Post by Robert Waller on Nov 2, 2022 22:47:39 GMT
One of five constituencies in Wales with a majority or near majority of Welsh speakers, and not uncoincidentally the third most loyal seat to Plaid Cymru over recent decades, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr is unusual in a number of ways.
For a start, it is one of the most rural constituencies anywhere in the United Kingdom. There are no large or even medium sized towns – it does not include either Llanelli or the vast bulk of Carmarthen itself, so really it should be named Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr. The largest town is Ammanford, with a population of 5,411 in the 2011 census, but as a former coal mining community it is untypical and on the very edge of the division. The seat ranks 15th in the list of all UK seats in terms of employment in agriculture, and it is largely composed of even smaller towns like Llandeilo and Llandovery and remote-feeling villages, hamlets, and farmsteads. Dinefwr is the name of a local government district located in the northern half of this seat that existed between 1974 and 1996, and has a decidedly ‘mid-Wales’ feel.
The sense of insularity is reinforced by the statistic that Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr is also in the top twenty for residents possessing no passport. It is the top decile for those of pension age. Over 60% of the residents were deemed ‘competent in the Welsh language’ when that question was asked in the 2001 census, not far off the figure for Ynys Mon / Anglesey, but there are far fewer incomers here and it feels less on the beaten track, even though not quite in a corner of the country. The seat is almost entirely inland territory, unless one counts a narrow access to the Bristol Channel at the estuary of the Towy at Cefn Sidan sands. It is therefore not surprising that Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr has been held without a break by the Welsh Nationalists since 2001.
In fact it has the best claim to be the lineal successor of the Carmarthen seat that existed before 1997, and which itself had an interesting electoral history. Having retained some allegiance to the Liberal party even into their nadir in the 1950s, when they were reduced as in 1955 to six seats (including Carmarthen) and a general election share of just 2.7%, it fell to Labour in a 1957 byelection (oddly enough, won by the former Liberal MP and daughter of a Prime Minister, Lady Megan Lloyd George). Then on her own death, it was won in the historic byelection of 14 July 1966 by Gwynfor Evans, a veteran campaigner who thus became Plaid Cymru’s first ever MP. He then entered a period of alternation with Labour’s Gwynoro Jones, who held Carmarthen by 3 votes in the closest result of the February 1974 general election; Evans regained it in October that same year, before ending his Commons career with a defeat in 1979. But Carmarthen East & Dinefwr was only won by Labour in their annus mirabilis of 1997, and since 2001 both it and, even more so, the conterminous Assembly/Senedd seat of the same name, have seen an unbroken Plaid run.
In recent years the Nationalists have also enjoyed a dominant position on Carmarthenshire County Council, despite it also covering the Llanelli area which in Westminster terms has always remained fairly solidly loyal to Labour. In the May 2017 elections Plaid won 37 of the 75 council seats, and in May 2022 increased this to 38. They have a clear majority of the wards within Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr, dropping the odd seat to Independents such as at Llandeilo and one to Labour in the split representation of Saron just west of Ammanford. But despite its mining heritage the Nationalists, not Labour, won in Ammanford itself and they took an 86% share in Llandovery; that was against a Conservative – a party that won precisely zero seats in both 2017 and 2021 elections, though they had a lone representative in a small part of the intervening time as Shahana Najmi, elected as Labour, defected to the Tories in October 2021. That was in the Lliedi ward in Llanelli, not in this seat, and she finished bottom of the poll in the following May.
It might therefore come as a surprise to note that in the general election of December 2019 the Conservatives actually finished second in Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr, and that by a margin of a mere 1,809 votes. This was their first runner-up spot in this seat ever, and counting the former Carmarthen since 1987. They hadn’t actually won Carmarthen since 1874, unless a solitary Liberal Unionist victory in 1895 counts, which it probably shouldn’t, given that that party was fairly freshly minted and had not yet effectively merged with the Conservatives. The reason for the Tory advance in 2019 is clear. This constituency opted for Leave in 2016, by an estimated 53% to 47%. This probably links with its age profile, that lack of passports, and the fact that there are remarkably few ethnic minorities in this seat, which is over 98.5% white. On the other hand the local election results and historic general election figures suggest 2019 would be a flash in the pan for the Conservatives in a non-Brexit year, and indeed in the 2021 Senedd constituency election they slipped back to third place, even with the same candidate, Havard Hughes. Plaid Cymru won then by a very comfortable margin of nearly 7,000 over Labour.
It is true that the Plaid member in the Senedd is the popular Adam Price, who was MP here for 2001 to 2010 and has been his party’s leader since 2018. On the other hand, his successor and current MP Jonathan Edwards has been sitting as an Independent since 2020 due to an arrest and police caution for domestic abuse, which may cause problems in Westminster terms whether he is fully rehabilitated to the party or not. As elsewhere in Wales there will also be major boundary changes to take into consideration. With the need for it to be expanded to approach the UK-wide quota, now to be applied in the principality, the Commission have suggested in both initial and revised proposals that the town of Carmarthen itself should be transferred from the West & South Pembrokeshire division; previously only a small portion on the east bank of the river Towy, including the railway station, was in East & Dinefwr. This adds around 10,000 electors. Also taken from Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire is a swathe of territory totalling about 14,000 voters stretching west through the thinly populated Llanboidy and Trelech, and south west through St Clears and Whitland to the coast at Laugharne (Dylan Thomas’s 'Llareggub' in Under Milk Wood; try that name backwards).
