A Welcome In The Hillsides

Bethan Jenkins, a Plaid Cymru Member of the Welsh Assembly, has been required by her party to leave Twitter after she tweeted that Martin McGuinness was "naive" for having agreed to meet the Queen. I dare her to say that to his face. Anyway, she is only following the lead of her Leader, Leanne Wood, who refused to attend the Diamond Jubilee Thanksgiving Service in Llandaff Cathedral, attended by Her Majesty.

Labour dominates South Wales. It already does reasonably well in North Wales, and with a bit of effort could do very well indeed there in 2015. The Independents who swept Montgomeryshire last month must surely have among their number someone for whom Labour could stand aside and arrange trade union funding in return for support upon election, including acting, with others, as a sort of One Nation conscience; there is no doubt someone similar in Brecon and Radnorshire, although that has been a Labour seat in its time.

And West Wales is, with Cornwall, one of the two poorest regions in the United Kingdom. The rural Radicalism and the peace tradition that have both remained vibrant in Welsh Wales, and the witness of which are of such vital importance to the United Kingdom at large, deserve so much better than Leanne Wood and Bethan Jenkins, who would seem to have only the shallowest, if any, roots in them. They seem to be pieces of the Marxoid flotsam and jetsam that accrue to the outer fringes of Labour and of academia alike. Clearly, that tendency is well on the way to taking over Plaid Cymru, if it has not already done so.

Perhaps it is still too early to expect tribally non-Labour voters in places like West Wales and much of North Wales to change. Especially since even 2015 will still quite be soon after the Blair years. So, again, cannot figures of rural Radicalism and the Welsh peace tradition be found to contest such seats with Labour's and the unions' support, on condition that they support the Labour Government once elected, including by keeping it faithful to rural Radicalism and to the Welsh peace tradition?