What a fantastic, amazing, sensational result in the Caerffili by-election!

Labour, having held both the Westminster seat since it was created in 1918 and the Senedd seat since the start of devolution in 1999, fell to third place with only 11% of the vote – a catastrophic 35% drop in support that would mean the deserved end of the British Labour Party’s hegemony in Wales if repeated at next year’s Senedd election.

Reform UK threw the kitchen sink at Caerffili. Nigel Farage, completely ignorant about Wales and the Senedd, treating the by-election as if it were in England and resorting to his usual dog-whistle racism to appeal to the worst in people, strutted around Caerffili spreading lies and misinformation as though the result was a foregone conclusion. Bankrolled by multi-millionaires and far-right US think tanks, and getting huge, uncritical support from the UK’s rightwing media that is so dominant in Wales, the contemptuous nouveaux-fascists had the arrogant triumphalist smirks wiped from their hideous faces as they finished a distant second, 11% behind Plaid. Essentially their 36% of the vote consisted of the 17% the Tories got at the previous 2021 election along with the 5% support they already had, plus an extra 14% – all they managed to add despite their months-long bombardment of propaganda, despite outspending all the other parties combined and despite using every dirty trick conceivable – even ignoring the suspension of campaigning on the day of the funeral of Hefin David (1977-2025), the tragic Labour MS whose death by hanging had triggered the by-election.

As for the Tories…remember them? The thuggish morons lost their deposit with a pitiful 2% of the vote, having been entirely replaced by Farage’s far-right outriders. Bad Enoch’s desperate policy of being more horrible than thou should comfortably ensure the Conservatives don’t have a single Senedd member next year. Great, keep it up Kemi! She can’t grasp that Wales is not England and there just aren’t enough nasty, stupid, white trash scumbags here to sustain two mobs of wicked bastards.

On the highest turn-out yet in Senedd history, it was a wonderful result for Plaid Cymru, the Party of Wales – and particularly for Caerffili born and bred local hero Lindsay Whittle, for astute Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, for all the activists who campaigned with such determination and dignity, and most of all for the fine people of Caerffili. They saw through the hate-filled, divisive, destructive deceptions of Reform UK, delivered a body blow to the rightwing anarcho-capitalists who care nothing for Wales and breathed new hope, optimism and purpose into our nation. The thrilling possibilities of a route map on the road to independence from the atrocious UK now opens up in front of us. And Wales has also done a service to the whole world by showing that the rise of the far-right is not inevitable and that they can and must be defeated – not by treating people as venal idiots, in the demotic style adopted by all the words despots, but as decent, intelligent, thoughtful and principled human beings. We should all be very proud.