In return over 9,000 electors in the eastern part of Carmarthen East & Dinefwr are to be transferred to Llanelli, in the shape of Gorslas, Llangyndreyrn and St Ishmael’s wards. Thus the centre of gravity of the seat will be moved to the west, but overall the political impact is likely to be neutral; the predominant characteristics of both the new wards and those lost are Nationalist. However a name change is also suggested, in some ways a return to the Carmarthen that existed before 1997, except that now it is recommended that the lead nomenclature should be the Welsh form, Caerfyddin. This is a parallel to Ynys Mon, perhaps. It should be appropriate given that the most likely outcome if the first contest in the new seat will be a Plaid Cymru win, a hold in effect – unless some negative effect arises from the travails of the present MP, in which case Labour’s chances of regaining an area they haven’t held for over twenty years may become realistic. After all, taking into account the drama in the previous Carmarthen, no constituency has more convincingly shown more of a history of being a Plaid Cymru versus Labour marginal.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 22.4% 46/650
Owner-occupied 74.8% 72/650
Private rented 10.3% 561/650
Social rented 12.8% 445/650
White 98.6% 41/650
Black 0.1% 589/650
Asian 0.6% 610/650
No passport 27.7% 17/650
Managerial & professional 28.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.1%
Small employers and own account workers 15.9% 15/650
Employed in agriculture, forestry, fishing 6.2% 13/650
Skilled trades occupations 19.0% 17/650
Degree level 25.9% 321/650
No qualifications 26.2% 210/650
Students 6.1% 460/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 74.8% 56/573
Private rented 13.1% 524/573
Social rented 12.1% 421/573
White 97.9%
Black 0.2%
Asian 0.8%
Managerial & professional 30.2% 336/573
Routine & Semi-routine 24.3% 270/573
Degree level 33.1% 255/573
No qualifications 19.3% 224/573
General election 2019: Carmarthen East and Dinefwr
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Plaid Cymru Jonathan Edwards 15,939 38.9 -0.4
Conservative Havard Hughes 14,130 34.5 +8.2
Labour Maria Carroll 8,622 21.0 -8.8
Brexit Party Peter Prosser 2,311 5.6 N/A
PC Majority 1,809 4.4 -5.1
Turnout 41,002 71.4 -1.9
Registered electors 57,407
Plaid Cymru hold
Swing 4.3 PC to C
For a start, it is one of the most rural constituencies anywhere in the United Kingdom. There are no large or even medium sized towns – it does not include either Llanelli or the vast bulk of Carmarthen itself, so really it should be named Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr. The largest town is Ammanford, with a population of 5,411 in the 2011 census, but as a former coal mining community it is untypical and on the very edge of the division. The seat ranks 15th in the list of all UK seats in terms of employment in agriculture, and it is largely composed of even smaller towns like Llandeilo and Llandovery and remote-feeling villages, hamlets, and farmsteads. Dinefwr is the name of a local government district located in the northern half of this seat that existed between 1974 and 1996, and has a decidedly ‘mid-Wales’ feel.
The sense of insularity is reinforced by the statistic that Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr is also in the top twenty for residents possessing no passport. It is the top decile for those of pension age. Over 60% of the residents were deemed ‘competent in the Welsh language’ when that question was asked in the 2001 census, not far off the figure for Ynys Mon / Anglesey, but there are far fewer incomers here and it feels less on the beaten track, even though not quite in a corner of the country. The seat is almost entirely inland territory, unless one counts a narrow access to the Bristol Channel at the estuary of the Towy at Cefn Sidan sands. It is therefore not surprising that Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr has been held without a break by the Welsh Nationalists since 2001.
In fact it has the best claim to be the lineal successor of the Carmarthen seat that existed before 1997, and which itself had an interesting electoral history. Having retained some allegiance to the Liberal party even into their nadir in the 1950s, when they were reduced as in 1955 to six seats (including Carmarthen) and a general election share of just 2.7%, it fell to Labour in a 1957 byelection (oddly enough, won by the former Liberal MP and daughter of a Prime Minister, Lady Megan Lloyd George). Then on her own death, it was won in the historic byelection of 14 July 1966 by Gwynfor Evans, a veteran campaigner who thus became Plaid Cymru’s first ever MP. He then entered a period of alternation with Labour’s Gwynoro Jones, who held Carmarthen by 3 votes in the closest result of the February 1974 general election; Evans regained it in October that same year, before ending his Commons career with a defeat in 1979. But Carmarthen East & Dinefwr was only won by Labour in their annus mirabilis of 1997, and since 2001 both it and, even more so, the conterminous Assembly/Senedd seat of the same name, have seen an unbroken Plaid run.
