Arfon Labour

Source: Llafur Arfon on Blogmenai

Dyfrig has an interesting story on his blog - nobody wants to stand for Labour in Arfon.

If this is true then it's quite strange. It's fairly unusual for nobody suitable to put their name forward for Labour for a Westminster general election - even in a hopeless constituency. Hopeless constituencies are the first steps on the ladder to a successful political career.

But Arfon isn't a hopeless constituency for Labour, or at least it shouldn't be. The constituency didn't exist in the 2005 Westminster elections, but according to the people who understand these things, Labour would have won had it existed. The hypothetical results would have been:

Labour: 8165 (35.5%)
Plaid Cymru: 8072 (35.1%)
Tories: 3431 (14.9%)
Lib Dems: 2599 (11.3%)
Othe3rs: 748 (3.2%)
Majority: 93 (0.4%)

So Labour can't get anyone to stand in a seat that they hold - technically at least. Why?

The answer is quite simple - since the new constituency came into being Labour has been hammered there three times. Here are the 2007 Assembly election results:

Plaid Cymru 10,260 (52.4%)
Labour 5,242 (26.8%)
Tories 1,858 (9.5%)
Lib Dems 1,424 (7.3%)
UKIP 789 (4%)
Majority 5,018 (25.6%)

Things went worse after that, with the large housing estates of Caernarfon and Bangor voting heavily against them in the 2008 local elections - remarkably so. Things went from bad to worse in the European elections this year.

Now all this is happening in the context of a slump in the Labour vote across the UK, and a worse slump in North Wales - and an even worse one in Welsh speaking Wales.

So the central Labour Party is forced to select a candidate for Arfon - and it's likely that that person will come third. Labour were bragging they could win Arfon in 2007.

Very sad.