#labour-decline

#labour-decline

Let's be clear, he told his audience: We're not here to act as Labour's conscience. We are not here to repair Labour. We are here to replace them. For most of the 100 years in which the Labour party has been the overwhelmingly dominant force in Wales, such talk would have been for the birds.

Now, he's one of the 80,000 locals who have been thrust into the centre of the fight for the future of British politics as they prepare to head to the polls this month. These Manchester suburbs have become a microcosm of the wider story of modern British politics: Support for the centrist parties of Labour and the Conservatives is collapsing while emergent left- and right-wing parties are surging in the polls.

On a dreary Saturday morning, they stream in from all over London, hare along Kent's A-roads, pour off Suffolk and Surrey trains, to converge on this primary school. It's the largest venue the volunteers could hire and the corridors, the loos, even the little library with its impressive range of Julia Donaldsons, are all heaving with grownups. We cram into the assembly hall, where the crowd is declared as the biggest turnout in Green history.

In a little over 100 days three and a half months time voters in Wales will elect a new devolved government. Opinion polls suggest the prospect of a groundbreaking result: Labour being rejected for the first time ever. The valleys of South Wales are steeped in Labour's storied past. Hardie, Bevan, Kinnock and Foot -- the giants of this movement have walked these streets. But the mood within Welsh Labour as it contemplates elections across this nation is bleak, even black.

Others are rather less positive. They yell: Stop the boats!' You hear that all the time. But the boats are not an issue here. There are no boats with immigrants coming up the River Taff, the River Rhymney, the River Tywi. Ninety-seven per cent of people in this constituency were born in Britain. The people of Caerphilly go to the polls on Thursday to elect a new Senedd (Welsh parliament) member after the sudden death of Labour's Hefin David.