Labour’s shortcomings the real reason for Plaid’s popularity
Plaid Cymru’s lead in the polls shows that Labour’s leadership of Wales is at risk of unravelling, writes Martin Shipton
IF Plaid Cymru ever leads Wales to independence, it can point to an opinion poll published yesterday that put the party ahead of Labour for the first time ever in both sections of an election to the Senedd.
It’s a remarkable achievement for Plaid, but I doubt whether it yet reflects a huge appetite for Welsh independence on the part of the electorate.
While there is less outright hostility to the idea than used to be the case, and the latest independence march at the weekend had an impressive turnout, there remains a lot of caution about quitting the UK.
The reason why Plaid has taken the lead is, I suspect, a lot more to do with the perceived shortcomings of the Labour Party.
People have cast their votes differentially since long before the National Assembly was set up 20 years ago: many would vote for a particular party at a general election, but for another party or independents at council elections.
When the Assembly came along, the two-tier voting system made it possible to split your vote between two parties at the same election.
The results of yesterday’s Welsh Political Barometer poll by YouGov show how turbulent political support is at present.
For Plaid to be fifth in Westminster voting intentions, yet in the lead for a Senedd election is extraordinary. As is the historically low level of support for Labour at both levels – behind Plaid for the Senedd and the Conservatives for Westminster.
The volatility of the electorate is something we’re having to get used to.
It’s all very interesting and throws up opportunities for minority parties that previously would have been inconceivable.
But for Labour, it represents the worst of all worlds, and could see the party lose the hegemony it has had in Wales for 100 years.
The falling away of support has been a long time coming.
Many believed that events like the failed miners’ strike of the mid-1980s and the gradual erosion of Wales’ industrial base with the attendant decline in trade union membership would be matched by a decline in the level of support for the Labour Party.
But this didn’t happen. Instead, the habit of voting Labour often continued to later generations, even when the attachment to a particular industry or location had been lost.
Opponents of Labour would often say: “if you put a red rosette on a
donkey, they’d vote for it”, implying that tribal loyalty to the Labour Party was unthinking and against the interests of those who subscribed to it.
The other, more positive, view was that continuing support for Labour showed how deeply ingrained the party’s core values of equality and fair play for the underdog are.
As time has gone on, the degree of loyalty Labour could once rely upon has declined, but the party has been able to maintain its power base in Wales largely because of the divided nature of the opposition parties, with Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and to a lesser extent the Liberal Democrats challenging in different parts of the country.
But things are changing, and the old assumptions can no longer be taken for granted.
Labour’s opposition may still be split, but its own level of support has dipped to a point where it can no longer rely on the old “divide and rule” precept.
There is more than one reason why Labour is doing so badly, but the biggest by far has to be the unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn.
At the beginning of the 2017 general election, the Tories were expected to cruise to victory under Theresa May. A Welsh Barometer Poll at the time put them 10 points ahead of Labour. The lead was attributed to Theresa May’s pitch as a “strong and stable” leader in contrast to Mr Corbyn.
But any imagined cachet that Mrs May had soon disappeared. She ran a dreadful campaign, Mr Corbyn came across as better than the incompetent extremist he was portrayed as in the right-wing newspapers, and she lost her majority.
Two years later it seems than Mr Corbyn has wasted any political capital he earned at the time of the last general election. The Labour leadership’s absurd dithering over its position on Brexit has proved to be highly damaging. Out of fear that it might alienate those who voted Leave in the referendum, their equivocal position on by far the most important issue of the day has managed to put off multitudes of Remain supporters.
At the European Parliament election in May, Labour came third in Wales behind the Brexit Party and Plaid Cymru. Any thought that may be a one-off aberration has been seen off with this poll.
Mr Corbyn can’t be held solely responsible for Welsh Labour’s drop in support.
Mark Drakeford, who became First Minister last December, has so far failed to cut through to the electorate. While Plaid Cymru’s energetic leader Adam Price has been getting his face on to network TV at every opportunity, Mr Drakeford has been far less inclined or able to do so.
He should realise that Labour’s leadership of Wales is at risk of unravelling, and that he must be seen to lead.
Brexit uncertainty has made it more difficult to talk about anything else, but Mr Drakeford held back for too long in expressing his own fears about it through misplaced loyalty to Mr Corbyn. There’s a possibility his position is now irretrievable.