Four big questions from the Caerphilly by-election result

The result for Labour's Richard Tunnicliffe is abysmal. A Labour loss was widely expected, so a victory for the party would have been astonishing, but that does not diminish the significance or nature of this defeat. There are, naturally, caveats. By-elections are frequently different beasts from full elections, Caerphilly voters might behave differently in just a few short months. But this close to that full Senedd election, Labour appear to be in deep in the mire. Crucially, last night's result goes with the grain of everything we have been hearing about the trouble Labour is in across Wales - from pollsters, voters, rival parties and even figures within the party itself. Welsh Labour figures blame Sir Keir Starmer for their Caerphilly woes rather than First Minister Eluned Morgan. They want more muscular efforts to distinguish her Welsh administration from his. Others call for a "big retail offer" to capture voters' imagination come May. It is beginning to look desperate. Could the real game be about limiting Labour losses, rather than expecting to be the biggest party in Cardiff Bay? Might Labour's best hope be to win enough seats in six months time to give it the option of joining a Plaid-Labour Welsh government as junior partner, perhaps with some Greens and Liberal Democrats - a "progressive coalition" to keep Reform out?