Has Plaid Cymru's time come?
Plus anger grows within Welsh Labour
Bore da!
I am writing this newsletter from Venue Cymru in Llandudno as the Plaid Cymru spring conference winds down. I have spent the last two days here interviewing the party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth as well as politicians, members and activists.
Most of this newsletter will be a deep dive into what we have learned from this conference but there are a couple other issues I want to talk about first including a bizarre leaked email from Welsh Labour.
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“Welsh Labour needs your help!” - A party in panic
The situation within the Welsh Government/Welsh Labour is starting to get panicky. Some special advisors within the Welsh Government are looking for a way out and there is growing frustration with First Minister Eluned Morgan. Is she really governing or is she just manning the sinking ship? This is a question that is being spoken about more openly within Welsh Labour circles.
Some are trying to get jobs away from the Welsh Gov and back into Welsh Labour because they are seen as more secure.
There is a disconnect within the wider party on whether Reform or Plaid are the bigger threat in 2026. Speaking in generalities, Welsh Labour are more worried about Plaid and UK Labour are more worried about Reform.
Last week an bizarre email was sent round to Welsh Labour members asking for them to monitor the media for them. It read:
Figures within the party have told me they are baffled by the move. “We have the resources to do it ourselves!” one told me. “You will end up having to fact check what the members are sending in”.
If this was a small party like the Greens I could understand it, but for Welsh Labour it’s just weird.
The message is all the stranger when you see what shows they want members to watch. It was hardly a niche list and one staffer could likely keep an eye on these themselves given everything is available to catch up.
I am not saying that this is the biggest deal, just that it is really odd that a well resourced party can’t find someone to cover this in house. It’s pretty damning of Wales for the governing party to put out an appeal asking “will someone please watch the news for us”.
Commenting on this a Welsh Labour spokesperson told me:
“Welsh Labour campaigns are open to all members. We have members who want to support our efforts but we as a team acknowledge that not everybody wants to or is able to campaign through traditional methods such as door knocking or phone canvassing. This may be for a number of reasons including disability. This is an additional opportunity for Welsh Labour members across Wales to get involved. As the old Labour saying goes, ‘there’s a job for everyone’.”
More X/Twitter evidence
Last week I told you about my experiment into how X/Twitter was suppressing pro Ukraine content. I don’t want to go over old ground but I thought I would share what happened when I posted the results of my experiment on both X and Bluesky.
It is really obvious that X deliberately hides criticism of itself and mentions of Bluesky. My thread about X on Bluesky received 2,300 likes whereas on X itself it got just 36.
Now clearly some of this could be down to the sort of people that are on each platform, but I think it adds more evidence of X’s warped and perverse algorithm.
Inside Plaid Cymru’s conference
All party conferences have a press room. It’s where the journalists are allowed to set up their laptops and store their gear. The locations are almost always in crappy rooms with no direct sunlight and have an inevitable feeling of cynicism that only journos can provide.
Within the room of gloom, a question that these hacks (of which I am one) will always ask is “what do you think the mood is?”.
The “mood” is an utterly unquantifiable thing yet every conference has one. I remember Labour’s before the last General Election being roundly described as “buoyant and excited” because Labour knew, pending something crazy, they were going to be in government in some form after the election.
Though Plaid Cymru has legitimate reasons to feel hopeful that they could have the First Minister in 2026, the mood wasn’t one of excitement. To me it felt like a party being hit with the realisation that the thing they have dreamed of for 25 years could actually happen.
With this comes the huge weight of responsibility that now they may actually have to follow through on the promises and assurances they have made. There was a focus, rather than an excitement which came across. A feeling that, though there is a long way to go, the nation that gave the party its name could be theirs to govern and “crap we need to not screw this up”.
As such, conversations were much more practical. For years the party could say pretty much what it wanted because it didn’t have any chance of winning. Now they may, whisper it, have an opportunity to do what they say.
Plans to abolish the health boards?
Over the last few months Plaid have issued fairly detailed plans on how they would make changes in the health service.
I have been hearing rumours that Mabon ap Gwynfor, their health spokesman, was considering abolishing the health boards in Wales (we have seven). There has been no announcements on this officially so I asked Mr ap Gwynfor about it. Fair play, he was very up front.
This idea is essentially something that they are currently playing around with and are considering though haven’t made concrete plans.
For them this isn’t about saving money, it is a matter of focus. Mr ap Gwynfor believes that having health boards competing with each other across a range of different measures reduces the drive to both collaborate as well as ultimately distracting from delivery. He says he wants to remove the “false drivers”.
Instead of health boards, he is considering dividing the Welsh NHS into “primary” and “secondary care”. He points to GP spending (part of primary care) which, over time, has gone from 12% of the total Welsh NHS budget down to just 5%. GPs are calling for this to increase to 8%.
That 5% figure is pretty surprising when you consider that 90% of NHS contacts (roughly) are with GPs practices. The hope is that the distinction would make it easier to reallocate money into primary care (which even Mark Drakeford has said is desperately needed).
This begs the question, if you divide the NHS in two where does mental health and community care go? According to Mabon ap Gwynfor this would also go into primary. There would still be the overarching NHS executive above everything.
Will it work? God knows. We will need lots more details before we make that assessment. It was at least heartening to see people acknowledge the radical changes we need to healthcare delivery in Wales and not just trim around the edges.
Child payment plan - what we know so far
It is hard to overstate the poverty issue Wales has. Child poverty is projected to increase from 32.3% at the start of 2025 to 34.4% by 2029. This has impacts on all other areas of Welsh life (not least the health service). You simply can’t solve Wales’ health crisis without tackling the poverty crisis.
At the conference, Plaid announced what they believe will be key to help tackle this. A child payment. This is where people in poverty will be given a fixed payment for each child they have.
There is a similar scheme already in place in Scotland. Analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty rates are projected to fall by 2029 – a direct result of the Scottish Child Payment.
So how will this look in Wales under Plaid’s plans? Here are the key points:
It applies to any child aged between 0-6 where the household receives Universal Credit (UC).
It will start with a trial of £10 a week for 15,000 households (10% of UC receiving households).
The trial will cost £10m a year (roughly the same as the Basic Income pilot).
If successful it will be rolled out to all applicable households in Wales (of which there are 150k).
This would cost £78m a year.
There are few points I would mention here:
The policy worked in Scotland. It is predicted to have kept 60k out of poverty there.
The amount would almost certainly rise. In Scotland it started at £10 but is now £26.
Would it be taxed? We saw with the Basic Income pilot that the Treasury saw this as additional income so it was taxed. This basically meant that Welsh money was leaving Wales to go back to Westminster. Plaid say they “hope” that a Labour Government would not do that and believe the optics would be terrible for Labour if they did. Personally, I have never seen any evidence of flexibility in the Treasury so I am sceptical they would make an allowance.
How can they do this legally? Wales has fewer powers than Scotland so can’t bring forward the policy in the same way (welfare is not devolved). However, Plaid say that they will use the Wales Act 2006 section 60 which says: “The Welsh Ministers may do anything which they consider appropriate to achieve the promotion or improvement of the social well-being of Wales.”
Key takeaways from the conference
To prevent this newsletter becoming a 10,000 word epic I am going to list what I think are some of the key takeaways from the Plaid conference. These are:
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