The change we need

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On Friday, Nation.Cymru carried an article by Plaid’s leader, Leanne Wood, arguing that the choice facing Wales is between independence and an increasingly right-wing, centralised British state.  I can’t disagree with the underlying assumption that those driving us to Brexit are instinctive believers in a return to a more unitary, centralist and authoritarian state in which British patriotism and deference to authority become once again the norm.  It’s a perspective from which the economic crisis which they seem determined to precipitate is probably viewed as a plus in order to rekindle that famous ‘wartime spirit’ for which they are so nostalgic.  Nor do I disagree with the assertion that one way of avoiding that future is by seeking independence for Wales.  But I do nevertheless harbour a number of doubts about posing the choice of futures for Wales in such terms.

Firstly, there’s a question of nomenclature.  The terms ‘hard right’ and ‘hard left’ are regularly used by politicians, but what do they mean?  As a general rule, politicians use such terms as a substitute for debating ideas and policies or as a way of insulting other people rather than engaging with their views.  When the Telegraph or Mail refer to Corbyn as ‘hard-left’, their intention is to portray him as a villain, and it probably works with a large part of their target audience.  It’s not that the target audience necessarily understand exactly what it means – they just know that it’s a bad thing to be.  But outside that target audience, it probably just annoys people.  Similarly, calling people ‘hard right’ works with a different target audience, but not outside that audience.  Both are pretty much meaningless other than as insults.

Secondly, there exists, in the Welsh electorate, a hard core of Tory voters.  While swing voters can boost the party’s performance to anything up to 33% of those voting, the party has almost never attracted less than 20% of the votes in a Westminster General Election in Wales.  And that 20% can be considered to be composed of people who identify their political affiliation as Conservative, and who will vote for the party almost regardless of the specific platform being put forward.  It doesn’t matter how ‘right-wing’ (whatever that means) the party becomes, they are likely to continue to support it, because it’s ‘their’ party.  It’s probably true that many of those voters are, currently at least, opposed to independence for Wales (although we know from past opinion polls that even some Conservative voters do support independence), but presenting independence as a direct alternative to their party is more likely to confirm that tendency than to change it.

Gaining independence requires at least 50% support of the Welsh electorate (and personally, I’d want to aim much higher than that: the experience of Brexit surely indicates the problems of trying to implement such a significant change with the support of only a bare majority of those voting).  Potentially alienating at least 20% of the available voters makes that harder to achieve.  It is, perhaps, inevitable that a party which seeks to combine support for the long-term aim of independence (and as an aside, the reiteration of Plaid’s previous position that Wales’ economic position needs to improve before seeking independence was disappointing, but that’s off-topic here) with positioning itself in a particular part of the political spectrum will end up alienating those who do not place themselves in that part of the spectrum from that longer-term aim; but it isn’t always helpful in terms of furthering that aim. 

I would not argue, however, that an independence-minded political party which involves itself in electoral politics can or should avoid any ideological positioning.  That’s fine for an extra-parliamentary campaign, such as Yes.Cymru, but a political party represented in a parliament will need to be willing to vote on a range of issues (and even participate in government); and those voting for it need to know where it stands.  I would argue, rather, that what Wales needs is the normalisation of the debate around independence as being something which people on all parts of the political spectrum can support, albeit whilst holding different visions of the sort of Wales which would emerge.  That requires the existence of other credible parties of independence, which can present the aim in terms that welcome, rather than exclude, the support of those on what is loosely called the political right.  I wouldn't vote for such a party, but there are people who would, and whose views have no current home.  A situation where there is only one party even nominally supporting independence can also allow that party to ‘park’ the issue, almost with impunity, because they calculate that independence supporters have nowhere else to go.

The blockage which prevents the expression of alternative visions for an independent Wales is an electoral system which not only militates against a multiplicity of political parties but also gives a huge inbuilt advantage to one party in particular.  The real ‘change Wales needs’ (to steal a phrase) in order to remove that hegemony and facilitate a more representative form of politics in Wales is a move to STV for Assembly elections.  I cannot think of any change which would do more to change the nature and direction of Welsh politics.  The irony is that the only route that I can see to achieving that in the foreseeable future is by a level of joint working between non-Labour parties which one party has emphatically ruled out. 

