Focus on core issues will have more resonance than rhetoric about referendum

Chief reporter Martin Shipton gives his verdict on this week’s Plaid Cymru conference

THE announcement of three major policies during a party conference more than two years in advance of the election after which they could be implemented takes some political courage.

Usually parties are reluctant to show their hand until the immediacy of an election campaign.

The traditional view has been that the public needs to be energised with eye-catching ideas in the period when the election is imminent.

Adam Price, though, realises that despite recent encouraging polling evidence which puts Plaid within striking distance of Labour in an Assembly election, he needs to give his activists something tangible to offer voters during the doorstep conversations of which he is a keen advocate.

There’s a myth subscribed to by some that knocking on doors is enough in itself to ensure an increase in the level of support a party can achieve. But all the door-knocking in the world will be of no use if the messaging isn’t right.

When party activists have strong pledges to deliver – like a serious plan to improve hospital waiting times and another to beef-up job creation – voters are likely to be more responsive. And if they express enthusiasm after the doorstep chat, they can be targeted for future mail shots aimed at firming up their support and potentially leading to their recruitment as party members.

Another thing apparent from Mr Price’s speech is that the party will be seeking to contrast him as a potential national leader with Mark Drakeford, who took over as First Minister in December after winning

the Welsh Labour leadership contest.

Plaid believe they have in Mr Price someone who can be presented as a more forceful politician than Mr Drakeford.

Hence the Plaid leader’s series of demands to the UK Government set out in his speech.

In a sense, though, this is moodmusic rhetoric designed to appeal to existing Plaid supporters. It is difficult to envisage a UK Government acceding to such demands, or agreeing to a referendum on Welsh independence without – at the very least – a Plaid manifesto commitment to hold one that was endorsed by a majority of AMs.

Mr Price knew when he made the series of demands that he was highly unlikely to be able to secure them or to get the referendum he rhetorically sought.

The Plaid leader also knows that a referendum on Welsh independence held very soon would be unlikely to result in a Yes vote. That is why the party’s previously set out strategy is to seek to win power in 2021, run a competent minority government for five years and then hold a referendum during the second term of a Plaid Cymru administration.

So far as Welsh voters are concerned, the party’s promises on the core issues of health, education and the economy are likely to have far more resonance than rhetoric about an illusory referendum.