Former Green Party councillor selected as Plaid Cymru general election candidate

Plaid Cymru has selected a former Green Party councillor to fight for the Brecon, Radnorshire and Cwmtawe seat at the next general election.

Emily Durrant-Munro was a Powys County Councillor for the Llangors Ward between 2017 and 2022 and was the first Green Party County Councillor in Wales. Subsequently she joined Plaid Cymru and sat as a Plaid Cymru Councillor.

The new constituency has been created following boundary changes to reflect the loss of eight Welsh MPs at the next Westminster election comes.

Ms Durrant-Munro has worked in agriculture and food supply chains and previously led a rural development project, working with more than 250 farmers. She currently works with global agri-food businesses.

Nonsense

Following her selection, Ms Durrant-Munro said:  “It’s time we stop this nonsense of environment vs food, climate vs farmers, Labour vs Conservatives. Our farmers are being treated as pawns in a political game, blown this way and that.  It has to stop.

“We can’t keep saying OR, we have to start saying AND.  We need food AND a stable climate. We need food AND living rivers, we need farmers AND nature restoration. The real villains here are not the farmers, neither are they the birds and butterflies.

“The Conservative Government in Westminster has deprived Wales of billions of funding since Brexit, including slashing funding available for Wales’ agricultural budget by 100s of £millions. Welsh Labour has handled the introduction of a Wales farming scheme poorly, losing the trust of the farming community.

“This is a planetary crisis, and it will involve some change, but pushing farmers and people out of rural areas is not the answer.”

Fay Jones, the MP for Brecon and Radnorshire has been reselected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for the new seat, which incorporates voters from the Upper Swansea Valley.

In February Powys councillor Matthew Dorrance, the local authority’s deputy Leader was selected as the Labour candidate while David Chadwick, a cybersecurity consultant, is standing for the Liberal Democrats.