The Western Mail reports on the intervention of 'senior Plaid Cymru figures' in coalition talks between Labour and the Party of Wales.
These 'senior' figures include Dafydd Wigley, who believes that amongst Plaid Cymru's demands should be an additional £500m of match funding from the Treasury to assist with the implementation of convergence funding. Other anonymous figures demand STV for local government, a bigger Assembly elected by the single transferable vote, the active participation of Prime Minister, Gordon Brown in a referendum campaign in favour of more powers and the renaming of the Welsh Assembly Government.
It very much sounds like certain journalists have been doing a ring-round, but whatever the origins of the story the stakes for a Plaid-Labour coalition have been raised and the foundations laid for a very strong argument in favour of a Welsh Liberal Democrat-Plaid-Tory Government at the Plaid National Council on 7th July.
Update: I have been reliably informed that this story did not originate from a ring-round but that key protagonists contacted the journalist in question on their own initiative. This indicates the start of a campaign within Plaid Cymru to secure agreement for the rainbow coalition.
Welsh Liberal Democrats Councillor for Cwmbwrla Ward, City and County of Swansea - Please buy my novels at Author Page
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Friday, June 22, 2007
1 comment:
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It indicates Peter that the right of Plaid are sufficently worried about the red/green initiative to have made this pretty daft approach. The terms are completely undeliverable for any type of government in Wales and the intervention will not have been taken seriously by either Plaid or Labour teams.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is Labour can easily match the All Wales Accord and add the Westminister dimension. So the major difference is the Labour deal is deliverable whereas key elements of the 'rainbow' such as the referendum and barnet are castles in the sky. Plaid are shrewd and will not easily throw away the only prospect of a Parliament for a decade.