It may well be, as some would argue (although I'm not convinced), that there would be a high political cost in the short term to any such collaboration.  But without such change, does anybody really see any way out of a stagnant and ossified politics in Wales?

Never mind the answer - what's the question?

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When Plaid’s leader, Leanne Wood, announced last week that she would stand down as leader if she did not become First Minister after the next Assembly election, two obvious interpretations struck me.  The first, and presumably the intended one, was that it was a bold and confident statement of intent that she intends to ensure that Plaid win sufficient votes and support to turn the idea of a Plaid government, or a Plaid-led government, into reality.

There are only two ways in which it could become reality, however.  The most obvious is for Plaid to win sufficient seats to become – at the very least – the largest party in the Assembly and then claim the ‘right’ to be given a shot at forming a government.  It’s not entirely impossible, of course; we’ve seen dramatic swings in electoral support elsewhere, not least in Scotland.  But any hard-headed analysis of the polling data would have to conclude that it looks more than a little unlikely as things stand.  The Tories have a long-standing and apparently unshakeable core level of support amongst the electorate of around 20%, and this seems unlikely to change.  UKIP will almost certainly disappear at the next Assembly election, and the Lib Dems seem certain to remain marginalised.  That means that any increase in votes and seats for Plaid can only come at the expense of Labour.  There are no obvious indications that such a shift is on the horizon.

The other way of realising the aim is for a minority Plaid government to enjoy at least the tacit support of another party – and in this case, the only realistic option is the Tories.  It nearly happened after the last Assembly election – a united non-Labour opposition could have replaced Labour but for the solitary Lib Dem choosing the other option.  What sort of government that would have been remains a mystery to me, but Plaid depending on votes of Tory and UKIP AMs for its survival on a daily basis suggests that any programme for government would have had to be very bland and play always to the lowest common denominator.  Such a government does not need to be a formal coalition, of course, but there is no escaping the fact that any alternative government whose daily survival depends entirely on being ‘not-Labour’ looks more likely to turn out as a sleepy camel than a thoroughbred stallion.

And if the prospect of Plaid’s leader becoming First Minister looks diminishingly small as things stand, then we are faced with the other interpretation of Leanne’s statement, which is that she has effectively given three years’ notice of her intention to quit, and potentially become, as some would argue, a lame-duck leader as a result.  Clearly there are and have been for some time internal rumblings, and it seems probable that there are members preparing for a leadership challenge.  Politics is full of egos and ambition, and there are always those who think that they can do better than the incumbent – a point which is true for any post in any party.

The question, though, is what changes as a result of a change of leader?  Clearly some leaders are better than others at motivating members; clearly some have a better media persona than others, but how much difference does the leader really make?  Looking specifically at Plaid, the party’s electoral performance under the current leader has not been notably different from its performance under the previous leader despite the obvious huge difference between the two individuals; the party’s proportion of votes and seats in the Assembly has lain within a narrow range at every election barring the very first.  Where is the evidence that a change of leader would be transformational?

I can’t help wondering whether those who believe that the answer is a change of leader are actually very clear about what the question is.

Is more of the same inevitable?

Tweet There is nothing new in the latest statement from Leanne Wood ruling out any deal with the Tories after next May’s Assembly elections.  It has attracted comments in a number of Welsh blogs already.  Peter Black suggests that categorically ruling out such a deal will weaken Plaid’s negotiating position.  I can’t disagree with that assessment.  It’s in line with a comment that I made in advance of the UK election – but it’s only a problem if establishing a good negotiating position is the intent, and it clearly is not.  Jac o’ The North suggests that effectively it means that a vote for Plaid is a vote for a Labour Government.  And given the range of outcomes from next May’s election which are currently credible, I can’t disagree with that either.  The only choice we’re being given is Labour by themselves, or Labour with a partner.

Gwynoro Jones sees it as a potentially huge missed opportunity, and a repeat of the situation in 2007.  This one I’m a great deal less sure about.  It is based to an extent on the idea that demonstrating that there is a viable alternative to Labour, however cobbled together, will be enough in itself to bring about the sort of change in Welsh politics which will destroy the hegemony of the Labour Party.  That’s not dissimilar to the arguments which were being put forward by the supporters of an alliance with the Tories in 2007.  I thought the argument was wrong then, partly because I feared that such an alliance would end up strengthening rather than weakening Labour, and partly because, for a serious nationalist party, there has to be a long term gain to justify the short term pain which would probably follow such an alliance, and I simply didn’t see such a gain in 2007.

