Conservatives
On a Night when the they were expecting to lose Cardiff North and gain Brecon Radnor the Conservatives are celebrating their best general election results in Wales for more than 30 years.
Held Cardiff North, and y won 11 of the 40 Welsh seats.
The party captured Gower by 27 votes, a constituency Labour had held for more than 100 years. yjr Tories also gained Brecon and Radnorshire from the Lib Dems and Vale of Clwyd from Labour. It all contributed to Cameron receiving a narrow majority in the House of Commons . However he may find like John Mayor in 1992 that it will be a Pyrrhic Victory and two spectres loom over him as the party split over the Euro Referendum and he's going to face a group of hostile SNP members who if well organised are going to make life difficult for him.
Labour
Labour: were at (keeping the 26 seats they won in 2010, and gaining both Cardiff Central from the Liberal Democrats and Cardiff North from the Conservatives); with hopes of Arfon ad Carmarhen East ad Dinefwr on a god night . But it was not meant to be.Annihilated in Scotland and not making anything like the gains they hoped for they paid the price for running scared of upsetting the Medias Barons (Who attacked them a\anyway) and attacking the Coalition austerity Programme. They may have a bruising leadership Election which will not help and the Spectre of Scotland and Europe also looms over them as well . How they address Scotland Will have implications for Wales
LibDems
A complete disaster they are now a minor party losing two seats in Wales and hanging on to Ceredigion were ironically Mark Williams possibly the least visible of the lLibDems in Coalition held of a Plaid Challenge losing Cardiff Central and Brecon and Radnor they also lost votes throughout Wales where in 2010 they almost snatched a fair number of Labour seats . They will recover but it may take at least a decade and they will be very wary of going into coalition again. It is often the fate of coalition partners that they lose out in the next election. We will at least be spared the little bargraphs for a few years
Plaid
A night that ent from expectation to hope to relief as the assault on Labour heartland ended badly in Llanelis, Cerdigion again failed to fall and Ynys Mon just evaded them. But as Arfon was held there wa sposibly a sigh of relief. With a high profile leader who may translate this into gains in the Welsh Assembly Elections Plaid are probably les bruised and battered than Labour or the LibDems but for tehm in the Valleys seats they have to make progress in the worry must be that they can't seam to muster the protest vote that Te LibDems had in 2010 and now seemed to have switched to Ukip.
Ukip
Although not even coming in close to wining a Welsh seat they out poled Plaid in the number of votes for the whole of Wales and were second in many seats . Even with paper candidates like Carmarthen East and Diinefwr they received 4698 . How much this was due to the profile of Nigel Farage is open to question. But if his resignation as leader is to prove permanent . The party may wel seee a fall in support his influence and media Profile has been huge in the rise of Ukip can they continue to do so without him
The Greens
Increased their vote throughout Wales and are now a permanent part of Welsh Politics may have high hopes of capturing an Assembly seat next year in some Wales in some ways they mirrored Plaid in being relieved to hold their Brighton seat as the hope of making gains faded
6 comments:
I am wondering if fairness and democracy can be joined in the same sentence after what we saw yesterday. Interesting that the SNP has been used as battering ram by the Tories to good effect. But no attention was paid to their get out of jail card the DUP or Labours alliance will the SDLP (Anti Trident and for ending the Union) the reason Labour split any possible united progressive alliance.
The SDLP polled just over half the vote Plaid gained and have the same number of MPs. The DUP polled nealy the same as Plaid (2k different) and took 8 seat. Eight seats is what the Libersls ended up witt and polled twenty times as many votes.
On the left weve always been aware of the manifest unfairness of FPTP, and this election has been another case in point. The tories have emerged with a working majority despite the fact they only got around 36 percent of the popular vote and only increased their share of the vote since 2010 by less than one percent.
But it's often forgotten that the anti tory forces had their chance to introduce PR following blair's landslide but comfortably in office - and with a whopping majority - nulabour dropped it like a stone....and the rest has been very painful history!
