Adam Price overhyped election results and fortunate to secure such a favourable Labour deal says top academic
Leader Adam Pice overhyped Plaid Cymru’s election results and was fortunate to secure such a favourable cooperation agreement with Labour, a top academic has said.
Richard Wyn Jones, Director of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance, said that the cooperation deal between Plaid Cymru could be a bigger moment for the national movement than the ‘One Wales’ Plaid-Labour coalition of 2011.
However, writing for Barn magazine, he said that Adam Price had “overhyped Plaid Cymru’s election hopes beyond reason” and as a result “undermined Plaid Cymru’s credibility as a potential partner” for the Labour party.
However, he added that the party’s membership had seen “the best and worst of Adam Price over the last few months” and that the cooperation deal was as a result of his “careful guidance”.
“Due to a combination of favourable circumstances and, yes, some of Price’s special talents, Wales is entering a new phase in our political history,” he said.
“Time will tell exactly what will come from the new program for government and the unique arrangement put in place to oversee it. But, in reading the agreement, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the program is in many ways more to the taste of the national movement than even the One Wales agreement of the period 2007 to 2011.
“It is also difficult not to believe that the fact that the Labour Party in the Welsh Parliament had endorsed the agreement was a sign of a significant shift in its attitudes.”
Richard Wyn Jones goes on to say that Plaid Cymru currently “prioritises policies above all else” but with Mark Drakeford due to step down in three years’ time will need to change the focus to becoming an election-winning machine.
“The work behind the scenes to turn the party into a vote harvesting machine will be as important to its long-term future as the public efforts made in the context of the deal itself,” he said.
The full article can be read in Welsh here or in the pages of Barn magazine.
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Wales is finding its feet cross party. Only the Tories remain stuck in the fifties as if the Suez debacle had never happened and governor generals still wore feathered hats.
All I would say to pencil pusher Richard Wyn Jones is this. What has he ever done for Wales other than snipe from the sidelines. Answers on a postcard please if you can think of anything this half-baked Welshman has ever done to aid Wales or Welsh democracy. At least Plaid Cymru enabled Wales to become legislature, which then became a springboard for further devolution and the return of our Senedd Cymru/ Welsh parliament after an absence of 600 years in 2020., as up till that point English Labour were quite content for our then toothless Welsh Assembly to use… Read more »
Just get fighting for a new wales 🏴 and stop being little Englanders and be proud to be welsh start fighting for your children and grandchildren future in wales 🏴
RWJ is in danger of becoming the new DET seeking to a develop a profile through strong public statements backed by opinion rather than research or actual evidence.
A long way to go before joining the pantheon election pundits I’m afraid 😱
Adam Price overhyped election results and fortunate…
There’s politicians for you! 🙂