Speaking last October at his party’s annual conference, Plaid Cymru’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, raised the biggest cheer when he laid out the stakes in what may be an era-defining Senedd election: “Let’s be clear,” he told his audience: “We’re not here to act as Labour’s conscience. We are not here to repair Labour. We are here to replace them.”
For most of the 100 years in which the Labour party has been the overwhelmingly dominant force in Wales, such talk would have been for the birds. But as Plaid gathers for a spring summit in Newport this weekend, ahead of May’s poll, it reflects the new political reality. Soon after Mr ap Iorwerth spoke, his party won the Caerphilly byelection from Labour with a 19-point increase in its vote share, depriving Nigel Farage of a post-industrial seat he had expected to win.