In addition to the fact the tories are now free to continue their cherished goal of dismantling the british welfare state surely the most depressing feature of the night from a welsh perspective is the fact that wales visibly shifted to the right on the night, with the tories now close to having the same number of MPs in wales they had in their early 80s heyday and Ukip piling up votes across wales.
Just how what is ostensibly a neo thatcherite party like ukip is attracting large numbers of votes in places like the south wales valleys is something which is hard to understand......as historically its plaid which has been the beneficairy in these areas of disillusionment with labour. And this is not a one off - ukip enjoyed a lot of support in these same working class parts of wales in last years european election.
There's clearly something going on in welsh politics alot of us havent caught up with yet, and as things currently stand ukip look like getting a quite a few seats in the welsh assembly next year. - a truly appalling prospect.
on a positive note we're sure your words of encouragement for the welsh greens wil be very well received glyn.
Plaid Cymru, Labour, Greens and the left in Wales are in denial about UKIP and their rise, hoping they’ll go away or that Farage’s departure will stop them growing is the wishful thinking that gave rise to them.
Acknowledging UKIP as a party and that they attract support is a start, it doesn’t mean accepting their divisive, racist agenda but understanding the underlying reason why people vote UKIP are varied but the economy is at the heart of it.
The pollsters have said that UKIP supporters are the ‘left behinds’ or what we used to call the semi skills manual workers, they have been in direct competition with eastern European migrants for jobs is south Wales for more than a decade. If Labour or Plaid Cymru hadn’t dismissed their concerns out of hand would as casual racism would UKIP be so strong now, I doubt it.
As for Plaid Cymru one big reason why Plaid polls so badly in the valleys and north east Wales is they haven’t got people on the ground or they have hollowed out local branches with a few token activists. If you’re not active in local communities how on earth can you know what voters concerns are at election time. In my constituency two council by-elections were also held on Thursday but only Labour and Lib Dems were contesting the seats where was the Plaid Cymru candidate I asked myself?
Leanne Wood and her team need a reality check after the election, but I’ve not heard anything from her or anyone in the party that makes me feels she understand the problems Wales is facing, if she fails to make significant progress in the Assembly elections Plaid Cymru and Wales are doomed.
Here today gone tomorrow primeminister.Once the fuss of the election is over this will become more significant as we saw with Blair. Legacy will become more significant and being boxed in by a referendum in 2017 and need time for a new leader to bed in will reduce the options for the Tories.
UKIP is a manifistation of something we have seen in UK politics for a number of years. A home for the 15% to 20% of those that can't stand either of the two major parties. In the 1970s it was the Liberal protest. The SDP acted as a magnet for this discontent in a similar way. We are seeing UKIP hoovering up these voters and pulling in similar votes that the Lib Dems gained last time round. This is especially true of seats where there is a sitting member that is well intrenched.
Rhondda Lib 2010 - 3,309 UKIP 2015 - 3,998
Cynon Valley Lib 2010 - 4,120 UKIP 2015 -4,976
Preseli Lib 2010 - 5,759 UKIP 2015 - 4,257
Carmarthen West Lib 2010 - 4,890 UKIP 2015 - 4,698
Ogmore Lib 2010 - 5,260 UKIP 2015 - 5,420
Alyn & Deeside Lib 2010 - 7,308 UKIP 2015 - 7,620
Aberafon Lib 2010 - 5,034 UKIP 2015 - 4,971
Caerffili Lib 2010 - 5,988 UKIP 2015 - 7,791
Torfaen Lib 2010 - 6,264 UKIP 2015- 7,203
In all these seats the Liberals voted reasononably well in 2010 but were not in contention to win the seat. UKIP have moved into the Lib Dem position and the Lib Dems have in most places picked up the type of vote UKIP had in 2010
Five Labour seats with majorities of less than 3,000 votes
Three Labour seats with majorities of less than 2,000 votes
Lower turn out a Assembly elections will make them rather tight.
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