The byelection victory for Lindsay Whittle is a huge boost for Plaid, which believes it can win next year’s Senedd elections, ending a century of Labour dominance in Wales. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
Rhun ap Iorwerth’s party seizes Senedd seat after Reform UK challenge
Rhun ap Iorwerth’s party, which wants Wales to become independent, seized the Senedd (Welsh parliament) constituency from Labour and resisted a fierce challenge from Reform UK.
Plaid candidate Lindsay Whittle received 15,961 votes, while Reform UK’s Llyr Powell won 12,113. Labour’s vote collapsed in what had been a stronghold, with its candidate Richard Tunnicliffe polling only 3,713 votes.
Plaid emerged with a majority of 3,848 votes, and a swing of almost 27% from Labour.
In his acceptance speech, Whittle … said: “There is deep, deep disillusionment with Labour, both on a UK level and at a Welsh government level, and the people are looking for new leadership. A Plaid Cymru win here tonight is the clearest evidence yet of who is in the driving seat to lead [Welsh] government for next year. I don’t think Reform have shown they are particularly interested in Wales. It’s all about getting [Reform leader] Nigel Farage to Downing Street.”
Parliamentary press passes allow journalists more access to Westminster. (Photo: PA / Alamy)
MPs condemn ‘sinister move’ to deny access to Declassified reporters.
Parliament has been accused of an “outrageous abuse” that is “worthy of the Trump White House”, after blocking Declassified from holding a media pass.
Internal emails reveal that officials cited our “in-depth investigations… from a particular standpoint”, when rejecting our application.
They also flagged a recent investigation we published that raised concerns over pro-Israel bias in Westminster.
This is despite parliamentary authorities having a duty to remain politically impartial. Guidelines say that passes should be granted with “fair access across a range of outlets”.
The decision to deny Declassified access has been criticised by politicians across the political spectrum, including Labour, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, and the Independent Alliance.
Almost 500 journalists currently hold a pass, which provides unfettered access to Westminster and daily government briefings. They include many from right-wing outlets like Guido Fawkes and GB News.
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People take part in a pro-Palestine march in central London organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, April 13, 2024
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Corbyn’s Gaza (Independent Public Inquiry) Bill, tabled the very day that polling shows a majority of the public want a full arms embargo on Israel and even for the country to be expelled from the United Nations for its genocidal war on Palestinians, shows he is still playing that vital role: voicing, in the corridors of power, the views of millions of ordinary people shut out by a suffocating ruling-class consensus.
His Bill is supported by a range of independent and Labour MPs, as well as some from the Greens, Plaid Cymru and Scottish National Party.
The numbers should be much higher: Britain’s active role in the genocide runs deep, and too much of it is cloaked in secrecy.
The bits people know about, such as continuing arms sales to a military killing scores of civilians every single day, have appalled public opinion.
How much more so if the whole sordid story, the details of what is passed from the hundreds of RAF surveillance flights over Gaza to the Israeli authorities, the troop-training and logistical support, the ways in which our air force’s Akrotiri base on Cyprus supports Israel’s war effort, were to come into the open.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
The spat between Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform party, and Rupert Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, burst into the open when Lowe was suspended from the party. The allegation was that he had threatened violence to the party leadership, which he denies. The matter is currently being investigated by the police.
The row does not appear to have affected support for Reform in the polls. A YouGov poll completed on March 10, after Lowe’s suspension, shows Reform on 23% in vote intentions, compared with 24% for Labour and 22% for the Conservatives. It is still a three-party race at the top of British party politics.
In the 2024 general election a good deal of Reform’s support came from protest voters. These are voters who dislike all the mainstream parties and so see a vote for the party as a way of choosing “none of the above”. They are not attached to any party and can easily switch support when circumstances change. So why has support for the party not been affected by this row?
Protest politics and support for Reform
The answer to this question is that while Reform attracted a lot of discontented protest voters in the election, it has since acquired a more stable niche in British party politics. It is primarily a party of English nationalism, equivalent to the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales. These three parties differ greatly in outlook and politics, but they occupy a similar place in the public’s minds.
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To examine Reform’s support from protest voters we can look at the relationship between spoilt ballots in the 2024 general election and support for the party in the 632 constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales. Normally, observers of British elections pay little attention to spoilt ballots (or “invalid votes” as they are described in official statistics). However, it turns out that they played an important role in the 2024 election which has a bearing on support for Reform.
Research shows that voters who spoil their ballots can be classified into two categories: those who simply make a mistake when filling in the ballot and those who are protesting about the current system.
Mistakes are easy to make in countries with complex electoral systems. However, in Britain, the first-past-the-post system in which everyone has just one vote, ensures that this is not a significant factor because ballot papers are so simple. The bulk of spoilt ballots are protests of various kinds, taking the form of blank ballots, write-in candidates, or abusive messages about parties and candidates.
This is illustrated in the Lancashire seat of Chorley, which is held by the speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle. By tradition none of the major parties challenge the Speaker by campaigning in his constituency. In the election there were no less than 1,198 spoilt ballots in his constituency. It is fairly clear that these were a result of some voters feeling disenfranchised by the absence of their preferred party on the ballot paper.
The relationship between the Reform vote share and the number of spoilt ballots in constituencies in the 2024 election
Protest voting takes different forms. P Whiteley, CC BY-ND
There is a strong negative relationship (a correlation of -0.46) between the share of a constituency vote that went to Reform in 2024 and the number of ballots spoiled in that constituency. Where people were voting Reform, in other words, fewer people were spoiling their ballots. The implication is that the party picked up votes from people who would normally spoil their ballots or would not have voted at all if Reform had not stood in their constituency. These are the protest voters.
Identity politics and support for Reform
Not all support for Reform came from protest voters, however. The chart below compares the percentage of Reform voters with those who identified as English in the 2021 census in England. There is a strong relationship between the two measures (a correlation of 0.66). The more English identifiers there are in a constituency, the greater support for Reform. In effect, Reform has become an English national party.
The relationship between Reform voting and English identity in 2024
An English national party in the making. P Whiteley, CC BY-ND
National identities can change over time, but the process of change is slow. There has been a growth in “Englishness” at the expense of “Britishness” over time and this is undoubtedly reinforcing support for Reform.
It means the party has a relatively solid base of supporters to rely on in future elections. While the row between the party’s leader and one of his MPs could play out in any number of different directions at this early stage, it would be wrong to suggest that Reform isn’t thinking big picture and long term.
Farage has clearly learnt from his past and will not let his current party disintegrate into chaos like UKIP or the Brexit party before it.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Lake Vyrnwy in Powys would be included in the proposed Welsh national park. Photograph: Jon Beech/Getty Images/iStockphoto
‘It’s a play area for townies’: visitors and residents row over plan for new national park in Wales
Plans to create a new Welsh national park stretching from the dunes of north-east Wales to the wild Berwyn mountains and the peaceful, wooded slopes of Lake Vyrnwy further south have captured the imagination of many ramblers, cyclists and other outdoor lovers.
But the Welsh government’s proposals to improve access to nature have been dismissed by an opposition group as creating “a play area for townies”, sparking a furious debate about who the countryside is for.
Elwyn Vaughan, leader of the Plaid Cymru group on Powys county council, who has become a figurehead for the campaign against the park, claims the plan would lead to more “honey pot” beauty spots, which are easily accessible from large cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. “There would be huge pressures from the number of visitors … it would lead to the proliferation of holiday homes and Airbnbs. It would lead to litter pollution and parking problems, which we see in places like Snowdonia,” said Vaughan.
People take part in a pro-Palestine march in central London organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, April 13, 2024
