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.)


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