Plaid should keep their Eye on the Prize.

Professor Richard Wyn Jones' may well be pointing to the Elephant in the Room in his warning that  Plaid Cymru’s three leadership contenders that any talk of forming a Welsh Government without Labour’s support is “completely fantastical”.

But although at the moment the polls that we have in Wales look static, occasionally things change, and it is not impossible for Plaid to become the largest Party if not a  holding a majority.

In 2007The Scottish National Party emerged as the largest party with 47 seats, closely followed by the incumbent Scottish Labour Party with 46 seats. The Scottish Conservatives won 17 seats, the Scottish Liberal Democrats 16 seats, the Scottish Green Party 2 seats and one Independent (Margo MacDonald) was also elected. The SNP initially approached the Lib Dems for a coalition government, but the Lib Dems turned them down.^[2] Ultimately, the Greens agreed to provide the numbers to vote in an SNP minority government, with SNP leader Alex Salmond as First Minister.

Writing in Barn magazine, Professor Richard Wyn Jones said that each of the party’s contenders would have to come to some kind of arrangement with Labour if they wanted to be in government.

“In all seriousness, what extra constituencies does Plaid Cymru expect to capture?” he asks. “Even expecting to win over 20 is psychedelically optimistic.“And even in such a scenario, they could not expect to form a government without a coalition or agreement.“Since coming to any kind of agreement with the Tories would be impossible, it is unavoidable that this would mean some kind of agreement with Labour.”

But it does happen  and who can predict what the mood of the Welsh People will be two yeaars after Brexit.

Richard Wyn Jones suggested that it could be more likely that Plaid Cymru would convince the Labour party to support independence than lead the country to independence as a majority party.

“Partly because of Plaid Cymru’s influence, Labour has travelled far in terms of policy, for instance in supporting a Welsh legal authority,” he said.“It’s also true that the experience of the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 and Brexit two years afterwards has led to all kinds of discussions within Labour about Wales’ fate within a nation-state that has changed completely.”

Therefore, the questions of the relationship with the Labour party was the largest strategic issue facing the party, “Perhaps a little fantasy is acceptable within an internal contest, but reality will bite in the end,” 

The problem with  Richard Wyn Jones argument is that it could be argued that Plaid's problem and that of the Assembly itself has been that for nearly 20 years  since the vote to establish the Welsh Assembly there has been a complete lack of vision of the future of Welsh Democracy.

Plaid buoyed up with it success in the first Assembly elections it which out preformed  the SNP in the first Scottish Parliamentary Elections seemed to have come to the conclusion then , that its emphasis should be n concentrating on making the Assembly work and “Devolution is a process, not an end in itself”.

Welsh Assembly election, 1999

Parties		Additional member system										Total seats
		Constituency					Region
		Votes	%	+/−	Seats	+/−	Votes	%	+/−	Seats	+/−	Total	+/−	%
	Labour	384,671	37.6	N/A	27	N/A	361,657	35.4	N/A	1	N/A	28	N/A	46.7
	Plaid Cymru	290,572	28.4	N/A	9	N/A	312,048	30.5	N/A	8	N/A	17	N/A	28.3
	Conservative	162,133	15.8	N/A	1	N/A	168,206	16.5	N/A	8	N/A	9	N/A	15.0
	Liberal Democrats	137,857	13.5	N/A	3	N/A	128,008	12.5	N/A	3	N/A	6	N/A	10.0
	Green	1,002	0.1	N/A	0	N/A	25,858	2.5	N/A	0	N/A	0	N/A	0
	Socialist Labour	-	-	-	-	-	10,720	1.0	N/A	0	N/A	0	N/A	0
	Natural Law	-	-	-	-	-	3,861	0.4	N/A	0	N/A	0	N/A	0
	United Socialist	3,967	0.4	N/A	0	N/A	3,590	0.4	N/A	0	N/A	0	N/A	0
	Communist	609	0.1	N/A	0	N/A	1,366	0.1	N/A	0	N/A	0	N/A	0
	Independent	30,554	3.0	N/A	0	N/A	-	-	-	-	-	0	N/A	0
	Independent Labour	4,134	0.4	N/A	0	N/A	-	-	-	-	-	0	N/A	0
	Others	7,736	0.8	N/A	0	N/A	4,673	0.5	N/A	0	N/A	0	N/A	0
	Total	1,023,225			40		1,019,987			20		60

This saw the almost disappearance of the I Word as Plaid seemed  to put Independence on the back burner  and even seemed reluctant to demand parity with Scotland when it comes to powers.

Whether the leadership contest will see Independence making it from the hustings to the next manifesto may well be seen

If there is a Plaid majority, minority or coalition government  after the ext Assembly election unlikely as Richard Wyn Jones may think then Parity with Scotland should be their aim for the next five years, 

Indeed even as junior partners in a Labour lead coalition that should be thier top demand in negotiations,whilst  still keeping their eye on the prize of Independence .

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