The people of Caerphilly have spoken — in their outside voice

In last year’s general election, Labour’s candidate took 38% of the Caerphilly constituency vote and held the seat comfortably, as it has done for over a century. Yesterday, they limped home with just 11%. Eleven. That’s not so much a bloody nose as a full dental reconstruction. Keir Starmer’s experiment in “not being a Tory” politics hit the buffers some time ago, but the Caerphilly by-election demonstrates just how mangled the Labour Party chassis actually is.

Starmerism, such as it is, feels like the political version of mindfulness. He sits quietly in Whitehall, reads his briefs, and makes well-meaning decisions one at a time; each one neat, tidy, and entirely devoid of passion. There’s no grand vision, no ideology, just a sense that if he thinks hard enough, and isn’t a member of the Conservative Party, then something decent will happen. It’s government as a cross between an Oxford tutorial and a parish council meeting.

The Prime Minister gives off the energy of a 1950s Church of England vicar, polishing his spectacles while explaining to the villagers that yes, sin is regrettable, but the important thing is to stay calm and follow proper ecclesiastical procedure. He approaches politics as if it’s a series of moral puzzles rather than a contact sport.

Meanwhile, the Tories, Lib Dems, and Greens didn’t just lose, they evaporated. The Conservatives managed just 2%, while the Lib Dems and Greens both hovered around 1.5%. It’s as if they turned up to a gunfight armed with a note saying, “Best of luck to all concerned.”

Which leaves us with the new fault line in Welsh politics: Plaid Cymru versus Reform UK.

And you couldn’t help but be moved by the victor, Lindsay Whittle; a Plaid Cymru councillor for nearly half a century, politically active since 1968 when he was a fifteen-year-old recruit clutching leaflets. Whittle’s political lifetime has been spent getting beaten up by Labour’s heavy machinery: he’s stood for Westminster ten times and, until now, always lost. Now, in his seventies, it’s hard not to cheer a man who compares his victory to scoring the winning try against the All Blacks in a World Cup final… only better.

But the reality is that the politics of Welsh nationalism is a sort of progressive populism wrapped in a red dragon. The Greens fancied a slice of that spirit, but Brighton is a long way from Caerphilly.

Reform, for all their noise and Nigel Farage’s three personal visits (including one yesterday), were left standing, trying to figure out why the wrong sort of revolution turned up. Don’t get me wrong, this was far from a disaster for Reform when compared to the establishment parties. After all, they ended on 36% of the vote which is more than 20 times their 2021 Senedd tally of under 500 votes in the same patch. Yet even with national polls showing them vying for first place across the UK, and with all the bluster and bombast Farage could muster, they still lost by over eleven points to Plaid Cymru. And that’s a bit disappointing.

It’s not that they didn’t make headway — they did. But it didn’t get them the win. And to be taken as a serious threat in a first past the post world, Reform has to start converting constituencies like this. The problem is that Farage’s knack for pub-table outrage doesn’t translate easily into real politics, especially where local voters sometimes want to know what you’d do next week on the ground. That’s why Farage has been silent on Caerphilly since the result, while other Reform figures scrambled to look on bright side.

Reform’s big pitch was outrage against the “Nation of Sanctuary” budget (Reform’s pitch is always outrage). The Nation of Sanctuary was Welsh Labour’s programme for supporting refugees. Reform painted it as a vast conspiracy to give “handouts” to migrants. BANG! There’s your smoking gun, they cried. Except, well, 85% of that money went to Ukrainian families; the same Ukrainians most Britons see as the plucky defenders of democracy against Putin’s thuggery.

So Reform found itself in the position of being anti-Ukraine, which is basically pro-Putin. And there’s Reform’s soft underbelly. There’s nothing like the vitriol from a Reform stalwart when accused of pro-Putin sentiment. Try it sometime… if you can take a faceful of outrage-induced phlegm.

And what’s really striking? Neither Labour, the Tories, nor the Lib Dems seem to have noticed this golden opportunity to tear Reform apart on moral grounds. Reform have two issues: first, they can be easily accused of being puppets to Putin; and second, they haven’t got a clue where the economy is.

It speaks volumes about the Westminster establishment that they can’t land a punch on them with this gaping open goal ready to be converted.

So yes, Caerphilly shows us plenty. Labour’s post-politics of “well-meaningness” is a disaster. Reform’s anger machine might not just run and run. And Plaid Cymru? Well, they simply turned up, told a story about Wales, and looked like they meant it.

Perhaps that’s the lesson for both Starmer and Farage: one should start talking a little more, and the other shouting a little less — or, put another way, both could stand to proceed more Caerphilly.

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