Plaid Cymru ready to replace Labour, says leader

Plaid Cymru is ready to replace Labour at the Welsh Parliament election next year, the party’s leader will say.

In a speech at the annual party conference, Rhun ap Iorwerth will position Plaid as a government-in-waiting, with “new energy and new ideas”.

“Let’s be clear. We’re not here to act as Labour’s conscience. We are not here to repair Labour. We are here to replace them,” he is expected to say.

Labour has led Wales since the Senedd was first established as the National Assembly for Wales in 1999.

But recent polling has forecast Plaid and Reform to be the two biggest parties in Wales at the election in May.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr ap Iorwerth said: “What has happened now is that a host of elements have come together which has led to a belief in people’s minds that that leadership of Wales, for the very first time, is within grasp.

“And Plaid Cymru is a party that now is putting forward that radical idea on health, on education, on creating better and better-paid jobs, on tackling poverty, that Labour’s failed to deal with.”

He added: “We’ve had one party, as it happens, in power over 26 years and I think they’ve run out of steam, I think they’ve run out of ideas, and having a chance to put a Plaid Cymru government in place, new leadership for our country after 26 years of standing still frankly, we can put a new energy into getting to grips with health, getting to grips with education and the economy.

“Devolution is only the means to take action on behalf of our country. Now we need to use those tools for the betterment of our country.

“I believe that Plaid Cymru can do that and we’re asking to build an alliance of the people ahead of the election next year to give us that change and make it a positive one.”

Mr ap Iorwerth also ruled out holding a referendum on independence in the next five years if he became first minister.

He told Today: “This isn’t an independence election coming up in May next year. There won’t be a referendum now… not in the next five years at all.”

Asked if he would accept free movement of people from the EU, he said: “We’re very supportive and very eager to see us getting back into the single market, into the customs union. We know that movement of people is something that is a part of that.

“I think it’s a yes because we know how much we miss the movement of people both ways into and from the European Union, and the way that it’s affected so many sectors.”

He also said he wants to grow the Welsh economy, telling the programme: “We have Welsh rates of income tax, part of income tax now comes directly into the Welsh treasury, we want to grow the Welsh economy.

“That’s why we have put together Making Wales Work – probably the most comprehensive economic strategy in any part of the UK at the moment – because we desperately need it here in Wales.

“Our economy under Labour has been underperforming. We want to move forward from that because people deserve better.”