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Plaid Cymru’s leader has promised “no more bending to Westminster’s will” as the nationalist party stands on the brink of taking office for the first time in next month’s Senedd elections.
Speaking at Plaid Cymru’s manifesto launch in Wrexham on Thursday – chosen because of its football team, which has showcased Wales’s potential to the world – Rhun ap Iorwerth told a packed room of supporters there would be “no more toeing the London party line, no more defending the status quo and no more saying no to Wales”.
He said: “Together, and for the first time, we can give our nation the leadership it deserves, leadership that takes its cue from the people of Wales and nobody else.”
Labour has led Wales since devolution in 1999 but it appears destined for opposition. Polls consistently suggest the May contest is a two-horse race between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, with Labour a distant third or even fourth after the Green party.
“Plaid Cymru offers a different path. Our pledge is to govern with hope, to govern with humility, to govern with a kind of urgency and impatience which gets things done,” ap Iorwerth said.
Many of the party’s key manifesto pledges had been heavily trailed or previously announced. Priorities include cutting NHS waiting lists, which are longer in Wales than in the other UK nations, a flagship promise of universal childcare, eradicating Wales’s high levels of child poverty with a new weekly child payment, and creating a business-led national development agency for Wales.
Demands on Westminster include more tax powers, addressing Wales’s historical underfunding, and devolving control of justice and policing and the crown estate.
Plaid Cymru has repeatedly ruled out holding an independence referendum in a first term, but its manifesto says it will progress plans for a national school of governance, create a diaspora taskforce and develop a “new and comprehensive bilateral cooperation framework” with Ireland.
The programme had been costed by the leading Welsh economist Prof Gerry Holtham, who called it “achievable”, ap Iorwerth said.
He said he was unconcerned about the electoral threat posed by Reform, as recent polls suggested Plaid Cymru was pulling ahead. Reform is likely to benefit from Wales’s new proportional voting system, going from two MSs – both Tory defections – to potentially the biggest party in the Senedd. However, since Plaid Cymru and Labour have said they will not go into coalition with Nigel Farage’s outfit, it is only the Welsh nationalist party that has a shot at forming a government.
“It’s important to keep them out of power, and the people of Wales are making it very clear they share my determination on that. Two-thirds of people in one poll said their biggest nightmare would be a Reform government,” ap Iorwerth said.
He said Plaid Cymru was ready to face a potentially hostile opposition, as well as the responsibilities of government. “We know we would be inheriting an incredibly difficult legacy from underperforming governments in Wales. We know what we’re getting into but we’re serious about finding solutions to that … and we will ask people to judge us on what we have achieved.”
