A by-election was held yesterday to fill the Bridgend County Borough Council vacancy in Caerau left by the late Phil White.
As said in the pre-election preview it was always going to be a Labour-Independent contest. I was expecting the result to be close either way (and with fewer than 100 votes in it, it was fairly close).
The result comes with a health warning. You can’t read too much into local by-elections, particularly when the main election is less than six months away.
We don’t know what the turnout figure is yet, but based on those numbers it was very low – probably at or below 20% (edit: Kyle Duggan has said turnout was 21.3%). By-election turnouts are usually poor anyway and given the time of year it’s not surprising.
Maybe this is more a warning to Labour than a boost for the Independents at this stage. I said in the preview this was effectively a first-round for next year’s local elections.
The Independents chose wisely in picking a seemingly well-known and well-liked candidate. However, Chris Davies will already have to start campaigning for re-election from today.
One positive Labour can take from this is they avoid an awkward selection process next year when the number of seats in Caerau is cut from 3 to 2. Labour in the Llynfi Valley does seem to have been dysfunctional and disorganised for a while now – the last thing they need is another falling out.
Labour can make a big statement and try to win back voters’ trust by announcing a timeline and budget to fix the mess left behind by the Arbed/insulation scandal (amongst other things) – but they need to do that quickly. This might not be the most accurate result in terms of predicting what will happen next May, but it’ll show a general trend and even the council’s own surveys are telling them that people aren’t happy.
Politically, it eats into Labour’s minority administration. Losing another seat won’t make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, but it always makes things trickier – particularly with a budget on the horizon. There’ll be changes behind the scenes to things like committee memberships too – even if it’s only for a few months.
As for Plaid Cymru, as said you can’t read that much into the result and the numbers look far worse than they are in reality – but it’s a sign of just how far behind they are in Bridgend more generally. All indications are that 2017’s relatively good performance in Bridgend won’t be repeated.
The Tories did about as well as you would expect.
