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Speaking last October at his party’s annual conference, Plaid Cymru’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, raised the biggest cheer when he laid out the stakes in what may be an era-defining Senedd election: “Let’s be clear,” he told his audience: “We’re not here to act as Labour’s conscience. We are not here to repair Labour. We are here to replace them.”
For most of the 100 years in which the Labour party has been the overwhelmingly dominant force in Wales, such talk would have been for the birds. But as Plaid gathers for a spring summit in Newport this weekend, ahead of May’s poll, it reflects the new political reality. Soon after Mr ap Iorwerth spoke, his party won the Caerphilly byelection from Labour with a 19-point increase in its vote share, depriving Nigel Farage of a post-industrial seat he had expected to win.
That result confirmed that Plaid’s progressive nationalism had cut through as the Welsh antidote to the far right, as voters across Britain ponder the best way to keep Reform out of power. Business leaders are flocking to hear what the party has to say, and while the vagaries of a new electoral system are hard to read, polls indicate that the autumn momentum has so far been sustained.
In both Westminster and Cardiff, Labour only has itself to blame. As in Scotland, Sir Keir Starmer’s administration has profoundly alienated voters who hoped a robustly social democratic government would take the reins in London after 14 years of Conservative rule. Welsh Labour’s attempts to distance itself from the mess have been undermined by poor outcomes in health and education, internal scandals and a failure to win arguments with Whitehall over devolution issues.
For Plaid, May thus represents a historic opportunity and a challenge. During the 1960s, prior to the party’s first MP being elected, its then general secretary, Emrys Roberts, lamented its failure to penetrate the mainstream. Six decades on, it has the chance to capitalise on a post-Brexit surge in the number of voters who see themselves as primarily Welsh and European rather than British, and associate that identity with socially liberal and redistributive politics.
Consolidating its leadership of that bloc, rather than making the case for Welsh independence, is Plaid’s campaigning priority. Flagship policy offers, such as an ambitious expansion of free childcare, will be accompanied by the promise of a more combative approach to London. The notion that Sir Keir’s beleaguered administration would make more concessions to a Plaid first minister than it did to the current Labour one, Eluned Morgan, seems implausible. But having guaranteed that there will be no independence referendum in the first term of a government he leads, Mr ap Iorwerth may calculate that more Westminster intransigence will do the nationalist cause no harm.
For British politics, Plaid’s rise is yet another wake-up call. Come 8 May, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland may all have elected first ministers who favour their territories’ departure from the United Kingdom. Such an outcome would, in itself, speak volumes regarding the need for radical renewal and a new settlement. Throughout its long Welsh hegemony, Labour was able to channel traditions of solidarity and class loyalty formed in the industrial era. As the centre-left fragments and reconfigures, it is no longer in charge of what comes next.
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