Local elections 2016: Welsh Labour ‘in great shape’ despite ‘very unhelpful behaviour’ of ‘appalling’ Ken Livingstone

Welsh Assembly Member Jenny Rathbone in confident mood despite the looming shadow of her party’s anti-Semitism row

Jenny Rathbone with her canvassing team in Cardiff Central

Labour in Wales at its lowest ebb since 2010, and pretty close to its worst showing since the First World War, according to some polls?

“Not true, not here,” says candidate Jenny Rathbone. “Not in Cardiff Central.”

Voters “seething, absolutely seething” with Labour, according to Gower’s Conservative MP Byron Davies?

“B*****ks,” she says, and sticks a Labour flag in her car window, ready to go forth and ensure that the faithful get out and vote.

But first Ms Rathbone, Welsh Assembly Member for Cardiff Central for the past five years, must go and vote for herself. As she enters the Plas Newydd polling station, she seems not to notice the young couple exiting.

“Plaid Cmryu,” says the young mum putting her toddler into the pushchair. “Lib Dem,” says her partner. “So she’s failed with us.”

But she’s not downhearted by that either. Because as she laughingly agrees when The Independent tactlessly mentions the couple’s voting intentions, that is an insignificantly small polling sample.

Although it’s also fair to say her confidence is… nuanced.

“Errm,” she says when asked if she is confident of victory. “I don’t know. I am the candidate. The candidate is always the last to know. You always have to be careful with the positive responses you get on the doorstep.”

And, she adds, “Ken Livingstone, in the last few days, has been very unhelpful. He has given everybody who wanted it an excuse to vent their spleen.

“He’s absolutely appalling, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us share his views [on Hitler having at one stage supported Zionism.]”

As for that other divisive, potentially vulnerable Labour figure: “There is some Corbyn effect. He’s a bit Marmite. People either love or hate him. But I would say that in Cardiff Central, which has a high number of students, more people are voting for us because of Corbyn than are voting against us because of him.”

You rather suspect Ms Rathbone was placed in a core group ‘as loyal as Jeremy can hope for these days.’

She voted for him in the Labour leadership election: “I had wanted to vote for Yvette Cooper, but I got absolutely fed up with her saying nothing at all.”

“The party here,” she says, “is in miles better shape, has had a huge increase in membership, since both the general election and the leadership election.”

And so, a short drive, Labour flag flying in the sunshine, takes us to the working class area of Adamsdown.

“I’ll definitely vote for you,” says Kathleen Kahar, 60, happily accepting a 'vote Labour' poster. “You’re a top lady.”

As for the Corbyn effect, he’s not Marmite here. He doesn’t seem to be anything.

“Who’s he then?” says Ms Kahar, a proud grandmother of 15. “Is he anything to do with Jenny? All I know is I like this lady’s character. She’s better than all the rest of them.”

A few doors down, it has to be said, there is seething, but not against Labour.

“I’ve got to find £12 a week bedroom tax,” says William Field, 55, a Falklands veteran disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder. “While Iain Duncan Smith can afford to pay £35 for a f***ing breakfast.

“All this talk about anti-Semitism [in the Labour Party] is just the Conservatives trying to shift public attention from the Panama Papers, from Iain Duncan Smith resigning [over proposed cuts to disability benefits.]

“Corbyn isn’t a problem. He’s not a money magnate like the Tory front bench. And so what if he wears a tweed suit? So did my schoolteacher.”

“I’m very anti-Conservative,” adds Mr Field. In case the Labour poster in the window isn’t evidence enough.

Not everything, of course, is coming up Labour roses.

There may not be seething, says Ms Rathbone, but “some people do feel abandoned by everybody. Their wages and pensions have gone down. For some, the target of their frustration will be immigrants. Some will vote Ukip.”

This may explain why Ukip is expected to make a grand entrance into the Welsh Assembly this time, winning as many as 10 of the 60 seats. Since its impressive 2014 euro-election performance, Ukip has been speaking of Wales, where Labour has dominated the devolved assembly since its creation in 1999, being “there for the taking.”

Jenny Rathbone with Kathleen Kahar, one Cardiff resident who was in no doubt as to which way she would vote

Ms Rathbone, however, suspects that a fair few of the disgruntled and disaffected will simply not vote – possibly to her advantage.

John Price, for example, is certainly disaffected, talking of immigrants and rising crime and possibly voting Plaid Cymru. But the 64-year-old dockworker concludes: “I’m not voting at all. The politicians are all as bad as each other.”

So with that anti-Labour vote neutralised, Ms Rathbone has just one small problem, in one small block of Adamsdown flats.

“Eluned Parrott” reads the cheeky Lib Dem poster. “Back the bird!”

“It’s in a communal area,” says the peeved Labour candidate. “It won’t represent the views of everybody in the block.”

Numerous buzzers are pressed. Answers come from none. The doors remain locked, the offending poster unmoved.

“Sod it!” sighs Ms Rathbone. “It’s only one poster.”

Come the night, there will be more to worry about – or even celebrate – than just one poster.