The results of the local elections in Wales have been dissected and examined in the past week as analysts, pundits, psephologists, journalists and politicians examine the runes and attempt to predict the future. Local election results of course are not General Election results. There is significant variability, not least because different parties stand or don’t stand, there are large differences in motivation, voters often split votes between parties in a way they can’t in a General Election, and the turnout is radically different. But despite these disclaimers there is certainly a series of conclusions which can be drawn about voting patterns which seem to be distinct to the Wales in this election.
The most significant of these is that Labour looks a lot more resilient in Wales than it does in England. Welsh Labour has quite shamelessly put First Minister Carwyn Jones centre stage of the campaign and confined the name Jeremy Corbyn to the margins and the footnotes. Indeed, when Labour launched its Welsh campaign on Wednesday the UK party leader’s name was not mentioned once. This, Labour sources confirm, is a deliberate strategy. The only way Labour kept hold of vulnerable councils like Flintshire, Caerphilly, Cardiff, Swansea and Newport last week was by playing a very localised campaign where the modern JC with the beard and the sandals and the love for the poor and the vulnerable was nowhere to be seen. This was the secret of Welsh Labour’s modest success in the local elections.
It remains to be seen, however, whether this pattern can possibly carry through to General election voting. The Conservatives have done worse in Wales than England at every general election since the 1880s. But serious attempts have been made in recent years to address the historic perception of them as an essentially English party and this has borne some fruit. 2015 saw 11 Conservative MPs out of 40 in Wales; and two consecutive opinion polls put them on 40% of the Welsh electorate, at least 5% ahead of Labour. Just to give these polls some context, when the Labour government was on the ropes in 2010, Wales figures were Labour on 33% to the Conservatives 23%. The change is truly staggering and wasn’t mirrored in the local election results where the Conservatives polled well but not gob smackingly well. Yet at this moment in time, and if this polling is anywhere near right, seats like Newport West, Bridgend, and Delyn are going to turn blue for the first time since the 1980s; and never previously won targets like Wrexham, where Labour had a terrible local election result, are expected to follow suit.
Another interesting pattern that is emerging is the acute crisis of connection which Labour is displaying in the heads of the valleys areas. Both in last year’s Assembly elections and in this year’s local elections, Labour had some uniformly bad results there. The Independents took control of both Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil last week, while Plaid Cymru topped the poll in the Rhondda in the same way it did in 2016. Could there be some sort of further shock in store in that part of Wales on June 8th?
On previous form that shock will not come from Plaid Cymru. The chasm between their recent General Election performance and that of the SNP is enormous; and they haven’t won a new seat in Westminster since 2001. Even last week their credible showing across Wales didn’t deliver any additional councils. They came as tantalisingly close to taking outright control in Ceredigion, Ynys Mon and Carmarthenshire as they did of winning Ynys Mon in Westminster in 2015. But in a first past the post system winning is everything and Plaid is struggling to shake off their streak of bad luck. Indeed, when Welsh nationalists look on the SNP it is with a mixture of disbelief, envy and bewilderment. Presumably when they looked at the survival of Labour last week and the poll ratings of the Conservatives in Wales these days, they must be feeling exactly the same emotions.