniune danger of collapsing. A challenger is rising. The far right’s advance is faltering. The electoral system is about to shift in ways that will accelerate these trends. For Labour, this is a moment of reckoning. Not the kind where you change your logo and hope nobody notices. The kind where you actually have to ask yourself what you’re for and whether you’re prepared to do the work to earn back trust. If the party thinks it can sleepwalk through to May’s Senedd election and recover, it’s deluding itself.

For Plaid Cymru and the Greens, this is an opportunity. They need to capitalise on it, not just by offering an alternative to Labour, but by building a positive vision for Wales that goes beyond “we’re not Labour.”

And for Wales itself, we’re at a turning point.

For generations, Welsh politics was about Labour dominance and the occasional Plaid surge. That looks like it might be over. What comes next is genuinely uncertain. It could be positive, a more dynamic, pluralistic political landscape where ideas are contested and power is earned rather than assumed. Or it could be chaotic, a fragmented parliament where nothing gets done and extremism fills the vacuum.

The people of Caerphilly suggests that the electorate still believe the former is possible.

Let’s hope they’re right.