Adam Price isn’t the ‘right person’ to lead Plaid Cymru, says former PCC
Adam Price isn’t the “right person” to lead Plaid Cymru, according to a former PCC.
Arfon Jones, who recently stepped down as North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, took aim at his party leader for the performance at the Senedd election.
Plaid was knocked back in many of its targets, and won 13 seats in the Welsh Parliament, compared to 30 for Labour and 16 for the Conservatives.
Jones took aim at the party’s electoral strategy and claimed that its leadership didn’t do enough to support regional branches.
When he was asked by Golwg360 if Adam Price was the right person to lead Plaid Cymru, he replied: “I don’t think so personally. I know there are some people who still support him but that’s another matter.
“It’s up to the membership to decide on who it wants as a leader. But no, I don’t think he’s the person to move us forward”.
On his party’s performance at the Senedd election, he said: “I don’t think there was a strategy there to tell the truth.
“We haven’t had any support from the centre in Cardiff, and the reason that some candidates did so well was because of their own hard work, and not because of support from the party.
“It’s time for us to have that discussion, and we are unable to have it internally.
“We’ve had a working committee and a national council and the electoral failures haven’t been discussed in either of them.
“I know that Dafydd Trystan (Davies) is investigating these failures and it’s expected that something will be published in September.
“But I think we should have a discussion now before it becomes ‘oh everything is ok’ and we do the same in the next election again.”
‘Devolve’
Arfon Jones called on Plaid to “devolve resources” to party branches and suggested that it would lead to more success.
He said: “That would enable them to build their own infrastructure.
“We’ve been quite successful in Wrexham through building our own structure, and we’ve done that without a jot of support from Cardiff or the leadership.
“It took two years if not more for Adam Price to visit us as branches in the north east of Wales, and that isn’t good enough.”
A spokesperson for Plaid Cymru said: “The period after an election is an important opportunity for Plaid Cymru to reflect on the campaign and to look ahead to the local elections in 2022.
“Dafydd Trystan’s review will be supporting that work and we look forward to accepting any constructive recommendations in due course.”
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Price has been a huge disappointment. Good at giving a speech, but ask him a question & he goes into meldown, stuttering & blubering his way thru. The only thing in his favour, is that he’s not Leanne Wood!
Come on, if you find those speeches in any way positive your bar must be set very low. He’s long on rhetoric and cliches but very short on substance. Although Leanne is a touch Marmite her delivery particularly in her early days as leader was far more subtle and strong on content. Had she not had her head turned by fringe issues, some time just after giving Farage a mouthful, she could have continued as a good leader. But it’s all history now.
What short memories we have! Have we forgotten Plaid’s ratings under Leanne’s leadership plumbing single digits?
That was in the period after her joust with Farage, when she started wandering off on all sorts of distractions.
Yr oeddwn i’n bersonol yn gruddfan bob tro y clywn Arfon Jones yn agor ei geg, ac wrth gwrs roedd yn un o gefnogwyr mwyaf brwd Leanne Wood.
Plaid have lacked a charismatic leader since Dafydd Wigley.
Personality is more important than policy to the X Factor generation.
Elections have become little more than popularity contests played out in the media between party leaders.
Since they stabbed Wigley in the back, they’ve been dire. Visioneless, and rudderless. Nationalists must all nkw stop wasting their time and money, and find a new home. Plaid is done.
Judging by recent by-election results in England, UK Labour is well and truly finished as well. Time for people to stop voting for unionist parties.
In my opinion, the attacks on Price are very unfair. This was an almost impossible campaign for any party to fight other than the incumbents in government in Cardiff and Westminster – since there has been almost no scope to move the agenda beyond the COVID response.
Spot on Cai 👍
The lesson is never fight an election during a pandemic. The wall to wall coverage of Mark Drakeford along with a ban on street campaigning for most of the election worked like a dream for Labour.
Excuses, excuses!
Plaid – always with the excuses. No self awareness at all.
And what was Labour”s excuse for losing the Hartlepool by-election?
Plaid Wrecsam is the way to go.
I was a english speaking only Plaid supporter and 95% of Plaid members are great people. They have a deep problem a local councilers who like to have a shout and don’t care about the consequences. Until the party machine a) grows a pair and makes that behaviour unacceptable[1] b) show some economic intelligence, they will be a party of a 1/4 of the welsh population and never any more. The point about the party having no self awareness is on the money. [1] My 17 year old Daughter would love to join and be an active member, but is… Read more »