The Conservative Party has suffered a historic wipeout in Wales, losing every one of its seats
Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak (C) with Wales Secretary David Davies (L) at a campaign event on May 23, 2024 © AFP / Henry Nicholls
The UK Labour Party has won all but five of Wales’ 32 seats in the House of Commons after the Conservatives suffered a crushing defeat in Thursday’s general election.
Labour secured 27 of the Welsh seats, while the pro-independence Plaid Cymru party won four and the Lib Dems took one. The Conservative Party faced a total wipeout, losing all 14 of the seats they had won in the 2019 election.
Keir Starmer officially became UK prime minister after his landslide defeat of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives. Labour has so far secured at least 412 out of 650 in the British parliament.
Sunak said on Thursday that he took responsibility for the loss and that he would step down as leader of the Conservative Party as soon as his successor is selected.
Welsh Tory leader Andrew Davies said he was “bloody angry” with the result, according to the BBC. In a post on X, Davies said his party would rebuild and would stop taking lifelong Conservative voters for granted.
“Let’s be frank: We’ve let a lot of people down,” he wrote.
Secretary of State for Wales David Davies was one of the 14 losses, making him the first Welsh secretary to lose his seat since the creation of the office in 1964. Labour’s Cardiff East MP Jo Stevens was confirmed as the new secretary.
The last time the Tories failed to elect any MPs in Wales was 2001, when Tony Blair’s Labour Party secured its second win. The same had happened four years earlier, in the 1997 election which brought Blair to power, meaning that Wales had no Conservative MPs from 1997 to 2005.
Tories still hold 16 of 60 seats in the Welsh Senedd, with Labour holding half and Plaid Cymru with 13.
The Wales wipeout is reflective of the broader national situation, as Sunak’s party is expected to win only 131 Commons seats, the lowest number in its history. With 410 seats, Labour are projected to have an overall majority of 176.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the pro-independence Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) lost 38 of their 47 seats thanks to Labour’s resurgence, the party’s worst result since 2010.
The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn called it “a black night for us all” and said that Scottish independence was now a “hard sell.” He stressed, however, that the mandate for an independence referendum still continues to exist “within the Scottish parliament itself.”