The question for me was (and is) not whether a simple coalition between Plaid and the Tories would be a good idea or not (it wouldn’t), but whether the gain for Wales would be enough to justify the pain for Plaid.  My disagreement with the position taken so categorically by Leanne Wood and Plaid Cymru this time round is that it rules out even considering whether there might be such a trade-off.

And it does so on the basis of what seems to me to be an assumption that the Tories are still the untouchables of Welsh politics.  I’m not at all convinced that that assumption is as valid as many seem to think, but if we accept that it is true, it means in effect that short term electoral advantage for the party is considered more important than considering whether there might be a real long term gain for Wales.

Accepting for the sake of argument the premise that any form of post-election arrangement with the Tories would be electorally damaging to Plaid, could the Tories offer anything at all which might justify such a sacrifice by Plaid in the short term to advance the cause of Wales in the long term?  That is, I think, the question which should be being asked but doesn’t seem to be.  And it’s complicated, of course, by the fact that any conceivable arrangement of parties which comes to a majority over Labour needs to include – on the basis of current polling – at least the tacit support of UKIP as well (an even more unpalatable prospect for Plaid).

Despite all the difficulties and problems, there is actually one potential prize which I think might be worthwhile.  Under the latest Wales Bill, the Assembly is to get control over its own membership and electoral system, and a move to an even more proportional system of elections would be a better way of bringing about the step change in Welsh politics which most parties claim to support in principle.  An Assembly based on 60 constituency seats elected by STV in multi-member constituencies, with a further 20 list members from a single national list, would produce a legislature whose membership matched very closely the overall share of votes across the whole of Wales.

Labour’s projected vote according to the latest polls is around 35%, but the current electoral system is likely to give them over 40% of the seats and be within a few seats of an overall majority as a result.  An electoral system which gave them only 28 seats out of 80 for that 35% would not only be fairer, but with 52 non-Labour members, it would transform the playing field of Welsh politics.

It’s not a huge step forward for most of the parties involved.  Most parties recognise that an increase to 80 members will happen at some stage; Plaid, the Green Party and the Lib Dems are long-time supporters of STV; and UKIP and Plaid recently joined forces with the Greens and others to present a demand for a more proportional system of voting.  Could the Tories be brought round to such a proposal? 

It would not, of course, be enough to make for a stable Welsh Government for a full four or five-year term, but a government which passed such legislation and then sought to dissolve the Assembly for new elections to be held under the new system should be able to hold together for long enough to achieve that more limited aim.  If they’re as serious as they all claim to be in wanting to see the log-jam of Welsh politics removed – and removed by democratic vote, rather than stitch-up – this would be a far better way than trying to put together a far-from-credible multi-party coalition for a full term.

Making peoples’ votes count – all of them, across the whole of Wales – would probably lead to a different outcome, beyond the difference resulting solely from proportionality, as people think about their second and third choices as well as their first.  And it would also open up the possibility of realignment of parties and an opportunity for new and different parties to emerge. 

It’s the stuff of fantasy, of course.  I really don’t see the non-Labour parties in the Assembly being able to come together around such a proposal.  But in the absence of a step change of some sort, then the conclusion reached by Gwynoro looks depressingly likely to be true – we will be facing more of the same for the foreseeable future.

Britannic Confederations

Tweet There’s nothing particularly new about the idea of a confederal Britain as floated by Leanne Wood last week.  I remember Gwynfor talking about the possibility in the 1970s, and I think that he wrote a pamphlet on a “Britannic Confederation” sometime in the 1960s, although I can’t lay my hand on the copy which I’m sure I have somewhere.  Whether it’s as good an idea now as it was pre-EU and pre-devolution is another question – even the best ideas only work in context.  The idea didn't disappear for a few decades by accident.

It’s unclear to me from the reporting of the speech containing the proposal whether it replaces the ‘aspiration’ for independence for Wales or is merely an attempt to define a staging post and a process for moving forward.  I’m assuming the latter, although I’m well aware that a confederation would have been enough for many in Plaid over the decades – and been several steps too far for some.

