SWANSEA: Mike Hedges should quit Senedd seat for Rob Stewart, senior Welsh Labour figure says in scathing attack on ‘functionally broken’ party

Newly re-elected Swansea Member of the Senedd Mike Hedges should resign mid-term to make way for new talent – and his replacement could be Swansea Council leader Rob Stewart, walking into the Senedd without facing voters again.

That is the explosive demand from a senior Welsh Labour figure who has launched a scathing attack on the party’s record – declaring Welsh Labour “functionally broken” and accusing it of a decade-long failure to confront its own decline.

The intervention – first reported by Welsh political journalist Will Hayward – comes less than 48 hours after Hedges held on as the only Welsh Labour MS for Swansea following the party’s catastrophic election defeat.

The senior Welsh Labour source, who is not named, said it was “perhaps too much to hope” that Hedges and fellow long-serving Welsh Labour MS Lynne Neagle would realise they should resign mid-term to let “talented, second-place candidates” take their seats.

That second-place candidate in Swansea is Rob Stewart – meaning the leader of Swansea Council could enter Wales’ parliament without facing the electorate again, if Hedges were to step aside.

Under the new D’Hondt voting system used at this week’s election, when a sitting MS resigns mid-term their seat passes to the next eligible candidate on their party’s list – rather than triggering a by-election.

Stewart was not elected at this week’s election. Plaid Cymru topped the poll in Gwyr Abertawe with three seats, Reform UK took two, and Hedges held on as Welsh Labour’s number one candidate. Stewart, sitting in second place on the list, missed out as Welsh Labour’s vote collapsed across the city.

The senior figure’s broader assessment of the party was devastating.

Welsh Labour, the source said, “requires a total overhaul; it is functionally broken and will not be fixed overnight.”

The defeat had been “a decade in the making” – they argued – claiming Welsh Labour had repeatedly avoided an honest reckoning with its record in government and instead chosen “to paper over the cracks.”

The source took aim at Welsh Labour’s recent campaign messaging, dismissing slogans such as “partnership in power” and “two governments working together” as vapid – and arguing the party had abandoned its mantle as the party that would stand up for Wales.

Blame for the result, they said, lay across the party – with MSs who failed to step up in the Senedd, with MPs who spent years chasing Reform UK voters and with party factions and unions who had “treated leadership contests as personality contests” or “extensions of Westminster paranoia.”

The source argued that rushing into a permanent leadership contest would be a mistake – calling instead for potential candidates to be required to listen to voters first and present a concrete plan for the future.

The intervention also called for Welsh Labour to scrap the deputy leader role entirely, or fundamentally redefine it.

And in a striking line, the source warned others not to scapegoat party staff for the defeat. “Watch out for those who pin defeat mostly on the staff,” they said – “and then ask what their voter contact rate was.”

The intervention is the latest sign of significant internal turmoil within Welsh Labour following the historic election result, in which the party was reduced from 30 seats in the previous Senedd to just nine.

It comes only hours after Welsh Labour’s new interim leader Ken Skates – elected unanimously by the new Welsh Labour group on Saturday morning – acknowledged the scale of the defeat and admitted the party “got it wrong.”

Welsh Labour has not formally responded to the comments. Mike Hedges has not commented publicly on the suggestion that he should resign mid-term, and Rob Stewart has not commented on whether he would take a Senedd seat through such a route.

The new 96-seat Senedd will sit for the first time in the coming weeks, with Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth set to lead a minority government following his party’s election as the largest in the chamber with 43 seats.

Reform UK secured a historic 34 seats and Welsh Labour just nine, with the Welsh Conservatives on seven, the Wales Green Party on two and the Welsh Liberal Democrats on one.

Swansea Bay News will continue to cover developments as the new Welsh Labour leadership contest takes shape and the new Welsh Government is formed.