Just a pawn on the chess board?

Tweet It was inevitable once Adam announced his intention to stand down as MP that there would be speculation about both where he would stand for a seat in the Assembly, and about who would succeed him as the party's candidate for Westminster.

Reading some of the speculation, it seems that some people might be labouring under the delusion that the party is playing a gigantic game of chess, in which individual candidates are mere pawns who can simply be moved around at will. That would be to misunderstand the party and the way we work.

There are three points which people would do well to bear in mind.

The first is that it might well be New Labour's style to stitch things up in posh restaurants behind the backs of the party members, but Granita-type discussions are simply not Plaid's style. Our decisions on candidate selection – both in terms of choosing a successor candidate to Adam and in any constituency or region where Adam decides to submit his name as a candidate for the Assembly - will be made democratically by the members; and if there's one thing that Plaid members don't like, it's being taken for granted.

The second is that no-one should regard the constituency as being a safe seat for whoever is chosen as the Plaid candidate. I can understand how anyone looking at Adam's majority in 2005 might think that, but it would be a mistake to take the voters for granted either. The result in 2001 was a great deal closer - I was Adam's agent in that election, and never for one moment did I feel that there was any certainty about the result - and nothing stays still in politics.

And the third is that, whilst there are a number of additional winnable constituencies for the party in 2011, it's hard to see how any of them could be won without a long and hard campaign on the ground. Switching candidates in or out at the last minute is hardly the best way to set about that.