The result of yesterday’s county council by-election in the Pyle, Kenfig Hill & Cefn Cribwr ward has been announced.
Commentary
You can never read too much into local by-election results as turnout is often low.
Labour now only has a majority of one seat on BCBC, wiping out their gain in Aberkenfig last year. They’ll be disappointed to have lost out by a relatively small margin to Reform. I don’t think they performed as badly as they could have done given how quickly they’ve managed to become unpopular since winning last year’s UK general election. There’ll be local issues at play in this too, but without accurate polling you can never tell why people vote a certain way.
The big story here will be Reform UK winning their first elected county council seat in Bridgend and (I think) their second in Wales following a by-election in Torfaen back in February.
We’ve been in a similar position before during 2015-16 when it was UKIP making these sorts of gains. Then they made a big Senedd breakthrough – which Reform is on course to do next May. Then they quickly prove to be completely out of their depth and self-destruct. It points to them being the protest/anti-Labour vote of choice in the Bridgend area next year (and in future by-elections).
That should also make it clear to the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru that they need to do a hell of a lot more groundwork in the area if they want to challenge for more than one seat in the new Senedd constituencies.
While Labour gets a poke in the eye here, it raises some questions for the Independents as well. While their vote had held up, by and large, they clearly don’t have a monopoly on the anti-Labour council vote in Bridgend anymore. They also don’t have the same resources or national media exposure/obsession/circus that follows Reform.