The idea of requiring no more than a majority vote in the Assembly to move all the way to a full confederal system is certainly a bold and radical one.  It’s only a matter of months since Plaid – very sensibly – moved away from its previous position that we needed another referendum just to get the power to make a minor variation in income tax.  It looks a bit like going from one extreme to the other; but the end result is a better position to be in than part of the Labour-Tory consensus that even small changes need another referendum.

Of course, using the argument that the people will have voted for it by electing a government committed to that position means that it becomes essential that the proposition is central to any manifesto; claiming a mandate for such a change if it’s only mentioned as a vague aspiration – as independence has been recently – is simply not credible.  The proposal makes sense only as an attempt to put the question back at the centre of the party’s proposition, rather than just another way of attempting to park the question.  So, how serious a proposal it is will become very obvious when the party publishes its manifesto for the next Assembly election, I guess.

As an idea, a confederation has its merits.  For anyone who believes that Wales’ progress is likely to be gradual rather than revolutionary, it does at least set out a credible path to the acquisition of many more powers within the current UK state, whilst leaving open the option of the more radical step later.  But my fear is that what looks like a gradualist, step at a time, change in Wales will inevitably look very different from an English perspective.

Whilst it’s not clear to me at what point on the journey from where we are to a confederation the English step change would have to happen, the fact that there would have to be one is surely inevitable.  A combined UK/English government and parliament can be made to work, after a fashion, in the current context, but there would have to be a clear separation between the two in any confederal system.  That won’t look like slow and gradual change to 85% of the population of the UK.

Could the UK parties and the English electorate be persuaded that it’s a price worth paying?  Maybe, if it maintained the precious union.  Or rather, maybe that would have been possible in the past.  If a clearly thought-through proposal along these lines had been put forward in 1997 instead of the devolution proposals which were enacted, I genuinely believe that it might have been possible for the unionists to win the argument – for a lengthy period at least.  But I think it’s now too late for that.

So, that leaves us with the question – why would the English parliament and government agree to a step change in their governing arrangements of the nature required to make this proposal work when the SNP definitely, and Plaid rather more hesitantly and apologetically, are saying that they only see it as an interim solution anyway?  What’s in it for them, if they think that they will be required to undo the changes in a few years time anyway?  It’s a proposal which will only ever make sense to England if they can be persuaded that it’s going to be a long term stable solution.  And it could only be credibly presented by the SNP as the very opposite of that.  In the place where it makes most sense – Wales – we’re dependent on the Scottish and English views.

As a short term process, it looks eminently sensible from a Welsh nationalist viewpoint, but as a long term solution, it would condemn us to a foreign and defence policy which continued to be based on possession of weapons of mass destruction, and it would prevent us becoming a member of the EU in our own right.  So whilst at first sight it looks like an attractive road forward to an increasingly powerful Assembly, I wonder whether its practicability in relation to the current context has really been thought through.

It's all an act

Tweet I doubt that there’s anyone who really believes Cameron’s line about not wanting to take part in leaders’ debates because the Green Party has been excluded, even himself.  He’s simply calculated the potential risks and benefits and decided that the downsides of participation are greater than the upsides.  The line about the Green Party isn’t entirely the fig-leaf as which it’s been painted though.  Part of his calculation will have been that having Farage present as a perceived alternative to the Tories might at least partly be countered by having Natalie Bennett there as a perceived alternative to Labour.

The others are just as calculating.  Farage probably calculates that the status accorded to him and his party as a serious player, coupled with his ability to play the outsider, can only be a plus.  Miliband should be very wary of going head to head with Cameron if he has any sense at all, but is milking Cameron’s refusal to take part for all it’s worth.  I can certainly see why he’d calculate that going ahead with the debates without Cameron might help him.  As for Clegg – well who knows what goes on in the mind of a Liberal Democrat?  Probably that nothing he can do can make things much worse, so any chance at all of redeeming his party's position is better than nothing.

The way that they and their advisors are calculating the risks and rewards of these debates isn’t the only similarity between them of course.  When it comes to policy there isn’t that much to choose between them either.  And four middle-aged male millionaires from the South East of England, saying and believing much the same, aren’t exactly a representative or exciting prospect.

