We asked Welsh voters what they really think of Labour ahead of pivotal election

The Heads of the Valleys road slices through some of the most politically important communities in Britain.

From Tredegar to Neath and beyond, these towns and villages haven't just returned Labour members for generations but helped to build the movement itself.

It was in Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare that the party's first member and leader, Keir Hardie, broke through.

While in Tredegar, Aneurin Bevan rose from the son of a coal miner to become one of the most consequential Labour cabinet ministers in the party's history.

The careers of figures like Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock further cemented the south Wales valleys as the symbolic heartland of Labour politics.

For more than a century, that bond has appeared unbreakable.

But with Labour consistently falling behind in the polls in Wales ahead of May's Senedd election, there is a growing sense that something deeper may be shifting.

Travelling the route from Tredegar west towards Neath, the long-term economic changes that have reshaped daily life are difficult to ignore.

Roads that once carried workers to pits, factories, and steelworks now more often take people out of the region towards jobs elsewhere.

In Maesteg, former Labour council leader Jeff Jones stood with me next to the site of what was once one of the Llynfi Valley’s biggest employers.

He remembers a time when thousands of people walked through the town to work every day.

"In the morning in Maesteg in the 80s, you’d see loads of people walking to work," he said. "Come now, you won’t see anybody."

The site has lay dormant for decades, but will soon be used for housing.

Jones, who joined the party in 1968, believes the long economic aftershock of industrial decline is now beginning to reshape politics in places that once formed Labour’s bedrock.

“The jobs are not here,” he said, describing the daily stream of traffic now leaving the valleys for work in Bridgend, Cardiff, Bristol, and beyond. For him, the bigger question is what that means for the next generation.

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