What Caerphilly by-election means for Scotland, the SNP and the Union

Even Reform's client journalists in the right-wing London media can’t protect Nigel Farage from this bad news.

Sure, they can softball stories about Nathan Gill, once Reform’s top man in Wales, taking bribes from Russia. They can deliberately fail to report Farage cosying up to America’s anti-abortion movement. They can bury stories about the MP Danny Kruger, Reform’s main strategist, promising to put the police under political control should the party win power.

But they cannot sweeten Reform’s failure to win the Caerphilly by-election in Wales, no matter how much they try. 

Reform was favourite to win. Its members swaggered around Caerphilly as if victory was guaranteed. Plaid Cymru trashed that narrative, romping home with an astonishing 47% of the vote.

But Reform losing is only part of the story. Caerphilly becomes a scrying mirror in which we can discern the likely shape of British politics over the next year and on into the 2029 general election.

First, Labour and the Conservatives are done. A quarter way into this new century, the old politics is over. The future of politics in each of the home nations and across the UK is now a battle of competing nationalisms.

Reform is the party of English/British nationalism. Sinn Fein is the biggest party in Northern Ireland. The SNP is set to win the next Scottish election in May. The battle for the Welsh Senedd will be a fight between Plaid and Reform.

Read more from Neil Mackay:

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Welsh, Scottish and Irish nationalism are all represented by left-of-centre, progressive parties. English nationalism is fronted by the reactionary xenophobia of Farage and Reform.

Not all nationalisms are the same. That’s another lesson.

Keir Starmer’s Labour is stuck in the middle. If he quickly tacks to the left, Starmer could perhaps save his party from complete wipeout at the next general election, and himself from defenestration come the results of the May 2026 vote when Scotland, Wales and London go to the polls.

Neal Lawson, the director of Compass, the progressive pro-Labour group, says that Caerphilly has shown that people on the centre-left “will vote tactically for a progressive alternative to Reform”.

Caerphilly isn’t Plaid’s natural heartland. Labour voters in the constituency switched to Plaid partly to ensure Reform’s defeat. 

However, Lawson says that left-of-centre voters “no longer view Labour as progressive”. 

He’s right. Starmer has continually courted Reform voters, amplified aggressive and unpleasant anti-migrant sentiment, and even drifted into far-right rhetoric with his ‘Island of Strangers’ speech.

Labour, says Lawson, “needs a massive reset at every level before the elections next May, to become both progressive and pluralistic, or they will be wiped out everywhere”.

It is more likely, though, that both Labour and the Tories – reduced to mortifying levels of support in Caerphilly of 11% and 2% respectively – will shift even further rightward.

That’s utter folly. Why vote for the low-fat version of Reform if the full-fat is right there in front of you? So expect a MEGA moment: Make England Great Again.

This will only further inflate support for Plaid and the SNP among floating voters, hastening the end of Labour and the Tories across not just Scotland and Wales but England as well.

Progressive voters in Scotland and Wales already consider nationalist parties the only bulwark against Reform. More pandering to the right by Starmer just underscores that belief.

In Scotland, the only prospect of limiting the size of the SNP’s victory come May would be for Labour to dump both Starmer and Anas Sarwar.

Indeed, the only prospect of saving Labour nationally is to dump Starmer as soon as possible. To get rid of him before May might be damaging but it would reduce the losses that are coming. After May, his fate will surely be sealed.

Sarwar is forever tainted by his role as Starmer’s coat-carrier. He has put no mark on Scottish Labour to differentiate it from Labour under Starmer. Scottish Labour could perhaps keep its head above water if it dispensed with Sarwar right away. 

Move the debate on beyond May next year to the UK general election in 2029, and it becomes clear that Farage’s road to power will not be as easy as he once hoped – and his pals in the London right-wing media hope.

Voters are now as promiscuous as a polyamorist. They have little loyalty to traditional parties. The LibDems and Greens in England are likely to benefit hugely from tactical voting to keep Reform out.

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All of which, of course, sets Britain up for a potentially hung parliament at the next general election.

The threat of Reform is already putting rocket boosters under both Scottish and Welsh independence and support for a United Ireland.

It is inevitable that if an attempt were made to form a grand coalition to keep out a Tory/Reform or just Reform-only government, then the SNP would be prominently in the mix along with Plaid.

Now, why would the SNP or Plaid save England from a Reform government unless the price was an independence referendum?

And if Reform did take power, can you imagine the unmitigated chaos which would immediately unfold across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Labour lost Scotland a long time ago now. Starmer, if he is not removed from power, may well go down in history as the man who didn’t just lose Wales as well, but killed the Labour Party and dug the grave of the union.

Neil Mackay is The Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.