I’ve never been a fan of the idea of leaders’ debates anyway.  Partly that’s because of the exclusion of any serious alternative viewpoint, and partly it’s because the election is about electing a parliament not a president.  (Although I wouldn’t have a major objection to separating the election of the executive from the election of the legislature, as it happens – indeed, I can see a number of advantages to doing that.  But while we're still electing a parliament rather than an executive, treating the votes of all the citizens of the UK as votes for one or other of the ‘leaders’ is to treat local MPs as nothing more than lobby fodder.  That may well be what they are much of the time, but that’s another problem which needs to be addressed not reinforced.)

However, neither of those objections are really what concerns me.  My biggest objection of all is that they’re not even proper debates.  They’re staged to suit the broadcasters’ wish for good television. 

The participants have all been coached and rehearsed and we’re encouraged to distinguish between them on the basis of their performance.  It’s all an act where the ‘winner’ is the one who has the best coaches and the best memory.  Remembering to look sincere in the right places, to display the right degree of outrage at others, to deliver the scripted sound bites and even the scripted jokes – all of these are more important than the substance of policy.

Would it be any different if Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood, or Natalie Bennett (or even all three) were included?  It would certainly look different, but how certain could we really be that they too wouldn’t have been coached and rehearsed to perform well?  And how well would the format really suit the presentation of a serious alternative viewpoint?

I’m not at all confident on either score, much as I’d like to believe otherwise.  Unintentionally, perhaps Cameron is doing us all a favour by finding an excuse to block the debates.  For sure, the broadcasters will complain about the impact on democracy, but in reality it’s no such thing.  And believing that the broadcasters are interested in democracy rather than ratings would be as silly as believing that Cameron really cares about excluding the Green Party.

Nods, winks, and peers of the realm

Tweet I find it hard to believe that Elfyn Llwyd’s call last week for Plaid to have more peers was preceded by a great deal of consultation with his party’s leader, Leanne Wood.  Given her long-standing opposition to the nomination of peers, Elfyn’s call looks a little incongruous to say the least.  Still, not even Elfyn’s best friends or biggest fans would say that always being “on message” was one of his fortes. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your perspective, I suppose.  For party managers, being “off message” is always likely to be a problem, but for most others it probably depends on whether you agree with what he’s saying or not.

Personally, I agree with Elfyn and think Leanne is wrong on this one.  A party like Plaid has to choose between engaging with the institutions of the state and keeping them at arm’s length.  There are sound arguments for abstentionism, which was long a popular position amongst Irish nationalists.  However, there is little history of abstentionism in Wales, and it seems to me that if you’re going to engage with some institutions of the state you may as well engage with all of them and exercise as much influence as you possibly can.

On the substance of the critique of the existence and nature of the House of Lords itself  however, it would be hard to find any difference between Leanne and myself.  The fear is that appointing members serves to legitimise the institution, but a party which claims only to enter the House of Commons in order to secure Wales’ withdrawal from it can surely apply exactly the same argument to any other institution.  

Whatever, the real question which I wish to address here is the mysterious way in which the institutions of the British establishment work when it comes to the appointment of peers of the realm.

When Plaid chose three nominees for peerages (Dafydd Wigley, Eurfyl ap Gwilym, and Janet Davies), their details were passed through the murky “usual channels” to number 10 - and the then prime minister studiously ignored them.  That was, for a while, the end of the story.  I – and I think many others – believed that we had made our nominations, and that Brown was simply blocking them.

It turned out that we hadn’t actually “nominated” anyone at all; the PM was not ignoring our nominations because there were no nominations to ignore.  This only became clear after the election of Cameron as Prime Minister. 

Shortly after Cameron came to power, Ieuan Wyn Jones had an opportunity to lobby him for the appointment of Dafydd Wigley to the House of Lords.  (Although of course Dafydd had by then withdrawn his name, and was no longer one of Plaid’s nominees – but that’s another story).  Nods were nodded, winks were winked, it was made clear that the party would be allowed to submit one nomination, and in June 2010 I found myself presented with a nomination paper to complete and sign (political nominations have to be completed by party chairs - a revelation to me).

I really hadn’t realised that there was a formal channel available for submitting nominations to an allegedly independent panel.  Perhaps I should have known that – it would be a fair criticism of me that I hadn’t even made the effort to identify whether there was a formal process – but I’ll admit that I didn’t.

