This week’s polling in Wales should shock Labour into action, argues Chris Carter
In the run up to June’s general election, it pays to keep a keen eye out for localised opinion polls. It is with this in mind we should all stand up and pay attention to Wales and its voters, following the release of a YouGov poll this week that put the Conservatives in the lead on 40 per cent of the vote, with Labour trailing 10 points behind on 30 per cent.
According to Professor Roger Scully at Cardiff University, ‘the Conservatives appear to be on course to win the majority of Welsh parliamentary seats for the first time in the democratic era … The Conservatives have not won a majority of Welsh seats at a general election since the 1850s – before the era of mass democracy.’
He goes on further to say: ‘Labour seem to be facing a defeat of historic magnitude: even in the disastrous 1983 election under Michael Foot, things were never this bad.’
Professor Scully’s damning insights should shock us into action. There are many reasons for Labour’s demise, although many analyses run the risk of ignoring the fundamental changes to Wales as a nation that have taken place so gradually they have gone almost unnoticed.
The South Wales valleys and cities were home to the country’s largest heavy industries of coal, steel and docklands. Labour heartlands and hubs of mass employment for their workers. Nearly all have now evaporated. Their replacement has taken more than thirty years to materialise since the pits and steelworks closed. Wales has transformed, and almost divided in two.
In cities like Cardiff and Newport, closed docklands have been the focus of intensive regeneration. Anywhere you travel in or between the two cities, you are never far away from new housing developments or swanky shopping centres. Wealthy suburbs have grown fast in recent years, anchored by new service-led industries that sprung up steadily to take the place of heavy industry. Ripe targets for political foes.
The change in Wales’ cities is in stark contrast to its valleys, still reaching the highest levels of poverty-measurement of any region in northern Europe. Even in old heartlands, Labour votes wobble – and Plaid Cymru seized the Rhondda and very nearly Ebbw Vale in the 2016 assembly election. Though unsettled, the people of Wales’ valleys remain loyal to Labour.
Labour needs to wake up to the significance of the changing fabric of Welsh life. It must be the party that puts forward the vision that brings together the aspirations of both the urban middle classes and those still left behind by the deindustrialisation of the valleys.
These polls are significant. They represent the slow, yet unstoppable changes that have taken place in Welsh society, unnoticed in Westminster. If reflected on 8 June, they will embody an earthquake in not only Wales, but Britain’s political history. They have come about for reasons far beyond the superficial.
We are all proud to have been a part of over a century of Labour party success in Wales and now need to campaign hard in seats where Labour are under threat from Conservative insurgency. We can win if we fight.
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Chris Carter is a Progress member, he tweets at @ChrisJCart
Exactly the same process is happening in County Durham, where I live, as South Wales. For the same reasons; as the population moves to more economically active areas on the coast or even leave the region altogether. The residual population is elderly, socially disadvantaged and conservative, at the moment with a small C. In this area seats such as North West Durham and Bishop Auckland are in real danger.
Labour have to speak to young people in a meaningful way to understand their concerns maybe more than the generation of retired older workers from economically inactive heavy industrial areas. Not to put too fine a point these voters are dying out