There he goes again...

Tweet Peter Hain has made it perfectly clear what he expects of Plaid Cymru, it seems. After having been pretty tribal towards us throughout the campaign, he now 'expects' that we will lend our support to a Labour-led administration.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to him - there are, after all, two ways of interpreting the word 'expect'. One is a simple matter of prediction; the other is more prescriptive. Fairly or unfairly, in Hain's case it is always going to sound like he's using the word in the latter sense - and because it sounds like that, it grates. And when he appears to be telling us what we must do, there's a danger that he achieves the opposite effect. But then, perhaps that's what he really wants...

The main thing wrong with his statement, though, is that it is based on an assumption that the main driving force for Plaid is that we are anti-Conservative, and that that motivation will be uppermost in our minds. There's always a danger in a member of one party trying to analyse and make assumptions about another party; they're not in a sufficiently objective position to do so. The main plank of Labour during the recent election was certainly that they were not the Conservatives - but that wasn't the main plank of what Plaid were saying.

What those who would wish us to act in a certain way need to think carefully about is not what we are against at all - but what we are for. Our position throughout the election has been that we want the best deal for Wales, and we've spelled out what we mean by that. Those thinking about inviting us to dance need to turn their attention to those issues, and not simply assume that we will agree to anything proposed by anyone who isn't a Tory.