Anyway, after a brief hiatus while the NEC agreed to reinstate Dafydd Wigley as a party nominee - a precondition to my signing any nomination - the form was duly completed and submitted and, hey presto, three months later Dafydd’s peerage was duly confirmed after the said “independent panel” had given it their careful consideration.  In essence, despite the lengthy period which appeared to be passing from a public perspective, the actual period between formal nomination and appointment was a very short one.

It neatly illustrates the difference between the written-down formal process - which is the submission of a form, consideration by an independent panel, and appointment or rejection; and the actual process – which depends on a series of nods and winks from the right people before you even get to the starting block. 

Perhaps we should have challenged that more strongly at the time.  With the benefit of hindsight – and hindsight is always a wonderful thing – I think we should have accepted the nod and the wink, but pushed the boundaries by making three nominations at that point rather than just the one.  That would really have forced the establishment to either accept or else formally reject our nominations, rather than two of them remaining in a strange and continuing sort of limbo.

However we did not do that, and unless the other two nominations have been formally submitted since I stood down as Plaid’s chair in July 2010 (completing Wigley’s nomination was one of my final acts), I suspect that the party has only ever nominated one candidate.  So whilst I agree with the substance of what Elfyn says, in that Plaid should be more strongly represented in the second chamber, I’m not convinced that Plaid itself could not do more to achieve that if it really wanted to.  But that probably takes us right back to the question of whether Elfyn was speaking for his leader or not…

Leanne has been a naughty girl...

Tweet … or so the WesternMail would have us believe.  And they’re not alone; Leanne’s political opponents (and possibly even some in her own party) seem to have been quick to heap on the opprobrium.  For my part, I’m having some difficulty working out what exactly is the heinous sin which she is supposed to have committed.

It surely has to be more than the mere fact of her holding republican views.  After all, there are many republicans in all parties, even if many of them are afraid to admit it.  It’s a much more mainstream viewpoint that any reader of the press would imagine.

‘Avowed republican meets with other republicans’ doesn’t strike me as being a particularly shocking thing to have done.

‘Politician attends meeting at which other attendees hold some rather different viewpoints to her own’ also doesn’t strike me as a particularly serious crime.  And if it were, there wouldn’t be many politicians left.  There have been many occasions over the years when I have inwardly cringed at some of the things said in meetings I've attended - and I do not think for one moment that that makes me untypical.

Perhaps it’s the oath of allegiance to republicanism which she took.  The Western Mail described it as bizarre – I can only assume that they’ve edited out the most egregious parts of it, because nothing in the words quote struck me as being particularly bizarre.  It's not even as if she took the oath with one trouser leg rolled up and a dagger held to the chest.  Now that would be bizarre, although I understand that many middle-aged males might consider it entirely normal.  What is normal and what is bizarre all depends on perspective.

The timing and provenance of the story is actually odder than the oath itself, as Gareth Hughes points out. At heart, it seems to be little more than an attempt to avoid debating substance and resort to smear by association.  It’s a sad reflection on what politics has become.

Sticking to her guns

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The decision by Plaid’s new leader, Leanne Wood, not to attend the Jubilee service led to a fairly sustained correspondence in the letters pages of the Western Mail in the period since it was announced.  Some of the letters have been from the usual suspects (does ‘Monarchy Wales’ actually have more than one member?), as one might expect.  Supporters of the status quo talk about the ‘hard work’ and ‘service’ provided by the current monarch over many years, whilst others talk of ‘disrespect’ to a visitor to Wales (without, apparently, realising the irony of the description of 'our' monarch as a ‘visitor’).

That there are plenty in Wales who feel an attachment to both the institution and the current incumbent is surely no surprise to anyone.  But one of the things that has struck me repeatedly every time the issue comes up is the conflation of republicanism and nationalism in the minds of many.  It’s a connection which does not stand up to analysis. 

Many members of the Labour Party are republicans (although a number prefer not to admit it), and, whisper it quietly, there are plenty of Tories who would struggle to convince anyone that they honestly believe that the head of state should be a hereditary position.  I’m sure that there are some Lib Dems, too, who support the idea of a republic, although how many and which ones probably depends, like so many of their policies, on who’s listening and whether there’s an ‘r’ in the month.

The point is that nationalists in Wales certainly have no monopoly on republican thinking.

