Following the death of Labour Councillor Jane Henshaw in September, a by-election will take place in the Splott ward on December the 5th. Splott has three of Cardiff’s total of 79 Councillors and all three, prior to the death, were Labour. The ward is the epitome of an archetypal Labour stronghold and, apart from the odd fleeting departure from this norm, has been so for generations. It would be a massive surprise if Labour candidate Anny Anderson, who also happens to be Jane Henshaw’s daughter, didn’t hold the seat for Labour.

The turn-out for full Council elections in Cardiff usually amounts to around 40% of the electorate and in apathetic Splott the support of a mere 2,000 of the 10,000 voters is more often than not all that is necessary to become a Councillor. In a one-off by-election, when there is next to no media coverage, turn-outs can slump to a derisory 20% – especially if there is virtually nothing at stake, as is the case in this by-election where Labour have 54 of the 78 Councillors already and it makes no difference whatsoever to Cardiff’s political composition who wins the seat.

Yet, most peculiarly, this inconsequential local government by-election has brought me more knocks on the door from canvassers, more leaflets through the letterbox and more street encounters with roving swarms of electioneers than I can ever recall experiencing previously – and that includes Westminster elections, Senedd elections, full Council elections and referendums. What the hell is going on?

I will answer my own question. The unprecedented interest is nothing to do with concern for Splott and its many pressing problems and neither is it triggered by anger at the catastrophes inflicted on Cardiff by the utterly incompetent, negligent, destructive and dumb Labour Council over the last 12 years and counting. No, this sudden engagement with Cardiff’s politics is almost entirely happening because, for the first time in the fully-formed, mass smart phone/social media/internet era, the UK has a Labour government – and that in itself is anathema to the tech billionaire oligarchs who want to control all information and all thought, define all truths and all realities and impose a world of endless disruption and chaos inhabited by numbed, dazed, disconnected populations of ignoramuses, the better to make even more billions and wield unparalleled power in a dystopian hell. Kier Starmer’s government is actually timid, managerialist, centre-right and bureaucratic in the European tradition, but even that wet conservatism is no longer acceptable to the far-right fascists now on the march across the planet. Emboldened by Trump and despots around the world, the barbarians have smelt blood and are now moving in for the kill to finally eradicate the enlightenment values and humanitarian principles that have always enraged brutes, autocrats, criminals, the wealthy and the wicked. And even a parochial squabble over dog-shit, pot-holes and bin collections in Splott is a useful stage where more disinformation, lies and division can be spread.

Taking a look at the seven candidates standing in the by-election encapsulates the problem as it pertains to Wales. The first thing to note is that never before have so many different political parties contested the Splott ward. By comparison, in the last full Council election in 2022 a record high of six parties put forward candidates in Splott, while in the most recent election here – the July 2024 UK General Election in the parliamentary constituency of Cardiff South & Penarth with an electorate of 75,000 – there were also six candidates. Here are the seven (in alphabetical order):

Anny Anderson (Labour)
Anderson seems pleasant enough, but she’s a classic Labour loyalist who instinctively toes the party line. And in 2024 that is actually completely unacceptable. Labour has been hijacked by the rightwing – whether it is Starmer & Co in London’s House of Commons or Goodway & Co in Cardiff’s County Hall – and is completely reconciled to the rampant corporate capitalism, massive inequality and endless ‘growth’ that is destroying society and the planet. Anderson probably deludes herself that she occupies some sensible ‘centre ground’, but today that ground is not even as sane and civilised as the pre-Thatcher Tory Party of the Macmillan/Heath era from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s – that’s how far to the right UK politics has veered in the last 45 years. I doubt whether she’s aware that such times ever existed. Her election literature is Cardiff Labour’s usual mix of Panglossian cherry-picking, vacuous wishful thinking, unwarranted self-congratulation and total avoidance of the Council’s countless appalling policies of brazen and often illegal wrecking of the city’s built environment, green belt, biosphere, beauty, history, public services, civic pride, obligations to Wales and entire social sphere in order to further the profiteering of the spivs, speculators, off-shore hedge funds and faraway big businesses that care nothing for Cardiff and its people, while simultaneously piling up over £1 billion in debt that will cripple future Cardiffians. Nobody with a smidgeon of the socialist principles that Labour was founded on would vote for them today. So the multitude of foes now lined up to oppose Labour spans the entire political spectrum from the traditional anti-Labour forces of the Tory media etc through to anyone authentically leftwing. There’s only word to describe a political party that ditches its support base, its activists and its very purpose: stupid. Here’s a message that I suggest all Labour politicians, whether in Cardiff, Wales or the UK, digest and act on with the greatest urgency: WE DID NOT NEED ANOTHER TORY PARTY.

