To several observers, a telling aspect of Kirsty Williams’ criticism of Anagram is not so much that she makes it in today’s Wales on Sunday but that even now she only feels able to sort of go on the record.
Despite the predictable yada-yada about youth, radicalism and other stuff during the leadership contest, Williams appears to be a fireball on a slow burn. Her supporters point to a shrewd understanding on her part that she firstly needs to consolidate her relatively new status within a party that sometimes holds to a different definition of federalism than you might find in a dictionary. And she is gradually winning hearts & minds in the right places – just as she hopes to continue doing in Wrexham this weekend.
However, having successfully portrayed herself during the campaign as the person best placed to replicate the kind of electoral breakthrough her party has achieved in Welsh local government in the last decade, her internal critics - especially those in the Randerson camp - suggest that this will need something more substantial than periodic bouts of pensioner-bashing in the Senedd chamber. Some of her colleagues, whilst employing just the right balance of regret and frustration, seem all to willing to highlight that her chances of actually delivering wins at Westminster as well as Cardiff Bay remain very slim given current trends.
Plaid are already predicting a takeback of Ceredigion on or before 3rd June 2010 and current polls confirm a frustrating regional picture replicated elsewehere in the UK of a party that is unable to effectively capitalise on Labour’s electoral unpopularity let alone claim back a social reformist agenda hijacked by Cameron's almost reconstructed tories.
The truth, as one commentator points out, is that more people read what Lembit has to say than Kirsty on any given day, and the added uncomfortable irony, which will not be lost on the Welsh leader or her loyal followers, is that the MP for Montgomeryshire might well end up being the last man standing when the general election dust finally settles.
One can only guess at the Daily Sport headline on that one.
2 Comments:
Nah, Cardiff Central's much safer than Montgomeryshire for the Lib Dems. So there should be at least one sensible Lib Dem MP.
And I notice that you didn't even try to define what the difference is between the Lib Dems and Plaid, which may actually be the greatest of their problems.
We never let the facts get in the way of an entertaining scenario. As regards a Lib Dem and Plaid alliance, we understand the received wisdom is that neither will move in that direction until they get something close to numerical parity - an outcome which could only be achieved at each other's expense given present standings. Is that right?
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