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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Left Foot Forward has an exclusive with Caroline Lucas. She is set to resign as an MP at the next general election.
Caroline Lucas Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion. Official image by David Woolfall Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
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While she is unsurprisingly damning about the prime ministers who have been in office over her 13 years in the House of Commons, Lucas has had to work closely with MPs from other parties. By virtue of being the only MP for her party, working cross-party has been central to much of her work. As a result, she offers strong praise for MPs on the opposition benches who she has worked with over the years.
She tells Left Foot Forward: “I work really closely with people like Nadia Whittome and Clive Lewis on the Green New Deal, and we have an all party group on the Green New Deal and we work very closely together on that. I enjoy working with Barry Gardiner actually on the Environmental Audit Committee just because he’s such a terrier when it comes to cross-questioning ministers. From the Liberal Democrats I work very closely with Wera Hobhouse on environmental issues, green issues. Plaid [Cymru] are very good on social issues and I’m probably closest to them of all the parties in Westminster.”
However, such praise is definitely absent from her assessment of the likely next prime minister – the Labour leader Keir Starmer. She starts by acknowledging that she and the Green Party would “prefer to see a Labour government than a Tory government”, but goes on to ask “what kind of Labour government” we are likely to get.
“I think there are real concerns over the U-turns that Keir Starmer has been performing – whether that is on what was originally a £28 billion commitment for green investment, he was going to scrap tuition fees, things like the two child benefit cap which is a really, really obscene policy and his own frontbench have said its obscene yet he has now said that he is not going to reverse that.
“He’s better on oil and gas to the extent that he’s said he won’t give licenses to new oil and gas. But then there’s a totally incoherent position of saying that he will allow Rosebank to go ahead. Whereas if he had said were he to get into government he would have tried to roll back that decision it would never have been taken in the first place, because the signal that would have given to Equinor, the Norwegian investor who is going to go ahead with Rosebank would have thought twice. So on oil and gas, there’s a problem there.”
Lucas says that on the economy and other issues, Starmer is operating with a “lack of ambition” which is “so desperately disappointing because he seems to think that if he just plays it incredibly safe, then he can tip-toe into Downing Street”, before going on to say “I think he needs to worry as well about the number of people he simply won’t be inspiring to get off their chairs and down to the polling station at all – and right now it is incredibly hard to say what Keir Starmer stands for”.
Given that Lucas spoke to Left Foot Forward the day after the major vote in parliament on whether the government should call for a ceasefire in Gaza, she also criticises Labour for failing to vote to support a ceasefire. “I think it was incredibly disappointing that Labour is on the wrong side of history on this”, she says.
