Election reflections: what happened in Wales?
Across the country, we woke up to a new party in power for the first time in 14 years. Labour dominated as the tories collapsed across the UK, but in particular here in wales. With some intriguing numbers coming out of Wales, we take a look at how the parties did, who did well and who were the surprise packages of the night, with some thoughts from the people of Cardiff.
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00:00This general election was always going to be historic.
00:05Polls told us weeks ago that the Tories would be booted out of government after 14 years
00:08in charge, and of course that happened, and here in Wales it happened to a dramatic effect.
00:13Of the 32 Welsh seats, a staggering 27 went to Labour, one of their best performances
00:17in Wales ever, with Plaid Cymru up to four seats and the Lib Dems taking the final one.
00:22Notably then, that means the Tories took zero seats in Wales.
00:26This was a resounding rejection of the Conservatives here in the country, especially considering
00:29they had 14 seats at the last election, and were the clear number two behind the Labour
00:33party.
00:34Some of the more safer Tory seats in Wales have gone, but I'm not particularly surprised
00:43by that at the moment.
00:44I think the Tories have been there far too long, and certainly in the last five years
00:49have done nothing.
00:50They got less votes than Labour has before, and I genuinely just think it was people trying
00:55to get Conservatives out at this point.
00:58The theme of the night though was no Labour win, but a Tory loss, something that happened
01:02across the UK and across Wales.
01:04In fact, while the Tories lost a considerable vote share, the Labour party here in Wales
01:08also went down in their voter share and total number of voters, so had to rely on the incredible
01:13effort from the Reform party to consolidate their victory.
01:17Nigel Farage's Reform party, although taking a massive roughly 17% of the vote, had zero
01:22percent of the seats, a similar number to the Tories overall in Wales.
01:26I hope Nigel Farage do something better in the parliament and shout about it, you see.
01:33So that's how I feel.
01:34Again, I know a lot of older people who have voiced their opinions on Reform.
01:38A lot of my friends, a lot of my sort of demographic, very much against it.
01:43I'm very much against it personally.
01:45Economically they've got no ideas, and I'm afraid Farage for me is, well, he is our Donald
01:54Trump.
01:55Much of what happened here in the country followed the trend of the rest of the UK.
01:59But for one standout, Plaid Cymru had their best ever result in the general election,
02:03increasing their seats, their voter numbers and total voter share.
02:07This was in stark contrast to their counterparts in Scotland, as the SNP collapsed and lost
02:11roughly three quarters of their seats.
02:14Plaid ran on a fair treatment for Wales basis and largely hushed their independence calls,
02:18something that surely must have resonated with voters, who backed Plaid Cymru in higher
02:22numbers across the board.
02:25As expected, really, I think that they're strong in certain areas of the country and
02:28they've remained strong in those areas.
02:31You only have to go down Carmarthenshire Way or anywhere like that, you'll see all the
02:34Plaid Cymru signs everywhere.
02:36They're very well known in that area, so I'm not surprised that's happened at all and they've
02:40gained ground down there.
02:41This election has been historic, but for Wales it's much of the same.
02:45We voted Labour as the biggest party in literally every single general election for over 100
02:49years.
02:50One of the most successful political machines in the Western world.
02:53And they made their dominance known in Wales and staked their claim as Wales' party once
02:57again.