Political future of Adam Price in doubt as he fails to win top slot in candidate selection

Martin Shipton

The political career of Adam Price hangs in the balance after the former Plaid Cymru leader was allocated third place in the party’s list of candidates for his home county of Carmarthenshire in next year’s Senedd election.

We can reveal that current Mid and West Wales MS Cefin Campbell topped the members’ ballot in the “super constituency” of Sir Gar, which comprises the two Westminster seats of Caerfyrddin and Llanelli.

Lobbyist and former MS Nerys Evans has been allocated second place on the list, with Mr Price, Mari Arthur, Iwan Griffiths and Abi Thomas making up the rest of the Plaid team in that order.

Party members voted after attending one of four hustings meetings, three of which were held in person while the other took place virtually.

Barnstorming

Some members have said Mr Price gave barnstorming performances at the meetings, while one Plaid source contrasted his “invigorating” delivery with the more “connected” and down-to-earth approach of Mr Campbell.

Under the new electoral system in the expanded Senedd, whose number of members is rising from 60 to 96, Wales has been divided into 16 super constituencies, each of which will elect six MSs according to the closed list system of proportional representation.

Candidates are ranked by local party members in the order they would be elected. Unlike in other systems of proportional representation, notably the single transferable vote, members of the public cannot choose which individual candidates to support. Instead they can only vote for the party.

The closed list system has been criticised for putting too much power in the hands of parties instead of ordinary voters, but it was agreed between Mark Drakeford and Adam Price when they respectively led Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru.

Unlike Welsh Labour, Plaid also used a “zipping” system designed to create gender balance among its candidates. As a result, the second slot on Sir Gar’s closed list was allocated to Ms Evans, as the female candidate with the highest level of support, regardless of whether she got more votes than Mr Price.

Harvard University

Mr Price was first elected to represent the Carmarthen East and Dinefwr constituency at Westminster in 2001, standing down in 2010 to take a career break as a postgraduate student at the renowned Kennedy School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He returned to front-line politics in 2016, being elected to represent his old seat at the Senedd.

Two years later, he challenged the incumbent Leanne Wood in a Plaid leadership election that he won. But the party performed below expectations at the last Senedd election in 2021, largely because Labour First Minister Mark Drakeford had been perceived by many voters as a reassuring leader during the pandemic, in contrast to the lawbreaking conduct of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Paid became mired in scandal, with allegations of sexual harassment involving its staff. Ironically Nerys Evans, who has now secured a higher place on the Sir Gar list than Mr Price, wrote a critical report about the prevalence of harassment in the party which led to his resignation as leader in May 2023.

It will be a tall order for Plaid to win three of the six seats in Sir Gar, although officially the party believes it is a realistic aim.

The result of the internal election was leaked to us on the evening of Thursday May 29 and at the time of writing has not been revealed by Plaid Cymru. Neither have the number of votes won by each candidate.

Reform

We informed Cllr Alun Lenny, who chairs the Caerfyrddin Plaid Cymru branch, of the result. He said: “We believe that winning three seats is well within our reach and we shall be campaigning hard to win four. Labour is in meltdown in the county, and we easily held off the challenge of Reform UK at the Llanddarog by-election in March And the resounding victory of Ann Davies in the general election [when she was elected MP for Caerfyrddin] shows we can do it. .

“I am sure that the Reform bubble will burst. In a way, I’m pleased that they won control of a number of councils in England, because it won’t take long for their incompetence to become apparent.

“Farage has been making wild promises that would entail spending billions of pounds, yet at last year’s general election Reform said it would impose public spending cuts of £150bn a year. It doesn’t stack up and we need to be exposing the dishonesty of their position between now and the Senedd election.”

Reacting to Mr Price’s third place on the list, a Plaid Cymru member who didn’t want to be named said: “Adam Price is one of Plaid Cymru’s most distinguished thinkers from throughout its 100 years of existence. It would be a tragedy if he wasn’t present in the next Senedd.”

Perilous

Another local source, who also did not want to be named, said: “Adam’s position is now very perilous. It would have to be a very good day for Plaid to pick up three seats in Carmarthenshire. He’s in this position because many party members think he hasn’t been spending enough time in the constituency, and because there remains concern at his weak handling of the Jonathan Edwards affair [when the then MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr received a police caution for assaulting his wife and the party’s national executive committee overruled a disciplinary panel recommendation that following a period of suspension he should be allowed to resume his career as a Plaid MP].

“There is also some irony in the fact that Adam’s political future is insecure as a result of the electoral system he agreed with Mark Drakeford. Had the old system still been in place, there is no doubt he would have retained Carmarthen East and Dinefwr.”

Mr Price has said he was told by Mr Drakeford that if Plaid didn’t go along with the closed list system, the increase in the number of MSs would have been abandoned.