CARDIFF, Wales — It would be like the Democrats losing Harlem or the Republicans going down in Mesa, Arizona.
Saddled with an uncharismatic leader, a divided party base and a platform badly in need of updating for post-Brexit Britain, the Labor Party, the country’s traditional leftist party, is facing an uphill battle even here in Wales, which for decades has been a critical bastion of strength.
Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May’s anticipated landslide victory in the June 8 snap election could dislodge Labor from its remaining strongholds in northern England and Wales in what some pollsters predict could be a “political earthquake.” The Labor Party has steadily lost parliamentary representation in two consecutive elections since being ousted from power in 2010.
But the latest round of voting could unseat Britain’s socialists from parts of the country that they have controlled for over 100 years, with Conservatives running strongly in constituencies they haven’t won since the days of Queen Victoria.
The latest ICM polls give Ms. May’s Conservatives a stunning 49 percent to 27 percent lead over Jeremy Corbyn and the Labor Party. The polling projects Conservatives to boost their 101-seat majority to a whopping 170 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons. In a possible harbinger, the Conservatives picked up some 500 seats in local elections across Wales on May 5 while Labor lost about 400 seats.
Once rich in coal mines and steel, Wales was a birthplace of Britain’s 19th-century industrial revolution and cradle of its organized labor movement. But the closure of mines in the 1980s and 1990s depressed the region, weakened its public services and undermined Labor’s authority.
Wales combines decaying industrial cities with rural farming communities in ways similar to the U.S. Rust Belt that turned away from the Democratic Party last year to deliver a stunning victory to Republican Donald Trump.
Ms. May made one of her first campaign stops in the Welsh city of Bridgend late last month after a local poll showed her party ahead of Labor by 10 percentage points in a region where Conservatives were virtually locked out 20 years ago.
She even told an indoor gathering of a few hundred supporters not to be complacent and urged them to continue working hard to block a Labor-led “coalition of chaos.”
Blaming Corbyn
Many Labor members also blame their underperformance on the lackluster leadership of Mr. Corbyn. Far-left support that helped him win against rivals for the party leadership could now work against him in a general election.
Ms. May has been raising the specter of a shaky coalition developing among Labor, Scottish and Welsh nationalists and other small parties if Conservatives fall short of an overall majority.
In a bid to limit the damage, some grass-roots Labor organizations are pulling their own candidates off the ballot in constituencies where smaller parties such as Greens and the center-left Liberal Democrats have better chances of winning the seats, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Labor Party officials have told The Washington Times that Ms. May chose Wales to launch her warning against “tribal politics” because the local government is led by a Labor official supported by the Welsh nationalist party known as Plaid Cymru.
In Scotland, the Scottish Nationalist Party has ousted Labor from another traditional party stronghold and governs with an absolute majority in the national assembly.
Ms. May has made managing Britain’s exit from the European Union a central issue of her election campaign, justifying her call for snap elections last month on the need to strengthen her negotiating hand in the upcoming Brexit talks.
In contrast to Scotland, rising Conservative support in Wales seems driven by anti-European sentiment, according to Labor representatives. Over 52 percent of Welsh voters opted to leave the EU in a national referendum last year, despite campaigns for remaining in Europe waged by Labor Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones.
Brexit’s triumph in Wales came as a shock to many opinion analysts because it has been a major beneficiary of EU subsidies. Mr. Jones blames Brexit’s victory in Wales on English tabloid newspapers, which he accused of misleading Welsh voters.
“They created a perception that immigration from other EU countries is much higher than it actually is in Wales,” he said in an interview.
Immigration fears
Welsh fears of being overrun by immigrants — a key motivator of Brexit voters last year — is palpable. Customers at a pub in Swansea talk about illegal gangs of Chinese fishermen destroying the local shellfish trade.
Labor Party opinion studies indicate that a quarter of supporters of Plaid Cymru voted for Brexit and can be expected to vote for the Conservatives on June 8.
“Brexit voters feel let down by Labor politicians decrying the referendum results,” said Conservative assemblyman Darren Miller.
He said accusations of voter ignorance and racism have “compounded resentment” toward the party’s leadership.
John McDonnell, Mr. Corbyn’s shadow chancellor of the exchequer, Britain’s equivalent to Treasury secretary, caused much embarrassment when he spoke at a socialist May Day rally in central London last week beneath the communist hammer and sickle and a Syrian flag.
The latest Welsh poll gives conservatives 40 percent of the regional vote, a net gain of 12 points over the last elections. Labor gets 30 percent with a net loss of 3 points. The rest is split among Plaid Cymru and other parties, including the anti-EU U.K. Independence Party, whose 6 percent support could go to the Conservatives, said Roger Scully, a political science professor at the University of Cardiff.
Some believe that predictions of a Labor rout are overblown.
“The Labor Party still has a far more developed infrastructure at the local level,” said Henry Dare, a former socialist militant who now develops housing projects in Swansea.
Mr. Jones, the Labor minister, acknowledged that a victory of Ms. May in Wales “would be unprecedented.” He unveiled the Welsh Labor Party’s official campaign this week, pointedly not mentioning Mr. Corbyn’s name as he outlined an agenda devoted to better schools, improved housing and protecting the national health care system.
Nick Servini, political editor of BBC Wales, said the omission of Mr. Corbyn’s name was telling.
He said the local Labor Party was hoping to limit its losses by limiting its ties to the national party.
“The lack of focus on [Mr. Corbyn] by Labor stands in stark contrast to the Conservatives, who seem to talk about the leadership of Theresa May in every other sentence,” Mr. Servini wrote.
Mr. Jones conceded a big Labor loss in Wales on June 8 could have consequences across the political landscape.
“It would force us to work very hard across the U.K. in order to re-establish ourselves nationally,” he said.
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