Calum Davies: The Caerphilly rout is just one omen of looming disaster for Labour in Wales

Calum Davies is a Conservative councillor in Cardiff and is a candidate for the Senedd next year.

You will have read plenty in the last week or so about the Caerphilly by-election to the Senedd, where Labour was pushed into a distant third behind Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. So, I’m going to highlight another couple of more low-profile races where Labour also faced a torrid time.

In September, it lost by-elections in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan – both to Reform UK. What I would recommend for Welsh Labour, if it ever wishes to win back constituencies like Caerphilly, is that it does not respond like it did on a local level to these losses.

Back in July, I begun working on a debate motion to bring to Cardiff Council, calling on the local authority to tell the Home Office we no longer wish to host migrant hotels and oppose the British Government’s purchase of private property to house illegal immigrants in the Welsh capital. We have over 9,000 households on the local waiting list here as it is and this property acquisition programme will only exacerbate it.

It was tabled in the days before Reform then took off Labour one of its safest Cardiff seats, in the Trowbridge ward, with 40 per cent of the vote. Labour slipped to third.

When this debate came to Council, it was as if it never happened. The overwhelming consensus, not just among Labour councillors but all the left-wing parties, was utter denial that there is a problem. There was no recognition that illegal immigration was an issue nor that the international systems that allow it to occur are outdated and require an overhaul for the modern and mobile world.

Many of the Labour, Plaid, Green, and Liberal Democrat councillors who spoke stated there was no such thing as illegal immigration. Others claimed migrants cannot come from alien cultures, despite the countries with highest exports of channel-crossers coming from those where homosexuality was a capital offence. One even suggested no asylum seekers committed crimes in South Wales. Guess they missed the notorious case of rapist Mohamed Amin.

I was accused of fanning the flames of division. Highlighting public policy failure is not what generates anger, but the policy failure itself. Cardiff’s newest councillor is a harbinger of what happens when institutions fail to adapt, perpetuating poor outcomes for the population. The Left baulked. Strangely, when the vote was called, Reform failed to support our motion to close migrant hotels.

Something similar happened in Barry: a by-election for in Illtyd saw Labour lose its seat to Reform, falling from first to fourth. This fall preceded another fateful county hall meeting.

Vale of Glamorgan Council’s Conservative group leader, Cllr George Carroll, had presented a motion to call on the Council to end its “County of Sanctuary” status. Like the Welsh Government’s “Nation of Sanctuary” programme, which was heavily criticised during the Caerphilly by-election, the scheme is increasingly portrayed as a pull factor that encourages people to seek asylum in the UK, whether that be through legal or illegal routes.

George faced down similar accusations of division and prejudice to me in a room full of people who, throughout the debate, had practically implied support for mass migration and open borders, to the detriment of the British people’s ability to access public services, afford housing, and maintain a cohesive society. For this and refusing to recant what polling shows to be the consensus among the public, he was thrown out of the meeting.

The Council’s Chair who dismissed George, by chance, is Labour’s last remaining councillor for Illtyd. At least the Vale’s Reform councillor backed the Conservatives on this occasion.

Whilst Labour may think that they need to hold up their left flank by doubling-down on culturally progressive views, it will do nothing to stem the perception that it is abandoning its working class, small-c conservative roots. Labour’s general reputation is sinking due to the sheer level of incompetence it is displaying at a national level on a whole host of issues as well as a lack of direction and messaging (see digital ID), a chronic weakness at the top (see backing down on welfare cuts), and the never-ending scandals (see Rayner, Mandelson, and other also-ran resignations).

It must take on illegal immigration and pivot back to a Rwanda-style deterrent and stop thinking that piecemeal deals – which have already demonstrated their ineffectiveness – like the “one-in-one-out” with France will work. 42 for 11,000 is not a like-for-like.

If it can restore public faith by doing what’s actually necessary on this issue, it can win back respect in places like Trowbridge, Illtyd, and Caerphilly. Plaid’s victory was not an endorsement of their policy offering. This deprived Valleys town is not a culturally progressive hotbed of lanyard classes, students, and radical separatists. I doubt a great deal of those who voted for Plaid in Caerphilly know just how more extreme it is.

The Lib Dems, Greens, and Plaid are protest parties. Yes, they are snatching votes from Labour, but if Labour want to be the leading the party of the Left, they have to deal with the issues that are affecting their brand nationally before they trickle down to this level.

As a Unionist, it is important that Plaid (nor the Greens) never becomes the leading leftist party of Wales. Labour must learn that they have indulged, enabled, and empowered the separatists for too long. They are the authors of their own demise and need to realise that their real political opponents are those that aim to replace them and tear our country apart.

The consistent message I am getting on doors since my own selection as the lead Welsh Conservative candidate for Cardiff West, South, and Penarth is “not Labour”. This will be down to 26 years of failure in the devolution period, but its inability to address totemic issues in Westminster is doubtless a factor too.

Residents are not sure who they are voting for yet next May. However, when we mention that Plaid Cymru propped up Labour and encouraged the madder elements of their policy record, the Greens want to legalise drugs and criminalise land lording, or Reform failed to back closing migrant hotels, then people become far more open to voting Conservative.

The Conservatives are responding after our general election loss by listening and acting on people’s concerns. Labour should try doing it before they lose power in May.