Selection contest gets nasty

Selection is a rough business but Plaid’s internal wrangling over the South Wales West regional list is proving exceptional – as seen in yesterday’s Western Mail which reported on some of the party’s movers & shakers behind an engineered deselection of sitting AM Bethan Jenkins.

Martin Shipton claims Elfyn Llwyd, Helen Mary Jones, Nerys Evans and Jenkins’ predecessor Janet Davies are all backing Dr Myfanwy Davies to defeat the AM in next month hustings & selection. Few doubt that the quoted comments of Janet Davies about “young politicians” who use their “persuasive ability to undermine colleagues or just to grab a few headlines” are aimed as much at Bethan’s partner, Neil McEvoy, deputy leader at Cardiff council and all-round thorn in the side of the Plaid establishment.

However, the OTT assertion that “Myfanwy has a deep and mature loyalty to our party” seems on a par with Dr Davies’s impressive wikipedia entry which carries the disclaimer that “sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations”. In other words, she wrote it herself.

There is no suggestion so far as to who fellow regional AM Dai Lloyd is backing.