With Labour set to win a majority in this week’s general election, Ka Long Tung visited the party’s traditional stronghold of Merthyr Tydfil to speak to voters. But even with anger at the Tories running high there is little enthusiasm for Keir Starmer’s Labour or mainstream politics in general.
Words and images by Ka Long Tung. Main image: David Richards is unsure who he will vote for on Thursday.
The Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare constituency is considered to be one of the safest for Labour in the country. Over the past three decades, it was only in 2010 that a Labour candidate won with less than 50% of the vote here.
Yet even after 14 years of austerity by the Conservative government in Westminster, there is little excitement for Keir Starmer’s party ahead of the general election on 4th July.
“I can’t vote conservative because I’m an ex-miner,” says David Richards, who lives in the town of Merthyr Tydfil. He thinks the Tories will never represent his community and has always voted Labour, but he is undecided about who to vote for this time. “I’ve lost faith in Labour,” he says.
Others however still think the party is the best way to finally kick the Tories out of power. “I’m likely to vote for Labour,” says Leighton Budding, a resident who works in the local college. “But I don’t fully get behind the manifesto,” he continues.
He admits that the decision to vote for the Labour candidate is tactical in the political system that is dominated by two big parties. “It’s probably Labour or Conservative, so it’s a two-horse race,” he says.
With widespread disappointment in politicians and the two main parties, a space has opened up for Reform UK, who’s leader Nigel Farage chose to launch his party’s manifesto in a social club in Merthyr’s Gurnos estate on 17th June.
Although a party on the far right with a history of racism, Reform is targeting Labour as well as Tory voters.
In the BBC Wales election debate, Reform’s Oliver Lewis, a candidate for the Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr constituency, criticised the privatisation of utilities in Thatcher’s time and promised Reform would not cut welfare.
He went on to say his party was the “new Labour Party”. Although it resulted in waves of laughter in the studio, it was a clear pitch to those who might be feeling disillusioned with the party.
Speaking of the decision to hold the manifesto launch in Merthyr, college worker Leighton Budding comments: “It’s tactical, isn’t it? He’s trying to swerve voters in this area because he thinks they’re impressionable and he went to the place where he thought to have the biggest impact.”
The view is shared with Tiff Oben who also works in Merthyr. “I think because there was a lot of Brexit voters here, there’s a lot of working class Tories who don’t really understand that the Tories are not in their favour and not doing anything for them.”
She continues: “So he (Nigel Farage) thinks he can come here and get those voters who no longer want to vote for the Tories.”
According to the Electoral Calculus seat prediction, Labour are set to win the constituency with 51% of the vote, with the Tories collapsing to third place on just 9%. Most of the Tory vote appears to go to Reform UK, who are predicted to come second with a 21% vote share. Disappointingly for Plaid Cymru, they are set to come forth with 8%.
In spite of Reform’s high polling, none of the eight people we spoke said they would be voting for the party on July 4th.
Distrust of Labour
In Wales, dismay with the Labour Party has grown following the donation scandal surrounding the new First Minister, Vaughan Gething, who ex-miner David Richards refers to as “guilty”.
More fundamentally however the party is also under fire for crumbling public services.
For Richards, who is yet undecided as to how he will vote, this is the case for the health service that he depends on due to back and knee trouble, as well as suffering with Spondylosis.
As of April 2024, there were 164,450 people on the waiting list in Wales, with 31,717 people waiting for over 14 weeks.
But it does not have to be an emergency or chronic disease when people need health services; Budding says he needs to use it more now after having children.
The father of two says it is very difficult to get a GP appointment. “When your child is sick, you know, ringing at 100 times, 8am to be told you’ll have to ring back tomorrow,” he complains.
He says he does not want to see more privatisation of the NHS.
Moreover, concern about the Labour Party comes from a scepticism that they will be much different from the Conservatives. Tiff Oben refers to the party’s politicians as “soft Tories.”
Ian Clark, a worker at a train company, echoes this when he says that Labour does not represent the working people anymore, but is “the lesser of two evils.”
Clark says the two parties are not considerably different anymore. “They [Labour] have moved to more middle class rather than working, grassroots now,” he says.
Although Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has pledged that there would not be a return to austerity if Labour came to power, critics say there will not be an increase in public spending without raising taxes on big businesses or the wealthy.
Effectively the Labour government could increase spending on some public services should they come into power, but it would only be possible with cuts to other areas of spending.
By ruling out redistributive taxation in its manifesto, the Labour de facto accepts existing spending plans which translate to cuts to unprotected departments of between 1.9 per cent and 3.5 per cent per year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts said Labour offered no radical manifesto. She said Labour was only offering “more austerity but painted red.”
Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare is a new constituency after two were merged following recent electoral boundary changes. Two Labour MPs had to fight an internal election in order to be the party’s candidate for the upcoming election. The left wing, anti austerity Beth Winter lost out to Gerald Jones – a Keir Starmer loyalist – in a controversial contest that was seen to favour Jones.
But despite the lack of hope about political parties’ ability to improve living conditions for people in Merthyr, Labour still look set to win on Thursday as predicted.
Jeremy Bassett, a Merthyr resident, says he will vote for the Labour candidate on 4th July. He says he has supported Labour since he joined a trade union, and unions have always worked closely with the Labour party.
Al, who owns a barber in Merthyr, says he will likely vote for the Labour candidate this time after voting for the Tory one in the last general election. “If they ruin my vote this time, I will never ever vote for Labour again,” he says.
He says he may consider voting for a smaller party next time if the business and the area do not improve under the potential Labour government.
Politics may have already made people feel alienated from it.
“That’s the way British politics works, isn’t it?” says Oben. “Tories are in for like 10 years, destroy everything. Labour come in, sort of mess things up a little but, but makes something for individual people. And it just goes round and round in circles.”
*This article has been corrected, an earlier version referenced the Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney constituency but this was abolished in 2023
