Inside Welsh Labour where anger and confusion risk tearing party apart

Poor polling, own goals and a by-election thumping mean serious questions are being asked as the party faces a seismic result at next year's Senedd election. Political editor Ruth Mosalski reports

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> Plaid Cymru's Lindsay Whittle and Labour candidate Richard Tunnicliffe at the Caerphilly by-election count last month

IT'S safe to say there is discontent wherever you look in Welsh Labour.

This is a party in government in Westminster, a party that has enjoyed 26 years of power in Wales, and it is in real trouble. There are less than six months to go until the Senedd election in Wales, an election which right now looks like it'll be seismic. If it goes the way currently projected, it could even end the careers of not just one but two of the party's leaders.

We now have consistent Welsh-specific polling which projects Labour will come third in the national election here in Wales in May.

But this isn't just about hypothetical polling any more. The most recent electoral test in Wales showed that voters are not only moving away from Labour to the right, in Reform UK, but also to the left and Plaid Cymru.

There is, as you'd expect, a postmortem under way. Campaigners report back that the overriding emotion they heard on the doorsteps was "frustration" at the slow pace of change or the lack of it.

In Caerphilly specifically, but not uniquely in Wales, it was on three levels - the local council making unpopular decisions, Welsh Government and UK Government.

Labour knows it needs something tangible for voters to see, but also for campaigners to talk about.

Achievements like free prescriptions or organ donation might have been under their watch, but they were a long time ago.

Some speak of "real heartache" that it has come to this. Another bluntly summarised the situation as a “sh*tshow”.

The by-election result in Caerphilly did very little to ease any worries. The disclaimer throughout the campaign was that that was just a by-election, and was on the "old" constituency boundaries and electoral system that will both be irrelevant from May.