Fortune may yet favour Plaid but at what cost?
What are realistically Plaid Cymru’s chances of winning power in Wales next year? Chief reporter Martin Shipton sifts the evidence
PLAID Cymru is a political party whose glory time is supposedly always destined to come at some point in the future.
There have been many false dawns, but to their enormous credit the party faithful have never been undaunted.
The goal of an independent Wales is not one with which a majority of Welsh people agree, although there is no doubting the passion with which the ideal is felt.
It’s perfectly natural for the citizens of any country to want to run their own affairs, and they should not be castigated for doing so.
But the distinctive history of Wales makes the independence question more complex.
As we approach next year’s Senedd election the same sense of anticipation is being built up among Plaid supporters, as has long been the case.
It may have taken more than 40 years after the party’s foundation for it to see its first MP elected, but more than 50 years after that event there is a belief that running Wales is an achievable goal.
Before the last Senedd election in 2016, Plaid’s current leader, Adam Price, was predicting that its then leader, Leanne Wood, was about to become First Minister. It didn’t happen – but nearly did, thanks to an important clause in the Senedd’s standing orders.
Mr Price hopes that next year he will be the beneficiary of the same rule, which ensures that at the first plenary meeting after a Senedd election, a new First Minister will be elected by the votes of all 60 Members of the Senedd.
Even the most enthusiastic of Plaid supporters realises that there is zero chance of the party winning the most seats next May. The best that can be hoped for is second place.
According to Mr Price’s strategy, with Plaid in second place he could be elected First Minister with the support of the Conservatives.
There’s an acknowledgement that it would be politically impossible for him to bring the Tories into government as coalition partners, but it’s by no means out of the question that they could be offered sufficient spending and policy concessions to back a minority Plaid government – especially in the knowledge that failing to do so would, in their terms, condemn Wales to five more years of Labour rule.
Last week an opinion poll saw Plaid rise in the polls – but they were still in third position at a notional Senedd election. While the Conservatives have seen their support drop following the Dominic Cummings affair and a growing sense that Boris Johnson has mishandled the pandemic – even though it’s a devolved responsibility – they remain ahead of Plaid, and are projected to have four more seats than the nationalist party in the next Senedd.
The irony is that Plaid’s ability to overtake the Tories in terms of Senedd election voting intention will be determined not by anything they do or policies they unveil, but by the vagaries of Westminster politics.
Mr Price is a serious and gifted politician, although currently under attack over an ill-judged comparison he made between the oppression of the Welsh by the English and the oppression suffered by BAME victims of the British Empire.
He has the capacity to pursue ideas in the field of economic policy that could prove beneficial to Wales. Yet his ability to get those ideas across and capture the imagination of voters has been diminished by the way the pandemic has dominated political debate in recent months.
Before the lockdown, he was developing a UK-wide profile with TV and radio appearances that were enhancing his reputation and that of his party.
More recently, and especially since Keir Starmer started performing well in contrast to Boris Johnson, Mr Price has tended to be somewhat sidelined. He needs access to network broadcasting to get his message across to those who rely on English media outlets.
As always, Plaid is hampered by its reputation among many that it is a party for Welsh-speakers. And in some seats that were seen as marginals last time – Cardiff West, Blaenau Gwent and Llanelli, for example – there have been local fallings-out that will make it far more difficult to make gains.
As things stand, the Conservatives look in a better place to make gains from Labour next year – although all parties will benefit to a degree from the likely departure from the Senedd of the Brexit Party.
Mr Price and Plaid as a whole must hope that there will be a further downturn in the Conservatives’ support – possibly as a result of further disillusionment with the handling of the pandemic, and the economic chaos that a combination of Covid-19 and leaving the single market and customs union might bring.
Serendipity is not unknown in politics. It is not out of the question that Plaid Cymru could be the beneficiary. But what a poisoned chalice leading the Welsh Government in such circumstances might prove to be.