Cadan ap Tomos (Liberal Democrat)
In recent times the Lib Dems managed to upset the applecart and somewhat make a dent in Labour hegemony in Splott, winning two of the three seats in 2004 and then one in 2008. This was during the period when the Libs, in coalition with Plaid, actually controlled Cardiff Council as the people rejected the rotten to the core Labour administration of Russell Goodway – with hindsight, a Golden Era in Cardiff politics. The Labour machine went into overdrive to regain control. They shifted Goodway to a backseat role out of the limelight and, aided by the noxious South Wales Echo, ousted the Libs in 2012 (today the atrocious Goodway is still effectively running the show as Cabinet Member for Investment & Development – yes, he is to blame). The Lib Dems are in pole position to stop Labour in this by-election especially with candidate Cadan ap Tomos living in Splott and capably articulating the terrible Labour record in the ward. One thing’s for sure: the garbage-choked streets, appalling pollution, complete absence of amenities, derisory and wretched scraps of green space, totally inadequate public transport, dangerous rat-run roads, hideous and permanently half-empty ‘trading estates’ plastered across the moors, scandalous abuse of the tragic coastline and the general air of squalor, poverty and decrepitude will not change so long as Labour knows it doesn’t have to do anything because it can take the Splott vote for granted.

Lee Canning (Reform UK)
The English/British far-right, currently called Reform UK after previous incarnations as UKIP and Brexit, are a ridiculous rag-bag of thick thugs, xenophobes, misogynists, white supremacists, criminals and opportunist con-men, led by the odious Nigel Farage. They have increasingly become interested in Wales in the last few years, not for its own sake but because it’s a vulnerable and downtrodden country which presents a soft-option opportunity to spread fascistic, simplistic ‘populism’ and nihilistic disruption and exploit a fragile infant democracy for their own ends as a handy platform for crude lies and seething hostility to anyone to the left of Adolf Hitler (like Trump and Farage, a charmless, bullying oaf who could persuade the desperate, the ignorant, the venal and the psychotic to vote for him). The new technologies foisted on the world without debate over the last couple of decades have provided the means to instantly disseminate misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, violent extremism, incels, influencers, scammers, conspiracy theorists, troll farms and so on and thereby warp weak and uneducated minds and implant corrosive beliefs across the planet. This was first noticeable on a major scale in Wales following the Senedd’s introduction of an eminently sensible default 20mph speed limit on residential roads and busy pedestrian streets in 2022. Taking advantage of Wales’ admirable petition system, a co-ordinated online campaign was organised by Tories in England to foment opposition to the new legislation. A petition opposing the legislation supposedly racked up over 400,000 signatures, making it the largest ever Welsh petition. However it soon emerged that this number was a giant Tory fraud, enacted by a combination of troll farms, rightwingers all over the world with free and easy online access to a Welsh postcode (the only thing needed to validly sign the petition), and the relentless social media propaganda onslaught objecting to Wales daring to have a Labour administration and indeed having any autonomy at all. It was whipped up by various bad actors in England, from the hysterical ‘war on motorists’ lobby through to the climate-change deniers, ‘nanny state’ whiners and anti-green petrolheads. They found a stooge mouthpiece within Wales in the form of the obnoxious Andrew RT Davies, discredited leader of the rump of ‘Welsh Conservatives’ in the Senedd, who persistently lied by calling the 20mph speed limit a ‘blanket’ law when it simply was not. In this way the Tories hammered away at the issue, as if they cared one iota about Wales, and brought vile US-style mob rule and ‘alternative facts’ to our politics. Fat good it did them: they were annihilated even in England in the 2024 General Election and completely wiped-out in Wales, where the uncontroversial 20mph law has brought about none of the ‘disasters’ the petitioners claimed would happen, has already reduced road accidents and, tweaked a little to give Councils more flexibility, is becoming an agreeable and accepted part of Welsh life. But what the fuss did do though was encourage Reform UK, the Tories’ extreme-right outriders, to stick their Little Englander imperialist noses into Welsh affairs – encouraged by the fact that Welsh democracy utilises proportional representation (something British rightwingers wouldn’t dream of introducing in the UK) and will be even more proportionate when the next Senedd election takes place in 2026. To Reform this is just an opportunity to get a foothold in the Senedd and bring the sort of vandalism and malevolence to Wales that Farage inflicted on the European parliament pre-Brexit. This is why Reform are contesting the Splott by-election, to get a taste of Welsh politics ahead of 2026. Their candidate is the suitably ghastly Lee Canning, previously a failed Tory and Abolish the Assembly (sic) candidate who doesn’t even live in Cardiff let alone Splott. Of course his leaflets are in English only, of course they treat the by-election as all about the Westminster government rather than Cardiff’s local government, and of course they are politically illiterate. Reform expect people to swallow the idea that no taxes should ever increase, and even that tax in itself is a ‘burden’ that shouldn’t exist, while at the same time bewailing the state of public services (this is what is meant by ‘populism’). Presumably, Reform will fund government obligations from a Magic Money Tree. To succeed, Reform UK must entirely rely on the electorate being completely thick – oh dear, that means they have a sniff of a chance…

