The mantra was simple: ‘Yes Wales Can’, as Adam Price declared after ousting Leanne Wood in a brutal leadership contest in 2018. Wood had been unable to halt the ruthless coup launched by Y Mab Darogan, the son of prophecy, as Price was known to his followers.
Plaid Cymru has been in Labour’s shadow in Wales for close to a century. Yet Price was deemed to have the intellect, oratorical flair and media savvy to launch a nationalist turnaround to replicate the fortunes of the SNP. At times, if paraphrasing Obama was any evidence, Price indulged the intoxicating legend that surrounded him. It was bound to end in tears.
By the time Price announced he would go, the narrative had run away from him
His resignation this week, after the party-commissioned Prosiect Pawb (Everyone’s Project) report found misogyny, harassment and bullying rife across Plaid Cymru, was the final act in his Shakespearian career. Disorder descended on Plaid, while pressure grew for a more robust response to the report’s damning findings.
The news website Nation.Cymru reported on Tuesday night that Price had decided to step down, yet there was no definitive statement from the party for 48 hours. By the time Price announced he would go, the narrative had run away from him. He couldn’t have stayed on as leader even if he ached to do so. Many of his own colleagues didn’t want him to, anyway. The sense of panic was palpable.
How different things once were. I always felt that Price, a skilled economist and persuasive speaker, was more comfortable as an MP, a solitary maverick in the centuries-long tradition of Celtic nationalists in the House of Commons. There, he could rub shoulders with the movers and shakers of Britain rather than second-rate politicians in Cardiff Bay. In Wales he has had to manage senior party figures who found it difficult to forgive him for betraying Wood. And he was forced to play second fiddle to Mark Drakeford. During his time in Westminster, Price built a substantial national profile: a firebrand who relished the opportunity for column inches, which came in droves thanks to his efforts to impeach Tony Blair over Iraq. Then he was confined to the dull political cave of Wales.
Like every good Welsh nationalist Price appreciated political theatre. At times he of course took things too far – like when he demanded ‘reparations’ for the historical treatment of Wales in the UK – but he had a vigour and spikiness in debates that made him intimidating, at least on an intellectual level. Only in recent months, amid growing disgruntlement about the party’s dreadful governance standards, did he lose that edge. Recently he has looked de-energised, ordinary even, like the many politicians around him.
Llanast – a Welsh way of saying disorder, mess or confusion – is an apt descriptor of Plaid’s predicament. The revelations from the Prosiect Pawb report, which came after months of complaints about Plaid’s toxic culture, are debilitating. The staggering number of 82 recommendations proposed by its author reflects the scale of the organisation’s cultural failures; eventually, the buck had to stop with someone. Price says he offered to resign as soon as its findings were known but was rebuffed by senior figures internally. That would have been a more dignified exit than the chaos that consumed the party after the report’s release.
His successor will inherit a party at a crossroads: with influence, but no power. Price, through negotiation and pragmatism, was integral to the cooperation agreement signed with Labour ministers after the Welsh election in 2021. It has enabled Plaid to elevate its policies, from free school meals to second home regulations, to the corridors of power.
In his resignation letter, Price pointed to the agreement with Labour as his crowning achievement. But there are clear signs that even before recent events the collaborative spirit between both parties was under pressure. The disquiet of backbench Labour members in recent days to continue with the agreement has been heightened by Price’s resignation, prompting the First Minister to launch ‘discussions’ over its future.
As Price’s political legacy looks increasingly threadbare, he cannot boast about electoral progress either. Lazy excuses have been made to explain Plaid’s stagnation at the polls, notably the momentum behind Mark Drakeford in the run up to the Senedd election two years ago. Again, however, basic levels of expectations were too high going into the campaign – meaning anything other than second place and formal coalition with Labour looked like failure. Far from being the party of Wales, Plaid Cymru is its third choice in the Welsh Parliament (behind the Conservatives) and sends only three MPs to Westminster.
Some hope a new leader will move Plaid away from its role as Welsh Labour’s think tank, paving the way for a more aggressive and competitive politics. But the lack of an obvious successor is troubling for a party that lacks talent in its Senedd group. Many backbenchers are flattering themselves by refusing to ‘rule themselves out’ but the most natural successor would be the former BBC journalist Rhun ap Iorwerth. In line with party rules, to do so he would have to abandon ambitions to win a seat in Westminster at the next general election. Rhun ap Iorwerth might conclude, however, that it is a rather tall order not only to lead the revival of a party but also transform it culturally too.
All these issues must be confronted before advancing Plaid Cymru’s central cause: independence. Adam Price cannot take as much credit as Conservative prime ministers for the steady rise in support for an independent Wales, which now hovers at around 30 per cent in opinion polls. He has at least made independence a definitive rather than ambiguous element of Plaid’s political purpose.
But he had much bigger ambitions than this: he wanted to change the dial of Welsh politics and lead his country. The expectations his supporters placed on him, and Y Mab put on himself, were totally disproportionate. There lies a lesson for his successor: don’t drink the Kool-Aid, especially if it’s your own.
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