Calum Davies is a Conservative councillor in Cardiff and former Senedd candidate.
A century since their founding, six decades after their first parliamentary election victory, and 27 years since achieving the stepping stone to their goal of national independence in the form of evolution, Plaid Cymru have finally become the most popular party in Wales and now lead a Welsh Government.
What are they going to do with power? Very little it seems.
Of course, as patient and committed nationalists, the pursuit of independence will infect the decision-making of ministers for the foreseeable, but the general perception in Welsh political circles is the lack of ambition Plaid seem to have in sharp contrast to their campaign rhetoric.
During its first month in power, statements and interviews from these debutant Cabinet Secretaries has had a feature running through them all – there is no change. Sure, they will criticise the British Government more vociferously now as there’s no party unity to manage as was the case under Welsh Labour, but it marks a return to form as this is what happened consistently for the fourteen years the Conservatives governed in Westminster.
As parties of the right tried to warn in vain, Plaid did not represent a break from the consensus but its furtherance under a different guise. (I would add here that there’s little difference between Reform UK in Wales and the Welsh Conservatives too. Just goes to show how powerful branding – or for the defectors, re-branding – can be.)
Were one to read or listen to what the new leadership of Wales had said without knowing who delivered the words, there’s every chance you would think Labour were re-elected in May. The Welsh Government has merely shifted from one left-wing party to another, though one who’s ming vase strategy meant having to publicly tone down the more radical elements of the policy programme they had been proudly proclaiming for years.
Given my interest in the topic, I listened to the new Cabinet Secretary for Housing deliver her inaugural statement on her priorities for this Senedd term. It was remarkably similar to what I had heard her Labour predecessors say for years. It may very well be the first time someone from Plaid said private landlords have an important role to play in the housing market. The emphasis on social housing, choosing “fair rents” rather than rent controls (more re-branding!), and stressing the importance of a community-led planning system is a reaffirmation of the status quo. This is not change.
It may be this marks the first sign of experienced civil servants, only been used to working for one party, steering new ministers away from radical reform towards the usual managed stagnation of Wales. Whilst I have no love for Plaid or their programme, it is notable how quickly they have buckled to reading the talking points of officials and abandon their own beliefs.
That is not to say there’s a great loss of principle among the separatists. Their zealotry belief in the goal of independence is enough to maintain discipline and overcome internal division. We can see that with the SNP government that survived the Sturgeon-Salmond rift, the brief leadership of Humza Yousaf, the gender wars, and the Murrell embezzlement scandal. All helped by the weak scrutiny that devolution enables, of course, but the party’s iron-clad founding principle is a highly durable glue.
Rather what we have seen suggests there was little thought given to the governing agenda. Here, Plaid shares much with the current Labour party. Faced with a dying government and a remarkable sense of self-righteousness, both began to believe their own publicity. A belief that their opponents were simply useless, their own moral superiority will translate into operational and intellectual competence, and problems that seemed difficult or impossible to solve will simply disappear. It is not about them abandoning ideas – it has been exposed that they had few in first place.
The lack of intellectual power in Plaid is quite evident in the parroting of the same left-wing slop and false anti-austerity talking points that carried Labour to victory in 2024. It is easy enough to oppose an agenda from this standpoint but, as Starmer has discovered, unsustainable to govern from it.
That’s become most evident in the first steps this new government wanting to take being setting up quangos, commencing consultations, and failing to commit to any hard deadlines to meet goals or introduce reforms. We’ve seen it in the unwillingness to put a date on implementing the flagship childcare offer, the nine-month listening exercise on agricultural policy, and pitch rolling a worse-than-expected budget, even though Plaid signed up to Labour’s final package.
There is a poverty of ambition here from a party that has finally supplanted its rival for the leadership of Wales. But that’s because the whole leftist, devocratic regime – represented by both Labour and Plaid – is devoid of ideas for delivering meaningful and positive outcomes for us. That both parties are exhausted is not a coincidence for they share the same agenda.
The problem with Plaid trying to represent change is it agreed with the substantial majority of what Labour did during its period of power in Cardiff Bay. Sometimes, it was an active, if not the driving, participant in the policymaking process.
Take the default 20mph law, the farm funding scheme, and expanding the Senedd with no public vote. These were arguably the most controversial issues of the last Senedd term. Labour led on all these, but they were all supported by Plaid. Indeed, on increasing the number of politicians, this was something the nationalists had wanted for years. Agricultural subsidies were subject to onerous green requirements, which the separatists championed more than anyone else but, like with 20mph, made half-hearted public pivots towards better implementation and communications once public resistance arose, though still support the policy fundamentals.
Plaid remains comfortable in importing American-style leftism in the name of Black Lives Matter, transgender ideology, and anti-colonialism. But so were Welsh Labour. The parties at the top may have changed, but the same devocratic, elitist regime remains.
What can we conclude from all this? Public services will continue to lag behind the rest of Britain, separatism will entrench its foothold across institutions, and politicians will pursue their ideological crusades ahead of the Welsh people’s priorities.
Thus, the founding purposes and promises of national devolution continue to go unfulfilled.