Sam Coates (Green)
I’m a natural Green. In fact I’m a Deep Green. Yet I can never bring myself to vote for the ‘Green Party of England and Wales’. The clue is in the name: there’s a ‘Green Party of Northern Ireland’ and a ‘Scottish Greens’, but Wales is deemed not worthy of its own autonomous party and must be run by England (which is 95% of ‘England & Wales’) despite the fact that most Welsh environmental issues are devolved and despite the fact that the Green’s manifesto unequivocally supports Welsh independence. This ‘England & Wales’ structure makes no sense. And if the Greens ever wonder why they make so little progress in Wales, which has reverence for the natural world and despair at the ravaging of our once-beautiful country built into its culture, this is the reason why. They should ditch this deeply insulting and alarmingly colonial treatment of Wales pronto. Apart from that, I can’t disagree with anything in the many leaflets issued by candidate Sam Coates – except perhaps the disingenuous claim that the election is between him and Labour…and maybe his track record of being a little too fixated on identity politics…and then there’s the plethora of photographs of him baring his teeth (aka: smiling) that are all over the leaflets – does this mean he presumes his mug is a vote-winner?

Kyle Cullen (Propel)
Propel is a party formed in 2021 by Neil McEvoy after a long and acrimonious split from Plaid Cymru. McEvoy, a former Plaid MS, is the party leader and also a Cardiff Councillor for Fairwater. Propel is a refreshingly different party that I have a lot of time for: passionately pro-Welsh independence, working-class, authentically Cardiffian, radical and pugnacious – a bit like me in fact! (Full disclosure: I know Neil). It’s great to see Propel contesting a seat beyond it’s western Cardiff heartlands, and in rough diamond Kyle ‘Cudgie’ Cullen they have a fantastic candidate, born and bred in this neck of the woods, deeply embroiled in Splott affairs and ready and willing to tackle the prime issue in this by-election: Cardiff’s despicable Labour Council that splashes millions on vanity projects, flashy gestures, civic boosterism, consultants’ fat fees and corporate whoring but can’t find money for the vital public services and desperately needed infrastructure and environmental improvements that real Cardiffians need.

Leticia Gonzalez (Plaid Cymru)
Regular readers will know I’m a Plaid Cymru voter through and through, come hell or high water, and given that Plaid’s Leticia Gonzalez is easily the best candidate in terms of talent, intelligence and decency, the likelihood is that she will get my vote. But Plaid’s campaign here has been low-profile and muted compared to the other parties – because as ever, being Welsh not British, it is systematically starved of resources and therefore must carefully target its campaigns where they can be most effective. So, with that in mind, the only thing that might make me vote otherwise is that Plaid stand little to no chance here and, for me, it’s just as important now to deliver a damaging blow to the shockingly bad Labour Council – and the LibDem, Green and Propel candidates all seem to be better positioned to do just that. Hmm…I must have a good think…

Tomos Llewelyn (Conservative)
Where did they find this effort?

RESULT UPDATE: Labour held the seat
LABOUR: 711 (34%)
GREEN: 362 (17%)
PROPEL: 305 (15%)
LIBDEM: 292 (14%)
REFORM: 271 (13%)
PLAID: 88 (4%)
TORY: 60 (3%)

TURNOUT: 17%

TOTAL FAR RIGHT VOTE (REF+TORY): 331 (16%)
TOTAL NON-LABOUR CENTRE-LEFT VOTE (GREEN, PROPEL, LIBDEM, PLAID): 1,047 (50%)