Slightly unexpectedly, I’m in the running
to be adopted as the Plaid Cymru candidate for Ceredigion at the next UK
general election. This might seem like a
strange career move, but it is something I am deeply committed to, and even
quite excited about.
The political tectonic plates are shifting
fast these days, and at every level: global, European, British, English,
Scottish and Welsh. Yet the level of
debate in this country about these seismic shifts is derisory. Politicians and media alike seem content to
stir the disenchantment, while offering neither useful analysis nor any real
alternative. Unsurprisingly, this is
leaving people thoroughly exasperated and with a growing sense of rage – the
‘plague on all your houses’ response, a.k.a. ‘politicians are all the bloody
same’.
But they are not. Really, they’re not. There are genuinely decent, honest people in almost
every party (some more than others), but it is in Plaid Cymru that I’ve found
by far the greatest concentration. Ever
since I first encountered Plaid, as a member of the NUS national executive
twenty-five years ago, I’ve been impressed by the vision, erudition and commitment
of its members, and their ambition for Wales – and the world beyond. Although lazily derided as “the nationalists”
by opponents, Plaid is firmly internationalist, progressive and co-operative in
its outlook. When I moved to mid Wales
thirteen years ago, I joined Plaid immediately, and have worked on their behalf,
with varying degrees of success, at every election since.
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| Aberystwyth Mon Amour |
When Leanne Wood was elected as Plaid
leader just over a year ago, it was clear that there were some exciting times
ahead. I’ve known Leanne for years, and
have always been inspired by her passion, her integrity, her absolute
commitment to social and economic justice and – rare indeed in a politician – her
utter lack of ego. To her, the idea of a
self-governing Wales is not an end in itself.
It is a beginning; the much-needed chance for Wales to work out its own
priorities, on its own terms, and to go for them.
After twenty years of writing and
broadcasting about Wales, and of studying in depth its history and culture, it
is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that no Westminster
government, of any political persuasion, is going to look out for us. Wales will always be an adjunct or an
afterthought. Policies designed for the
overheated economy of south-east England are never going to succeed here.
This logjam has to be broken. Here in Wales, we have all three of the UK
main parties in power: the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Westminster,
Labour in Cardiff Bay. As they bicker
and squabble amongst themselves, egged on by a breathless, blinkered media, it
is hard to see much difference between any of them. And as
they do so, our economy totters, our high streets start to look like rows of
rotten teeth, cuts scythe through our cultural landscape, our hard-won health
service lurches from one crisis to another, and our communities feel
increasingly beleaguered.
I’m keen to be part of building Plaid Cymru
towards becoming the government in our devolved Senedd. We so desperately need that to happen. So why am I taking a tilt at a seat in
Westminster?
Well, that’s because one of the ingrained
problems facing Plaid is getting any attention on the other side of Offa’s
Dyke. Despite having been represented in
parliament since 1966, and despite having three MPs (i.e. three more than UKIP!),
you’d barely know of their existence from the London media. And yet, with the Scottish referendum next
year and the ongoing Euro-ructions, the constitution of our country is facing
changes bigger than anyone alive has ever witnessed. We need to start having grown-up
conversations about this, and Plaid is keen to play its part.
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| Cei Newydd / New Quay last summer, when I walked the Ceredigion Coast Path |
To that end, I think that I could be a good
ambassador for Plaid, and for Wales, in Westminster. I want to help take on the kneejerk
assumption, routinely heard in every debate on, for instance, the Scottish
referendum, that to be an advocate of a different constitutional
settlement, you have therefore to be inherently ‘anti-English’ in some
way. My life and my writing both give
lie to that one. It is perfectly
possible to love both England and Wales, love them with a passion, but also to
believe that an eighteenth century structure, one created explicitly for gung-ho imperialism, is not the best way of running either.
Although I’ve settled just outside the
constituency near Machynlleth, Ceredigion feels very much like the right place
for me to try this. It’s where I first
moved to when I came to mid Wales thirteen years ago, where I first joined
Plaid and where I learned Cymraeg. Like all mid-Walians, I rely on Ceredigion
for healthcare, leisure, shopping, education, research, culture and
recreation. It has the one of the
highest proportions of self-employed people of any constituency in the country,
is home to two universities and the National Library, and has always been a
cauldron of entrepreneurship, quiet radicalism and profound cultural expression.
Of the dozens of TV travelogues I made for
HTV, many of the best were in Ceredigion, from a noson lawen in Tregaron to a night camping with my dog by the
lonely Teifi Pools; from a tootle along the coast road in that beautiful 1950s
bus you see parked in Llanon to sailing into Aberaeron on a wooden Edwardian
ketch. The thought of representing this
very special part of the world excites me enormously.
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| Filming Great Welsh Roads, with my late, lamented co-presenter Patsy, at Llyn Brianne |
It’s going to be a tough fight though. Ceredigion provided the most sensational
result of the 1992 general election (and a rare flicker of joy on such a
depressing night), when Cynog Dafis went from fourth place to win it for an
alliance of Plaid Cymru and the Green Party.
When Cynog went instead to the infant National Assembly, Simon Thomas
won the ensuing by-election for Plaid, and held it in the 2001 election. The LibDems (it had been a Liberal seat since
1974 before Cynog) nicked it back by a few hundred votes in 2005, but then in
2010 upped their majority to a meaty 8,324.
That’s a lot of votes to overcome. But Plaid did it before; when they first won the
seat in 1992, they’d taken just 16% the previous time. In 2010, Plaid won 28.3%. More to the point, we’ve had the sorry sight
of the LibDems in government, so we are all too familiar now with what their
smooth words look like in practice. It’s
not pretty. If I win the nomination (to
be decided over the next month), then I will relish taking them on their
appalling record as part of this hollow, cynical shambles of a government. I cannot wait.
