- War of words - 23rd May 2025
- Able bodied - 22nd May 2025
- NOT free and easy! - 21st May 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, and 41 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, covering or analysing elections has always been central. This is now underlined by watching closely the votes in England today, as well as looking at the outcomes in Canada.
Do not be fooled into thinking that just because elections are happening today in England, or have taken place even further away, they do not affect Wales. They do.
English local elections are happening today, and there will also be mayoral elections for certain UK cities and a by-election in the Runcorn and Helsby constituency.
If the results are bad for the Labour Party, they could rattle the UK as well as the Welsh Government (WG) shaking confidence in policy-makers to push through unpopular but worthwhile plans.
If they are bad for opposition parties, they may be less certain about holding to account the WG.
The converse is true as well, of course – if Labour win a slew of seats, the WG could feel emboldened to enact weak policies, or if they are successful, the opposition might take its eye off the ball, thinking the Government has no real mandate.
Even studying the results of the Canadian election (and believe me this is being done in Cardiff Bay) may bear fruit for politicians and support staff.
On the surface THIS election on April 28 seemed to preserve the political status quo.
As in the last one, in 2021, the ruling Liberal Party will form a minority government.
The Conservatives, the main opposition party, slightly narrowed their deficit in Canada’s Parliament—the Liberals now hold 25 more ridings (as constituencies are called in Canada) than the Conservatives do, down from a 41-seat gap.
The Conservatives fared a bit worse in the popular vote, losing it by two percentage points after winning by one in 2021.
Underneath this apparent stasis, however, lies a striking political upheaval.
On average, the margin between the two big parties in individual ridings changed by nine percentage points from 2021 to 2025, twice as much as the shift in the average American county between the presidential elections of 2020 and 2024.
Some ridings swung by more than 30 points.
These yawning gaps added up to modest differences in nationwide results only because for each riding that moved right, another one slid leftwards by a similar amount.
The collapse of Canada’s minor parties accounts for some of this local-level volatility. The left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) fell from 18 per cent of the vote to six per cent. The right-wing People’s Party (PP) dropped from five per cent to one per cent.
Yet changes in ridings’ third-party vote shares are only faintly correlated to shifts in the margin between the big parties. This means that huge swathes of the electorate probably flipped from backing the Conservatives in 2021 to the Liberals this year, and vice versa.
The Liberals’ stunning comeback from a 25-percentage-point polling deficit has rightly been attributed to a repudiation of Donald Trump.
Nonetheless, riding-level results look remarkably similar to the demographic trends that returned Mr Trump to office in the United States of America (USA).
This is a worrying sign for Mark Carney, the Liberal Prime Minister, that Canadian politics is realigning along American lines.
Closer to home there are indications in recent weeks that could also worry the UK Conservatives, with the results possibly playing out at the ballot box. There have been rumblings the party should form a pact with Reform UK.
In a secret recording (which has been used by me many times) at a student event, Robert Jenrick, who came second in the Tory leadership vote and is the Shadow Justice Secretary, said that he is “determined” for the fight from the right against Labour “to be united”.
Mr Jenrick can be heard saying on the recording that he would try “one way or another” to make sure Reform UK and the Tories do not compete at the next GE, handing a second term in office to Sir Keir Starmer in the process.
The Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has put a brave face on this, and a source close to her has stated: “She hasn’t condemned Jenrick for what he said because she has previously gone even further and told donors she believes a pact with Reform is inevitable”.
Whether or not all of this has any impact for voters today in England remains to be seen.
But if it does, the impact will be felt in Wales too…
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when political stories were often crucial), as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now
Tomorrow – why major questions are being asked about money given on a charity website, set up by a conspiracy theorist based in Wales who has appeared as a ‘media commentator’ on the contentious Russian TV station RT, engaged in a public spat with presenter Jeremy Vine, compared herself to David Icke, and threatened to sue The Eye.
