Plaid Cymru’s shock win in Caerphilly has sent tremors through the UK’s political establishment, exposing the fragility of mainstream unionist parties and raising the prospect of nationalist leadership in all four nations. As Reform surges and Labour falters, the case for a federal future grows stronger says Andy Maciver

And breathe. Mainstream British politics gave itself another pat on the back last Friday morning, and told itself everything was going to be ok, after the victory recorded by Plaid Cymru in the by-election for the Caerphilly seat in the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament.

After a constituency-based opinion poll predicted that Reform would win the seat from the Labour incumbent, the people of Caerphilly rallied around Plaid Cymru to ensure that the insurgent Reformers would be locked out. Labour, going from not far off half the vote share, fell to 11 per cent, and although they acknowledged their humiliation they still conveyed a sense that their votes had merely been loaned to the nationalist party to stop Reform.

Labour people, still, talk up their chances for May’s Senedd-wide elections, despite all polling evidence pointing to a two-horse race between Plaid Cymru and Reform.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, polled two per cent which, on a 50 per cent turnout, means that only one in a hundred people voted for the party that, until last year, ran the UK and was second in Wales, and for that matter still is second in Scotland.

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