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The leader of Plaid Cymru has claimed the Welsh parliament elections in May will be a straight fight between his party and Reform UK, which he billed as a choice between “culture or ignorance, humanity or indifference”.
Speaking at the party’s biggest ever conference, Rhun ap Iorwerth, the clear favourite to be the next Welsh first minister, said the Gorton and Denton byelection showed Labour and the Tories were “slipping away”, and he promised Plaid had a radical plan to improve Wales’s fortunes.
He said that while the Greens had done well to win in Greater Manchester, he was confident voters in Wales looking for a progressive alternative would turn to Plaid.
During the leader’s speech in Newport, south-east Wales, ap Iorwerth highlighted plans such as setting up 10 surgical hubs to tackle NHS waiting lists, and making sure every school has a library.
He said the party, which is comfortably leading the polls, would reveal a blueprint on Saturday for its first 100 days in power after the Senedd elections.
Ap Iorwerth said his government would be pushing for “fair funding” for Wales and “parity of powers” with Scotland. He said a new Wales bill was needed and a standing commission would be established to spark a national conversation about the shape of Wales’s future – though the word “independence”, a fundamental Plaid aspiration, was not mentioned.
Ap Iorwerth criticised the Labour leader in Wales, Eluned Morgan, for, in his view, defending Keir Starmer’s “catastrophic poor judgment” over Peter Mandelson, claiming Labour, which has dominated politics in Wales for a century, was no longer fit to govern.
But he reserved the most ire for Reform UK. He said: “Faceless candidates and feckless council leaders from Northumberland to Kent are the canaries in the mine when it comes to what [Nigel] Farage has in store for our parliament and our people.”
Before the speech, there was an appeal for financial help. Plaid has much shallower pockets than Labour or Reform. Ap Iorwerth said: “Reform with Trump’s playbook in hand will sell out to the highest bidder. They have deep pockets to spread propaganda and evangelise the deepfakes of [Elon] Musk’s putrid platforms, and they have the rightwing media in the palm of their hands.
“For Labour, the party is over – and so the election in May will be a choice between two contrasting futures. Tolerance or division. Progress or decay. Defiance or deference. Culture or ignorance. Humanity or indifference. Plaid or Reform.”
Among the delegates in the hall were Alison Vyas and her son, Cole, who hit the headlines during Plaid’s successful Caerphilly byelection campaign when they fiercely criticised the Reform campaign during a BBC debate.
Ap Iorwerth said: “They weren’t members of Plaid Cymru then but they are now, having joined us because we share a vision of building bridges and breaking down barriers.”
The conference opened with a local Plaid Senedd member, Peredur Owen Griffiths, invoking the spirit of the 1839 Newport rising, when chartists marched on the place demanding democracy. Griffiths said they were met with bullets, hate and an establishment “terrified of change”.
Like ap Iorwerth, Heledd Fychan, another leading Plaid member, spoke about culture. She said: “Culture is not something nice to have. It is the backbone of our nation. Culture and sports make us who we are, they bind us together.” But she said they had been held back by inadequate funding and a lack of political leadership
Outside the main hall, people enthused about the upbeat mood. Siân Thomas, who was on the councillors’ association stall, had attended about 50 Plaid conferences but never one as big as this.
“It’s vibrant,” she said. Thomas was confident Plaid would win in May and believed it would be a springboard for more electoral success in county and community elections.
Plaid is pleased at the number of younger people who have joined the party. Rhun, 27, was staffing a stall offering Plaid mugs, pin badges and rosettes. Also for sale were T-shirts with a miner’s helmet and the slogan “annibyniaeth” – Welsh for independence.
Myfanwy Davies, a community councillor for Caernarfon in north Wales, said she had booked the wrong hotel because she assumed the conference was being held in a smaller venue, not the large ICC Wales on the edge of the city.
Like many at the conference, Davies was pleased at the Greens’ success in Gorton and Denton. “The Greens are our sister party,” she said. “There is no fundamental tension between us.”
Did that mean Plaid would cooperate with the Greens at the Senedd election? “That’s not for me to say,” Davies said. “What I can say is that this is the most exciting Plaid conference I’ve attended.”