Views within Plaid and the wider national movement vary, as they do for the other parties.  Leaving aside any whose deep and sincere convictions stem, like those of so many politicians in the UK parties, from the findings of the latest focus group, there are three main strands of opinion amongst Wales’ nationalists.

• There are a minority who actually support the continuation of the UK monarchy for Wales after independence - and not just for reasons of political convenience.  The number is not large, but Oscar’s discovery of his undying love for the queen was never an entirely unique phenomenon.
• There’s another minority, probably even smaller, who believe that we should trace the descendants of Llywelyn Fawr and restore the House of Gwynedd to its Welsh throne.
• And then there’s the overwhelming majority who are natural and instinctive republicans, and who would still be so even if they were not nationalists.

That’s a personal assessment, of course; but it’s based on decades of involvement and knowledge of the national movement, and I’m convinced that it’s a fair assessment.  So why all the fuss when Plaid’s new leader actually says what most of her party’s members believe?

The main point worth noting is that whilst the members might actually support the republican viewpoint, they don’t usually say so – and although there is a clear majority of republicans within Plaid, the party has never got around to formally adopting a republican policy. 

For some that’s simply a way of avoiding debate on an issue which is not likely to be a vote-winner.  But for most, it’s more about an assessment of political priorities.  Gaining independence - or, in the interim, significant real powers for the National Assembly - is seen as a higher priority that trying to strip away the vestigial powers of the monarchy.  If the monarchy’s influence is more symbolic than real, why pick a symbolic battle, when the real one needs to be fought?

This year, though, things changed.  Plaid’s members overwhelmingly elected a leader who has, for many years, made her own republican viewpoint crystal clear.  And whilst some might see the issue as a symbolic one which can be left for another time, Leanne does not; she sees it as a more immediate issue.  No-one in Plaid can have been in any doubt about Leanne’s stance when they voted for her – and they should not expect her to change her stance now.

I’m no longer close enough to know for certain what goes on, but I can imagine the siren voices suggesting to Leanne that, as leader, she should tone down her comments, and modify her stance.  Personally, I think that would be a mistake.  If there’s one thing that Plaid should learn from recent experience it is that fudge and expediency end up looking like shiftiness and dishonesty.

Having nailed her colours so firmly to the mast over so many years, expecting her to change tack now is not only realistic, it would be a mistake on a grand scale.  For any politician who strongly holds a principled view, being willing to express it forcibly and honestly, even in the teeth of disagreement, is invariably going to be more effective than trying to pretend to believe something else.

And who knows; having a mainstream politician expressing republican views may even make more people think about the issue – and maybe even change their views.

New leader, new start?

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The election of a straight-talking leader, who is a committed nationalist, socialist, and republican marks, in every one of those aspects, the most decisive break with the last 12 years which Plaid Cymru could have made, and I’ll admit that the clarity of that decision came as something of a surprise to me.  In electing Leanne, the party has chosen the candidate who was furthest away from Ieuan Wyn Jones in her thinking. 

I was surprised to see Elin described during the campaign as the ‘continuity candidate’.  If there was a continuity candidate (i.e. someone likely to continue along the route set by Ieuan) in the race, it was surely Dafydd Elis-Thomas.  I rather suspect that Elin’s inability to articulate successfully the extent of the difference between her position and that of her predecessor owes more to a natural sense of loyalty than to any intention to simply carry on along the same route.

I have no doubt that Leanne will be courageous and honest in putting forward a clear alternative vision for Wales, and in attempting to lead rather than follow public opinion.  And I have long been convinced that that is the proper role for a nationalist party in Wales.  

Leanne does face a number of problems however.  Not the least of them is a raised, and probably unrealistic, level of expectation.  The idea that some seem to have that merely setting out a route forward and articulating her party’s objectives with a great deal more clarity will be enough to grow support for those objectives is over simplistic.  And the idea that there is a great groundswell of radical left-leaning voters in industrial South Wales just waiting for the right leader owes more to a romantic view of the past than to any analysis of harsh reality.

In that context, one of the most important things that the party needs to do is to define what ‘success’ means.  And it needs to self-define that, rather than have it defined for it by others, because others will define it solely in terms of electoral progress, whereas the real measure of success for a national party is in terms of progress towards its objectives.  Sometimes the two coincide; but they don’t necessarily do so at all times.  Conflating the two - or rather allowing success to be defined solely in terms of the one - has been a part of the problem.