United Kingdom: Keir Starmer's Labor threatened to lose their Welsh stronghold

Voters in Wales are expected to put an end on Thursday to more than a century of domination by the Labor Party, in competition with extreme groups who are fueling discontent with the high cost of living and the supposed decline of the United Kingdom.

In this former industrial bastion of three million inhabitants, a Labor defeat would constitute a scathing snub for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in power since July 2024. And would inevitably fuel calls for his resignation.

“I'm very sad not to vote Labor this time,” says Ross Mumford, a 59-year-old delivery driver, who until now had always supported the center-left party, like his father and grandfather.

"It was part of the family, but this year it's over," he told AFP in front of the Welsh parliament, the Senedd, located on the edge of Cardiff Bay.

With its working-class roots and esprit de corps, the history of Wales is closely linked to that of the Labor Party, founded in 1900.

The party's first leader was trade unionist Keir Hardie, MP for an industrial constituency near Cardiff. And the Welshman Aneurin Bevan was the architect in 1948 of the National Health Service, the essential national health service.

Since the UK Devolution Act of 1999, which gave Wales and Scotland their own parliaments, Labor has led the Welsh government, whose remit includes health, education and transport.

- Rejection of the popular electorate -

Recent polls on the May 7 elections predict a Labor largely left behind both by the left-wing independentists of Plaid Cymru (the Wales Party, in Welsh) and by the right-wing anti-immigration party Reform UK. The rise of these two parties, currently neck and neck, reflects the rejection of traditional parties at work in the United Kingdom as in other European countries.

Among the reasons for this rejection put forward by Ross Mumford: Keir Starmer "brazenly lied" about the Peter Mandelson affair, a historic Labor figure who was briefly ambassador to Washington despite his friendship with the American child criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr Mumford is set to vote for Reform on Thursday: 'Let's give them a chance, what have we got to lose?' he says, a recurring refrain among those disappointed with Labor.

Hope Porter, 35, another former Labor supporter, thinks she will vote on Thursday for the Greens, whose leader Zack Polanski is taking a turn to the left and denouncing Israel's policy in Gaza.

Labor are now "conservatives dressed in red. They are no longer on the side of the working classes", judges this artist met before the Senedd.

Sitting near a statue of a former Labor MP, Sue Jenkins, 83, is one of the rare people met by AFP at