A defeat for Welsh Labour in today’s Senedd election will pile fresh pressure on Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of the UK Labour Party – with senior figures already calling for him to step aside.
Mick Antoniw, the former Welsh counsel general who did not seek re-election yesterday, has called for the prime minister to make way for a new leader if the results are as bad as predicted.
“If the results are as bad as predicted then there will have to be a change of leadership,” he said. “Not an immediate departure but a planned, orderly and open transition and an open and transparent contest.”
Antoniw described the campaign as the most difficult Welsh Labour had faced in living memory.
He said the election seemed to be “more about Downing Street and immigration than Wales.”
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A former Welsh government minister has also said Sir Keir should stand down if the results are as bad as predicted.
The interventions reflect a wider mood within Welsh Labour that the prime minister has become a serious drag on the party’s electoral fortunes – a view reportedly shared by senior Welsh Labour figures throughout the campaign.
Labour sources said throughout the campaign that Sir Keir had come up negatively with voters on doorsteps across Wales.
A “grudging” acknowledgement that he had handled the UK’s response to the Iran war well had been soured, sources said, by the Lord Mandelson saga.
Despite that, several Welsh Labour MPs have indicated they are not expecting a formal challenge to the prime minister – even though one frontbencher has described the mood within the party as “at rock bottom.”
A number of MPs called instead for a bolder set of policies and for lessons to be learned from a difficult electoral picture.
(Image: House of Lords / Roger Harris)
Former Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones offered a more measured assessment in an interview on BBC Radio Wales Breakfast.
Asked whether he stood by the prime minister, Jones said yes – but added that things needed to change at Westminster.
“I don’t think it’s simply a question of if Keir Starmer goes everything will be fine – it’s not that easy,” he said.
But he said the broader direction of the UK Labour government needed to shift. “Do things need to change at Westminster? Yes,” he said.
“The message has to be more optimistic, we have to be more robust, we have to believe in ourselves a lot more, we have to give a sense of direction.”
He said all those things were missing at the moment. “Those are the most important things, and it’s up to Keir to show that he can provide that,” he said.
A senior Welsh Labour figure has described polling day yesterday as “awful.”
“I’ve never known anything like it,” they said. “We’ve been knocking on the doors of people who’ve consistently voted Labour in the past only to find the vast majority have voted Plaid, Reform, Green or importantly stayed at home.”
The figure said two messages had cut through with voters during the campaign – both of them deeply unhelpful for the UK government.
“The Plaid message ‘we’re the only party to stop Reform’ has really cut through. But Reform have also cashed in big time on disillusionment with Keir Starmer and our Labour government,” they said.
The framing reflects a campaign that has, in many ways, become a referendum on the UK Labour government’s first year in office.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage made that explicit when he kicked off Reform’s Welsh campaign earlier this year, describing the election as “a referendum on Starmer.”
That framing now appears to have landed.
Reform won more than 300 council seats in English local elections that took place yesterday – momentum that will further fuel calls for the prime minister to consider his position.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, lost more than 100 seats in those English elections.
A Welsh Labour defeat today would carry historic significance for the UK Labour Party.
One of the modern Labour party’s founders, Keir Hardie, was MP for Merthyr Tydfil from 1900 to 1915 – and Labour has emerged from every general election as Wales’ largest party since 1922.
The party has won every Welsh election since the Senedd was first established in 1999, and led every Welsh government since then. Health, education, transport, housing and local government in Wales have all been shaped by Labour-led administrations for more than a quarter of a century.
A defeat in Wales today would end that unbroken record – and represent the loss of one of the UK Labour Party’s deepest historical strongholds.
The implications for the prime minister will be felt beyond Wales.
Labour faces a difficult set of local elections in England later this year, plus elections to the Scottish Parliament – both of which will now be watched closely as further tests of Sir Keir’s leadership.
If the defeat in Wales is confirmed today, the party at Westminster faces a period of intense soul-searching about what has gone wrong – and whether a change at the top can reverse the slide before it becomes terminal.
The prime minister, for his part, has so far given no public indication that he intends to step down.
But the calls from senior Welsh Labour figures for him to consider his position will grow louder if the result tonight is as bad as expected.
Welsh first minister Eluned Morgan said consistently during the campaign that Sir Keir was “not on the ballot paper.”
When asked on Wednesday whether he could stay on if Labour lost in Wales, she declined to be drawn into what she called speculation.
Within hours, she may have her answer.
