Made the difference a triumph for Plaid
ngland anyway and they e been tending to go bour.” e to win Anglesey will be particularly acute regret. ad looked within touchce. In 2015 Labour’s n held on to the constitmargin of just 229, last Rhun ap Iorwerth won ly seat with a majority of in order to know where they are and for them to know us etc, because once we’ve had a chance to talk to people we usually find there’s a fighting chance of winning them over in seats we either hold or are very close to winning, wherever people have come from...
“That’s a lesson in terms of party organisation and I suspect there’ll be a certain amount of scrutiny of how the party organised itself during this election.”
He had “no doubt at all” about his party’s continuing relevance, and when asked whether he could envisage a Plaid First Minister in 2021, he said: “Well, there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be but we’ve a lot of work to do.”
In 2015 Plaid was unable to match the level of excitement that the SNP generated in Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon’s party that year won 56 of the 59 seats in a true landslide. This year, despite the publicity gained through party leader Leanne Wood’s network television appearances and her strong left-wing credentials, Plaid could not persuade legions of voters hungry for bold change to back it instead of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP Jonathan Edwards, who increased his share of the vote to 39.3%, commented that Plaid “can’t outflank Corbyn to the left”, adding: “Corbyn will be there to the next election.”
Looking back to the reasons why he joined Plaid, he said: “The reason I was in Plaid Cymru was the Labour Party was a ‘red Tory’ party. That situation has changed now so obviously Plaid Cymru has to react to the political realities we face and we should now focus far more on our Welsh credentials.
“The reality is the British state is changing rapidly despite this election. Labour’s weakness under Corbyn is that he views British politics through the prism of Westminster and Westminster alone and Westminster supremacy. Well, that’s not how I view the politics of the British state anymore.
“It’s a multipolar state and that’s why we should be focusing far more on the Welsh angle of politics and how Wales gets equality within the British state.” Describing the battle he led to hold his seat, he said: “We spoke to 10,000 people in six weeks. To put that in context, in 2015 [we] spoke to 20,000 people in two years.”
Mr Edwards now senses opportunity for Plaid in a Westminster where no party has a majority, pledging that it will demand “as high a price as possible for any co-operation”. He said: “It is a very strange election where the political rule book was thrown out of the window. I can never recall a time in Westminster politics where the leaders of the two main establishment parties are so weak – in the grand scale of things looking back over history they are political lightweights – and yet we saw this huge polarisation towards those two parties.”
Plaid’s challenge is to hold its ground and articulate a message that chimes with the aspirations of people who will back it in an election that could come very soon.