A GWENT council leader has won a selection battle to secure second place on a Labour candidate list for next year’s Senedd election.
Anthony Hunt, the leader of Torfaen Borough Council, has been elected by Labour members in Monmouthshire and Torfaen to take the second spot behind current Member of Senedd for Torfaen Lynne Neagle who is the Welsh education minister.
Welsh Labour has said it won’t release how many members voted in the selection process or how many votes each candidate received.
Under Labour rules, Ms Neagle was guaranteed top spot on the list for the combined constituency, one of 16 formed by twinning existing Westminster constituencies, for the 2026 Senedd election which will be the first to elect 96 members rather than 60.
Second place on Labour’s list for Sir Fynwy Torfaen is considered the only other spot with a realistic prospect of securing a seat in the Senedd due to the party’s tumble in the polls and the new fully proportional voting system.
That will elect six Senedd Members in each constituency based on their party’s share of the vote. The greater percentage of the vote a party receives in the constituency, the more members of its list, that can have up to eight candidates on it, will be elected.
Vote for a party
Votes will be cast for a party, rather than an individual, and there is no opportunity for voters to rank candidates in their preference order, though individual independent candidates can still stand.
Mr Hunt previously worked in Parliament and the former Welsh Assembly and was a special advisor to former Torfaen MP Paul Murphy when he served in the UK Government as Welsh Secretary and Northern Ireland Secretary.
Along with his council role, he also works part-time for current Torfaen MP, and Cabinet Office minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds.
As the spokesman for the Welsh Local Government Association on finance, the Panteg councillor frequently appears in the Welsh media, while he is also a member of Welsh Labour’s national executive committee.
Third place on the list is occupied by Monmouthshire cabinet member for education, Abergavenny councillor, Laura Wright and her cabinet colleague, Monmouth councillor Catrin Maby, who finished second behind the Conservatives in the Monmouth constituency at the 2021 election, has the fourth spot.
Monmouthshire’s cabinet member for finance Ben Callard, who represents Llanfoist and Govilon, has fifth spot with Torfaen councillor for New Inn, Nick Byrne, is ranked sixth and Monmouthshire councillor for Croesonen, near Abergavenny, Su McConnell in seventh.
Torfaen cabinet member, and Cwmbran councillor, Peter Jones withdrew from the contest for personal reasons.