New Cardiff Council leader sets out plan to win back voters

Kieran Molloy – Local democracy reporter

Cardiff Council’s new leader, Chris Weaver, has laid out an early vision of his plan to win back Labour voters ahead of the 2027 local elections.

Welsh Labour, Cllr’s Weaver’s party, suffered massive losses in Wales and the rest of the UK in the May 2026 elections.

The party, which has historically dominated Welsh politics, lost control of the Senedd for the first time in existence, only returning nine members, and the wider UK party lost control of 38 councils.

In the two Senedd constituencies that cover Cardiff Labour only managed to return two out of 12 possible members – a massive loss in a traditional party stronghold.

The 2027 location elections, in which Cardiff councillors and candidates will fight for their seats, are set to take place on May 6 meaning the new leader only has just under a year to make his case for Labour’s continued administration of Cardiff’s council.

The former member for finance was under no illusions about his party’s performance at the recent Senedd election. He said: “[The results] were really, really devastating to Welsh Labour and there’s a lot of reflection in the party around how we reached that point and why we reached that point.”

When asked about how he was going to bring voters back to Labour’s side he pointed to the party’s track record in the city, which he called “really strong” and put particular emphasis on the changes made to frontline services, education, and recycling.

But when asked about what big projects or initiatives the party was planning on in the next year to entice voters the council leader was cagey.

He said: “We haven’t written the manifesto yet but any party that has been in power has been able to talk about what they’ve done over that time otherwise what have you been doing? But that’s just the start.”

Cllr Weaver added: “We will be talking about the ambitions we set out in our manifesto and what we have done in the past” but would not give any early indications to what could appear.

The council leader said this strategy would win the party voters and fight off challenger parties like Plaid Cymru but emphasised that “politics is a volatile space at the moment”.

He added: “You can see over the last few years, electoral success has gone up and down for different parties in quite radical ways.”