Labour’s once unbreachable strongholds in the South Wales valleys crumbled yesterday as it lost control of all but two Welsh authorities in a disastrous set of elections for the party.

Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister, urged Gordon Brown to “listen, listen, listen” to voters as it became clear that Labour had suffered a string of heavy defeats across the country. Before the vote, Labour held eight of the twenty-two unitary authorities in Wales. Yesterday it was left with just two, Neath Port Talbot and Rhondda Cynon Taf, as the party lost 122 Welsh councillors, according to the BBC, and collapsed to a disastrous third place in Cardiff.

Newport, the last Welsh city in the party’s hands after 2004, fell to no overall control, and Flintshire, the only authority it had held in the North, went the same way. But it was in the valleys that Labour’s bedrock of support most dramatically collapsed. Independents delivered the knockout blows as former Labour supporters in the region gave their backing to local groups and individual candidates.

Labour councils in Merthyr Tydfil, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen and Caerphilly were all toppled. In the first two of these, independents and local parties had the numbers to take overall control, while in Torfaen independents became the second largest group, just two behind Labour’s eighteen seats.

In Caerphilly, Labour and Plaid Cymru were left level-pegging on 32 seats each after the latter made gains, and it is the nine independents — including Ron Davies, the former Welsh Secretary who quit Westminster after a “moment of madness” on Clapham Common — who now hold the balance of power.

Mr Morgan spoke darkly of an “anti-politician mood”, claiming that “protest candidates are doing very well” after “a huge amount of bad news about the economy”.

Arguing that Labour was being punished for economic woes that were out of its hands, such as rising food and fuel prices, he added: “We get the blame when we are in Government even if there is nothing we can do.”

But some among Labour’s losers suggested that the bloodbath was largely self-inflicted, and all sides agreed that the 10p tax has been a major factor in the election results. “I think a huge mistake has been made with this 10p in the pound tax situation,” said Ros Griffiths, who lost her seat in Flintshire. “People said they wouldn’t vote for Labour for that issue. It has caused us a major problem. I am very, very disappointed with what has gone on this week. I think national politics has let us down — badly.”

Mr Morgan urged Gordon Brown to “listen, listen, listen and just see how we need a strategy to get people to understand what it is Labour is trying to do to steer the ship of state through exceptionally choppy economic waters”.

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