Labour’s Caerphilly humiliation is a bad omen

Good morning. Labour has lost the Caerphilly by-election, going from first place to third. Some short thoughts on what it means below.

You got Plaid

Labour has gone down to what can only be described as cataclysmic defeat in the Caerphilly by-election, finishing a distant third in a Senedd seat it has held since devolution. The seat, which mirrors the boundaries of its Westminster constituency, has been Labour-held for a century. It is both a dreadful omen for the elections to the Senedd next year, and for the party more broadly. Here are the scores on the door:

Lindsay Whittle (Plaid Cymru) 47.4 per cent

Llŷr Powell (Reform) 36 per cent

Richard Tunnicliffe (Labour) 11 per cent

Gareth Potter (Conservatives) 2 per cent

Gareth Hughes (Green) 1.5 per cent

Steven Aicheler (Liberal Democrat) 1.5 per cent

To my knowledge, there has never been a by-election defeat quite this bad for the incumbent party before. Even in contests such as Eastleigh in 1994, when John Major’s Conservatives were pushed into third place, it still got more than 20 per cent of the vote.

Because the defeat and its scale was in a sense “priced in” at Westminster, there is not, at least this morning, a general sense that it is time for an immediate change at the top of either the routed Labour party or the Conservatives.

All this does is confirm the general expectation in Westminster that the elections in Wales next year will see Welsh Labour go down to heavy defeat, with its best hope being to become the junior partner in coalition with Plaid Cymru. The Conservatives are anticipating to be essentially replaced by Reform as the major party on the right.

But that is a huge “all”! What is priced in here is that both major parties are heading for defeats next year that they may never recover from.

Yes, it’s not a good omen for Reform that we see, once again, what a polarising party it is, and that can result in it being shut out by tactical voting. If Labour can discover competence in government, and/or just get a helping hand from global events, then you can see how it might become the anti-Reform force just by default. But the party’s learning curve in office has been so flat as to be invisible to the naked eye, and it remains to be seen if Keir Starmer’s latest Downing Street reset can turn that around.

Now try this

Right: I’m off to see the Magic Flute. However you spend it, have a wonderful weekend!

Top stories today

• Fed up | Doctors in England will go on strike for five days next month in an escalation of their dispute with Wes Streeting over pay and jobs, putting at fresh risk the health secretary’s promise to cut NHS waiting times.

• Wormald targeted | Keir Starmer’s Downing Street operation has been labelled a “viper’s nest” amid dismay in the senior ranks of Whitehall over anonymous briefings aimed at Chris Wormald, who was appointed cabinet secretary last December.

• Infiltrated | London’s Metropolitan Police arrested three men on suspicion of spying for Russia, in an operation the force said had been led by counterterrorism officers.

• Still committed | The Labour government stands by its pre-election tax pledges, including on income tax, minister Nick Thomas-Symonds told Sky News this morning. It comes as the Guardian splashes on the news that Rachel Reeves is in active discussions about breaking it. Some advisers in the Treasury and No 10 believe that raising income tax may be the only way to make sure she raises enough money never to have to come back for tax rises again in this parliament.