In recent years the Nationalists have also enjoyed a dominant position on Carmarthenshire County Council, despite it also covering the Llanelli area which in Westminster terms has always remained fairly solidly loyal to Labour. In the May 2017 elections Plaid won 37 of the 75 council seats, and in May 2022 increased this to 38. They have a clear majority of the wards within Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr, dropping the odd seat to Independents such as at Llandeilo and one to Labour in the split representation of Saron just west of Ammanford. But despite its mining heritage the Nationalists, not Labour, won in Ammanford itself and they took an 86% share in Llandovery; that was against a Conservative – a party that won precisely zero seats in both 2017 and 2021 elections, though they had a lone representative in a small part of the intervening time as Shahana Najmi, elected as Labour, defected to the Tories in October 2021. That was in the Lliedi ward in Llanelli, not in this seat, and she finished bottom of the poll in the following May.
It might therefore come as a surprise to note that in the general election of December 2019 the Conservatives actually finished second in Carmarthenshire East & Dinefwr, and that by a margin of a mere 1,809 votes. This was their first runner-up spot in this seat ever, and counting the former Carmarthen since 1987. They hadn’t actually won Carmarthen since 1874, unless a solitary Liberal Unionist victory in 1895 counts, which it probably shouldn’t, given that that party was fairly freshly minted and had not yet effectively merged with the Conservatives. The reason for the Tory advance in 2019 is clear. This constituency opted for Leave in 2016, by an estimated 53% to 47%. This probably links with its age profile, that lack of passports, and the fact that there are remarkably few ethnic minorities in this seat, which is over 98.5% white. On the other hand the local election results and historic general election figures suggest 2019 would be a flash in the pan for the Conservatives in a non-Brexit year, and indeed in the 2021 Senedd constituency election they slipped back to third place, even with the same candidate, Havard Hughes. Plaid Cymru won then by a very comfortable margin of nearly 7,000 over Labour.
It is true that the Plaid member in the Senedd is the popular Adam Price, who was MP here for 2001 to 2010 and has been his party’s leader since 2018. On the other hand, his successor and current MP Jonathan Edwards has been sitting as an Independent since 2020 due to an arrest and police caution for domestic abuse, which may cause problems in Westminster terms whether he is fully rehabilitated to the party or not. As elsewhere in Wales there will also be major boundary changes to take into consideration. With the need for it to be expanded to approach the UK-wide quota, now to be applied in the principality, the Commission have suggested in both initial and revised proposals that the town of Carmarthen itself should be transferred from the West & South Pembrokeshire division; previously only a small portion on the east bank of the river Towy, including the railway station, was in East & Dinefwr. This adds around 10,000 electors. Also taken from Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire is a swathe of territory totalling about 14,000 voters stretching west through the thinly populated Llanboidy and Trelech, and south west through St Clears and Whitland to the coast at Laugharne (Dylan Thomas’s 'Llareggub' in Under Milk Wood; try that name backwards).
In return over 9,000 electors in the eastern part of Carmarthen East & Dinefwr are to be transferred to Llanelli, in the shape of Gorslas, Llangyndreyrn and St Ishmael’s wards. Thus the centre of gravity of the seat will be moved to the west, but overall the political impact is likely to be neutral; the predominant characteristics of both the new wards and those lost are Nationalist. However a name change is also suggested, in some ways a return to the Carmarthen that existed before 1997, except that now it is recommended that the lead nomenclature should be the Welsh form, Caerfyddin. This is a parallel to Ynys Mon, perhaps. It should be appropriate given that the most likely outcome if the first contest in the new seat will be a Plaid Cymru win, a hold in effect – unless some negative effect arises from the travails of the present MP, in which case Labour’s chances of regaining an area they haven’t held for over twenty years may become realistic. After all, taking into account the drama in the previous Carmarthen, no constituency has more convincingly shown more of a history of being a Plaid Cymru versus Labour marginal.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 22.4% 46/650
Owner-occupied 74.8% 72/650
Private rented 10.3% 561/650
Social rented 12.8% 445/650
White 98.6% 41/650
Black 0.1% 589/650
Asian 0.6% 610/650
No passport 27.7% 17/650
Managerial & professional 28.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.1%
Small employers and own account workers 15.9% 15/650
Employed in agriculture, forestry, fishing 6.2% 13/650
Skilled trades occupations 19.0% 17/650
Degree level 25.9% 321/650
No qualifications 26.2% 210/650
Students 6.1% 460/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 74.8% 56/573
Private rented 13.1% 524/573
Social rented 12.1% 421/573
White 97.9%
Black 0.2%
Asian 0.8%
Managerial & professional 30.2% 336/573
Routine & Semi-routine 24.3% 270/573
Degree level 33.1% 255/573
No qualifications 19.3% 224/573
General election 2019: Carmarthen East and Dinefwr
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Plaid Cymru Jonathan Edwards 15,939 38.9 -0.4
Conservative Havard Hughes 14,130 34.5 +8.2
Labour Maria Carroll 8,622 21.0 -8.8
Brexit Party Peter Prosser 2,311 5.6 N/A
PC Majority 1,809 4.4 -5.1
Turnout 41,002 71.4 -1.9
Registered electors 57,407
Plaid Cymru hold
Swing 4.3 PC to C
