A BY-ELECTION in Morriston might well have been expected this month after the leader of Swansea Council, who represents the ward, stood for Labour in the Senedd election.
Cllr Rob Stewart is well-known in the city after 12 years as leader and Labour have always been the dominant political force in Wales.
In days gone by he’d be taking part in Senedd debates by now and his councillor role would be up for grabs. And indeed there is a Morriston by-election in nine days’ time, but in very different circumstances.
Cllr Stewart was Labour’s second-ranked candidate for the Gwyr Abertawe constituency on May 7 and only Mike Hedges – an incumbent MS – was elected for the party as one of six MSs, along with three Plaid Cymru candidates and two Reform UK ones. The result was symptomatic of a galling day for Labour and major gains for Plaid and Reform.
And, very sadly, a guiding force in Cllr Stewart’s career and a fellow Morriston councillor, Robert Francis-Davies, died in the early hours of May 8 – the day the votes were counted – hence the upcoming councillor by-election.
“It was probably one of the worst days I have had as a politician, and less so because of the result,” said Cllr Stewart, reflecting on May 8.
“I got a call from Robert’s family at 6.30am to say he had passed away. Clearly that completely changed the perspective of the day.“The whole count process paled into insignificance really given the shock news. I had lost a long-time friend, colleague and someone who had been a mentor to me for many years, and a really good friend.”
Two days later Cllr Stewart was on duty again as council leader for the annual VE Day remembrance service at the air defence memorial by the River Tawe. “You have to pick yourself and get back immediately,” he said. Cllr Francis-Davies’s funeral would take place took place two-and-a-half weeks later at Swansea Minster.
Asked in an interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service if the election experience had affected his focus as council leader, Cllr Stewart replied: “Absolutely not. I never took my foot of the gas during the Senedd election campaign. I give 100% to the job until I don’t have that job. My ambition for the city is unchanged, my commitment to the role is unchanged.”
For nearly two years Swansea Council was politically aligned with Cardiff Bay and Westminster; now Plaid Cymru holds sway at a national level in Wales.
“I haven’t had any formal meetings with new ministers – they are due in the next couple of weeks,” said Cllr Stewart. “We will work collaboratively with the Welsh Government in the interests of the city.”
He hoped that backing for regeneration projects would continue and that previous ministerial commitments such as the Welsh Government, he said, occupying part of a new public sector hub would be honoured. “I will be the first to stand up and say if they aren’t,” he said. “My job is to make sure we get the benefit of investment in our city.”
Many commentators have picked the bones out of the Senedd election, and Cllr Stewart said it had become clear to him while campaigning that Labour and other parties would get “squeezed” by Reform UK voters and those who didn’t want Reform turning to Plaid Cymru as the best means of stopping them.
Cllr Stewart said it felt like the election was being presented as “a binary choice” despite the fact it was a new system of proportional representation rather than winner-takes-all, meaning every vote really counted. Hats off to Plaid’s messaging, he said in so many words. “I think it really cut though,” he said.
Cllr Stewart felt quite a lot of people hadn’t grasped how the new electoral system worked and that there was some confusion, as he said was the case with every election, about which level of Government was being voted for and who was on the ballot paper.
He said some electors made it clear on the doorstep they were voting Reform – quite often, he said, “for bizarre reasons”. He went on: “Clearly there were people who felt they had tried every other party, and although they didn’t see anything specific that Reform would do for them, they were prepared to give them a chance.
“On a personal level I had come to the conclusion a few days before the election it was unlikely we were going to get more than one candidate through (in Gwyr Abertawe) because we’d seen a hardening of people’s positions. And I think that was due to the ‘two-horse race’ narrative and environment we were in.
“Overall I don’t think we ran the best campaign that we could have run nationally despite some really good efforts locally by a huge number of people,” he said. “Given that we (Labour) had been in power for a number of years I think we failed to talk enough about the good things that have happened during that period.” He went on to list free prescriptions and parking at hospitals, the smoking ban in public places, an overall protection of public services, and a more recent “recovery” of hospital waiting times.
Asked about the default 20mph speed limit introduced in 2023, Cllr Stewart said it had come up on the election doorstep but rarely. “My view hasn’t changed – it was the right thing to do but wasn’t implemented in the right way,” he said.
Cllr Stewart said he had communicated his preference for a phased 20mph implementation starting with streets people lived on and then looking at connecting routes on a case by case basis. “I think more people would have been supportive,” he said.
Labour’s sole Senedd success in Gwyr Abertawe, Mr Hedges, is a former council leader himself and has served as an MS since 2011. Cllr Stewart said Labour had had a process for selecting incumbent MSs and a different process for its others candidates such as himself. As such he knew he wouldn’t be Labour’s number one candidate for the constituency. “I can have no complaints,” he said.
Plaid ended up with 43 of the 96 seats on offer in Wales, Reform UK took 34, Labour nine, the Conservatives seven, the Green Party two and Liberal Democrats one. Welsh Labour declined to comment when contacted by the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Cllr Stewart said his council leader role was in no way a fallback position. “It’s a job I’m proud to have and I never take for granted,” he said. “Being leader of Wales’s second city with the biggest regeneration programme in Wales does give more influence and political power than you’ve got as an opposition member in the Senedd.”
The Morriston by-election takes place on June 18 and the candidates are Graham Ashby (Reform UK), Rebecca Francis-Davies (Labour), Idin Ghotbi (Conservatives), Hayden Lewis (Liberal Democrats), Gareth Schofield (Green Party), and Ioan Warlow (Plaid Cymru).
