Courting Plaid Supporters: Labour or Tory?

Since becoming freelance from ITV Gareth Hughes, has provided us with a insightful and entertaining Blog which is always worth viewing.

However and perhaps when you start from a position of praise there is always a however is latest piece on the  Welsh Labour Party conference  makes a I cannot see.

It is not so much is analysis of the conference itself but is assessment of Carwyn Jones overtures to Plaid Cymru supporters

Gareth goes on to make the claim that ..

The Tories started to eat into Plaid Cymru’s vote by targeting the more conservative Plaid. The strategy was greatly helped by Plaid Cymru trying to position itself as a left wing party. Whilst Plaid were trying to out left Labour the Tories were blatantly mopping up the some of Plaid’s more traditional conservative voters. Indeed they were so successful that at the last Assembly election Plaid were pushed into third place and Tories became the Official Opposition"

Where can he say Plaid tried to   "position itself as a left wing party"as opposed to previous Assembly elections? From  where I stood, this was the most centralist campaign Plaid had fought for decades  with only a few candidates taking a progressive left stand. The Party stood in the middle of the road and was run over by the Labour /Tories juggernauts

In my view Plaids campaign last year and its poor showing in the General Election of 2010 (In which the SNP also failed to live up to expectations) was partly due to a concentration on Westminster politics

However in the Assembly despite the vote on increased powers in the previous March in which they could have spent part of the build up working on law measures to put in their 2011 manifesto. Plaid offered very little to excite the welsh voters and suffered because they had been in  coalition with Labour for a good part of the previous Assembly  found in difficult to crticise the record of that  previous government.

ties		Constituency (First past the post)					Regional (Additional member system)					Total seats
		Votes	%	+/−	Seats	+/−	Votes	%	+/−	Seats	+/−	Total	+/−	%
	Labour	401,677	42.3	+10.1	28	+4	349,935	36.9	+7.2	2	±0	30	+4	50.0
	Conservative	237,388	25	+2.6	6	+1	213,773	22.5	+1.1	8	+1	14	+2	23.3
	Plaid Cymru	182,907	19.3	–3.1	5	–2	169,799	17.9	–3.1	6	–2	11	–4	18.3
	Liberal Democrats	100,259	10.6	–4.2	1	–2	76,349	8.0	−3.7	4	+1	5	–1	8.3

s		Constituency (First past the post)					Regional (Additional member system)					Total seats
		Votes	%	+/−	Seats	+/−	Votes	%	+/−	Seats	+/−	Total	+/−	%
	Labour	314,925	32.2	−7.8	24	−5	288,954	29.6	−6.9	2	+2	26	−4	43.3
	Plaid Cymru	219,121	22.4	+1.2	7	+2	204,757	21.0	+2.3	8	+1	15	+3	25.0
	Conservative	218,730	22.4	+2.4	5	+4	209,153	21.4	+2.3	7	−3	12	+1	20.0
	Liberal Democrats	144,450	14.8	+0.6	3	0	114,500	11.7	−1.0	3	0	6	0	10.

In the election Plaid lost  36,214 votes . The Tories gained  18,658 Labour gained 86,752 and the Libdems  lost 44,191. I suspect the majority of the 18,658 Tory voters came from those who had not voted in the 2007 election.

In individual Constituencies  there might have been a few Tories who voted Plaid previous;y as an anti Labour vote  but even in the one where it might be suspected Plaid voters switched to the Tories the figures don't add up 

Assembly Election 2011: Aberconwy[1]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Janet Finch-Saunders	6,888	34	+3.6
	Plaid Cymru	Iwan Huws	5,321	26.2	-12.3
	Labour	Eifion Wyn Williams	5,206	25.7	+3.9
	Liberal Democrats	Mike Priestley	2,873	14.2	+4.9
Majority			1,567	7.7
Turnout			20,288	45.1

Assembly Election 2007: Aberconwy
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Plaid Cymru	Gareth Jones	7,983	38.6
	Conservative	Dylan Jones-Evans	6,290	30.4
	Labour	Denise Idris Jones	4,508	21.8
	Liberal Democrats	Euron Hughes	1,918	9.3
Majority			1,693	8.2
Turnout			20,699	46.9

From this it could be argued Plaid voters switched more to Labour or the LibDems rather than the Tories . So whilst I can't totally discount Gareth Hughes argument I suspect that in reality only a few people who voted Plaid previously switched to the Tories in 2011and even then the their support was on lukewarm.

The majority  who switched went "Home to Labour" and this was because Labour with thier "Standing up for Wales" campaign slogan presented themselves as not only a Left of Centre  party as opposed to a right of centre Westminster coalition  government  bit also as "Party of Wales".

Even those who are on the right of the majority of Plaid supporters id  not largely subscribe to Thatchers vision and I suspect very few subscribe to Cameron@s and Nick Clegg's.

It will remain to be seen if Plaid can use Independence as their  Unique selling Point (USP) but I doubt if a move to the centre or right will gain many Tory Votes. The future lies in showing Labour voters that their values can be better severed by  a Welsh Parliament inCardif rather than a the Tories in Westminster