Friday, May 18, 2007

Who's future in the balance ?

"There's an opportunity to get Conservative policies on the statute book" said Alun Cairns on Wales Today tonight as he reflected on the potential for a Rainbow coalition.

I can see why Ieaun and Alun Ffred's generation see the Ministerial limousines as atractive as I assume 40 years of nationalism has been waiting for this sort of moment. It is why Cynog and Dafydd formed the pressure group Dewis a few years back.

But judging by comments left on my blog during the election campaign do Plaid activists really see their future with the Tories ?

I wait and see.

1 comment:

Cai Larsen said...

I'll let you in on a bit of a secret here Martin.

I've talked to very many Plaid members in the North about this - & I'm amazed at how ready people are to look at the idea - people that I would have regarded as being staunchly anti Tory.

Now, there are a number of reasons for this.
For example Labour aren't really engaging with us on the issue - they're just offering us the honour of keeping them in government from the outside. Rhodri wants meaningful negotiations, but it seems that Leighton, Huw & the boys won't let him play dice.

Also the Labour campaign - centred as it was on the vote Plaid get Tory nonsense has conditioned people to expect the Tories in government.

Then there's the fact that we've just had two, none too successful Labour terms.

But I'd hazard a guess that one of the main reasons for the sea change is simple human psychology. People get pissed off at seeing their party, it's core beliefs & it's public representatives (decent, honest people to a man) lied about, vilified, insulted & demonised on a daily basis.

The Tories don't do this, the Lib Dems do it sometimes - but much of Labour in Wales defines itself in terms of it's hatred of Plaid. This blog is in some ways a reflection of this mentality.

Your behaviour before the election, during the election & since the election might well turn out to have rather a higher price than you expected.