The lessons of Caerffili for Holyrood 2026

S ome great news from Wales today. Plaid Cymru has smashed over 100 years of Labour domination and swept its way to victory in the Caerffili Senedd by-election, taking 47% of votes cast.

Although pollsters and bookies had fancied Reform UK to take the seat, in the end, Plaid left Reform in the dust, far behind in second place on 36%. The result was an utter humiliation for Labour, whose vote collapsed to just 11%, and this, remember, in a seat where Labour’s vote had traditionally been weighed not counted. Labour has held the corresponding Westminster constituency since its creation in 1918 and has held the Senedd seat since the first elections to the Welsh Parliament in 1999.

This is a seismic result for Wales, the first big crack in the traditional stranglehold that Labour has held over Welsh politics for a century. The result was, if anything, even worse for the Tories, whose vote was almost entirely obliterated, leaving them with a risible 2% of votes cast. The Tories are the party of the walking dead, a party without meaning or purpose, and may be swallowed up by Reform before the next Westminster general election.

The voters of South Wales have delivered their verdict on Keir Starmer, and they don’t like what they’ve been seeing. A Labour party which moves into the political territory vacated by the Tories as that party descends into far-right lunacy is not a Labour party at all, and it’s a party which will be roundly rejected by Labour’s traditional voters.

But this result also tells us that the rise of Reform and its far-right nostrums is not an inevitability. Reform threw everything at this campaign. Voters were much more likely to see Nigel Farage on the streets of Caerffili than on the streets of Clacton. It remains a fact that there are more people who despise Farage and his migrant baiting fear-mongering than there are those who have lapped it up. That gives us hope that the English nationalist far-right can be defeated. In Scotland and Wales by progressive pro-independence parties, and in England by left-wing parties like the Greens and Corbyn’s new party.

The Caerffili result also gives us hope that the next Westminster general election could see the victory of pro-independence parties in Scotland and Wales and parties of Irish reunification in the north of Ireland. It’s hard to see how the UK survives this scenario with an election win in England by either far-right English nationalists or leftist parties which support the principle of self-determination for the Celtic countries. Either way, it will be game over for the UK as it is currently constituted.

Of course, the political and cultural/historical landscape of Wales is very different from that of Scotland, and we cannot read too much into this heartening result in terms of what it tells us about next year’s Holyrood election. Unlike the SNP, Plaid is not weighed down by the baggage of over a decade and a half in government. Labour has been the governing party in Wales since devolution was introduced and has presided over the worst-performing NHS in Britain. That’s an important difference.

Neither do the anti-independence parties and their supporters in Wales have the same existential dread of an independence referendum as their counterparts in Scotland. In Scotland, another independence referendum will unquestionably result in a victory for supporters of independence. The outcome of an independence referendum in Wales is far less certain. One consequence of this is that anti-SNP tactical voting will absolutely be a significant factor in the next Scottish elections, but it’s hard to say whether anti-Plaid tactical voting will occur at all in next year’s Senedd elections.

What we can say from this result is that the Labour party in Scotland and Wales cannot escape the massive unpopularity of Starmer’s government, while the Conservatives are dying as a significant political force. Both these factors bode well for hopes of Scottish and Welsh independence.

The catastrophe for Labour in Wales is all the more significant because Labour’s Welsh branch office has tried to distance itself from Starmer, unlike the spineless nepo-baby Anas Sarwar. Sarwar has not spoken out against Starmer’s shameless betrayal of the workers at Grangemouth. He is also keeping quiet about Labour’s disgusting decision to shaft the Scottish fishing industry by awarding it only a 7.8% share of the £360 million Coastal Growth Fund (CGF) despite the fact that Scottish fisheries are responsible for landing 64% of all fish in the UK by value in 2023.

Scotland landed more than three times as much fish as England by weight in 2023 (318,000 tonnes vs 91,200). By value, Scotland more than doubled England’s catch (£523.7m vs £249.3m). However, England will get 11 times more funding than Scotland (£304m vs £28m) to revitalise its fleet and train new fishers.

This decision is because Labour wants to plough the cash into English coastal communities where Reform UK is polling well. You could not ask for a clearer example of the UK sacrificing Scotland’s interests in order to benefit England. That will always happen as long as Scotland remains a part of this dysfunctional political construct that calls itself a union.

Despite attempts by Labour’s Scottish branch office to shrug off the Caerffili result as being of no relevance to next year’s Holyrood election – attempts which we can file under – they would say that, wouldn’t they? – less partisan observers beg to differ.

Ailsa Henderson, a professor of political science based at the University of Edinburgh, said the result in Caerffili has “obvious significance and resonance” for the Holyrood election next May, as it showed Welsh Labour being deeply affected by the unpopularity of UK Labour.

This result gives us hope that Farage’s frothers can be locked out of the constituency vote entirely in Scotland, leading to them failing to win a single Scottish seat in the next Westminster general election and minimising their impact in Holyrood after next year’s election.

For the Labour party and Keir Starmer, this result ought to be a wake-up call. Starmer’s pursuit of right-wing policies is a vote loser. Labour either returns to its traditional left of centre position or it dies, and in Scotland, that means Labour must return to an overt acceptance of the right of the people of Scotland to determine Scotland’s constitutional future for themselves. For the Tories, it’s probably too late already. For the time being, the Tories will limp on on the inertia of their history and name recognition, but their engine has broken irretrievably. For the SNP, this result tells us that a clear leftist position can cut through with the electorate. It was by Alex Salmond taking the SNP to the left in the early 2000s that secured SNP victory, and it’s by moving to the left now that we can secure victory in 2026.

GOING FURTHER

• Plaid Cymru by-election winner sworn in at Welsh Parliament after historic ousting of Labour | BBC NEWS

• Starmer 'deeply disappointed' at Caerphilly by-election defeat | BBC NEWS

• No 10 accepts people are ‘disappointed with the pace of change’ as Plaid Cymru celebrates Caerphilly byelection win | THE GUARDIAN

• Labour dealt historic defeat in Caerphilly by-election - as Plaid Cymru win seat | SKY NEWS

• ‘Disappointed’ Starmer in firing line over historic by-election defeat for Labour in Caerphilly | THE INDEPENDENT

Sources:

▪ This piece was first published in Wee Ginger Dug and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 24 October 2025 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Dreamstime/Rixie.