Labour's grip on its Welsh heartlands is slipping


The traditional industrial heartlands of south Wales have been ruled by an increasingly distant Labour elite for ages. There's no incentive for the MPs to put in any effort as they have jobs for life – it’s not good and has to change. Fortunately, the Labour vote share has been slipping and this election is set to see Labour - under the toxic leadership of Corbyn - further lose their grip.  

The Neath constituency like a good number of other parliamentary seats in south Wales has remained Labour ever since they got in a hundred years ago. Labour currently has 28/40 Welsh seats and has had a majority of the seats in all 19 general elections since 1945.

For a welsh Labour MP, it's been a job for life - once they get in they don't have to do any work. In Neath the last four MPs together had a reign of 93 years - over 23 years each on average. And Neath has suffered. It's no wonder that many voters in "traditional" Labour seats feel let down.

Yet Labour’s grip is slipping. The more recent past - the six general elections since 1997 when the existing 40 seats were established in Wales - has seen a decline in the percentage of the vote won by Labour at general elections. At times, in the 1950s and 60s, the Labour support was over 60% but it has fallen sharply. Labour's GE vote share in Wales averaged 52% in the two elections in the 1990s, 46% in the two in the 2000s, to just 41% in the three in the current decade.

The first past the post system used for Parliament has hidden this decline though the impact of the trend is clear to see in the results of the European elections (which use a form of PR). Labour won all the seats in 1989 and 1994 but have won only one (out of four) in each of the last three elections (in 2009, 2014 and 2019).

The Brexit Party led the way in the Euro elections and won two of the four seats in Wales. This makes the party the most credible option to be able to win in the industrial heartlands of south Wales where the Tories are widely disliked and the vote to leave the EU was consistently high in the referendum.

The voting system presents a challenge but it is clear that many voters in the left behind heartlands are taking the opportunity of the once in a generation opportunity to try something different. Once the Brexit Party has a toehold in south Wales the Labour edifice will crumble as it has in the Euro elections. The Brexit Party contract promises to overhaul the first past the post voting system and to reform postal voting, add in boundary reviews and it will be the end of Labour’s dominance.

(All data in this article come from Wikipedia.)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Project Fear" lives on in Labour and Plaid scare stories

Image
I feel really sad when opponents of Brexit frighten voters with fiction - what has become known as "Project Fear". I feel bad when people are taken in by the misinformation. If you believed every scare story, your view of the world would be so distorted you'd be afraid to get out of bed. The number one fear story this week is about privatising the NHS - despite there being commitments from all the major parties not to privatise the NHS! For the record, the Brexit Party policy as set out in the contract is: "The NHS must remain a publicly owned, comprehensive service free at the point of use" and "There should be no privatisation of the NHS". OK! The reason why scare stories work is that no one can really be sure about the future. If all parties are saying something won't happen it seems unlikely to happen. That said, it could be years before we know for sure if the Tories will - or will not - "privatise" the NHS. Presenting that genu...
Read more

Universal Credit - The Brexit Party policy

We had two or three people in Neath today ask about The Brexit Party policy on Universal Credit. They seemed to be examples of the people who have lost out – due both to bad running of the system and iniquitous reworking of payments. So, for clarity this is what the “ Contract ” says: Providing a safety net for those in need is a defining mark of a civilised society. The Universal Credit system has not achieved what was intended and needs to be revisited. We pledge to:  • Support those who have paid into the system with accelerated payment processes (five-week maximum), and continue to root out fraud.  • Undertake a 12-month review of the system and bring in reforms within two years.  • Review the position of women unexpectedly short-changed by recent rises in the state pension age.  • Extend the use of dormant funds to support civil society. The review seems to be the most important part of the plan - the system has to be fair and truste...
Read more

Thumbs down for Labour's planned tax increases

The respected and independent Institute for Fiscal Studies passed its judgment on the Labour Party manifesto . The tax rises are huge and not as innocuous as the impression given, notably in Labour’s greybook , with higher prices, lower wages and reduced investment expected to follow. Whatever the basic maths based on ready-reckoners, the behavioural changes could be huge – and not for the better. But is this even possible? Head of the think tank, Paul Johnson,  described the claim : 'It's impossible to understate just how extraordinary this manifesto is in terms of the sheer scale of money being spent and raised through the tax system. Take it from me, these are vast numbers, enormous, colossal. They suggest that all of that will come from companies and people earning over £80,000 a year. That is simply not credible.' The IFS concluded on taxes: Labour’s proposed income tax rise for those with incomes above £80,000 would af...
Read more