Plaid grow cold on coalition with Labour.

 I thought at first that the leader of Plaid Cymru in Cardiff Niel Mcevoy saying that  he wants ed his party to rule out being a minority partner in a Labour-led Assembly Government after May’s election was going against the mainstream views of the Plaid Leadership 

But it seems Plaid seem to have gone cold on the prospect of going into Coalition with Labour


Adam Price  who Plaid members are praying that he wins an assembly seat next May said:

 “My own view, and this is just a personal view because is the party is concentrating on winning the election, is that I don’t see there being any circumstance where the members and supporters of my party would be prepared to see a simple repeat of 2007 ( When Plaid joined a minority Labour government in coalition in Cardiff Bay ].

“We want to lead a government and unless you have the First Minister’s post, you cannot set the direction of travel.

“I certainly have no appetite for five more years of rule under this First Minister. There’s a lack of vision and a lack of ambition, so we have to have change.

  “I would be prepared to accept a situation where Labour was a junior partner to us if that’s what the arithmetic dictated. An equal partner, maybe, where we shared the First Minister’s position on a rotation principle, but that for me personally would be the minimum.
“Anything less than having a change of First Minister at some point in the next five years is not going to deliver the change that Wales needs.”

If anyone thinks we’re going to cuddle up the Labour party again – we tried that in 2007 and we got a Parliament out of it, so it was worth doing, but it’s not going to deliver the sort of change Wales needs.

“I am not frightened of saying that, and if it ruffles a few feathers I don’t care, because we have got to make clear to people that what Plaid Cymru is about in this election is winning, taking over the leadership of the Welsh Government, having Leanne Wood as First Minister so we can set a different direction.”

and Plaid Leader Leanne Wood also indicated in a interview with the Morning Star  that any appertite she had for such a coalition had diminished.

Meic Birtwhistle: Your statements about the Labour Party seemed pretty strident on Saturday. Was that a new attitude your adopting towards the Welsh Labour government?

Leanne Wood: I think that after 17 years of Labour running Wales — all be that there have been coalitions in that time — the outcomes in policy terms being as they are with a stagnating economy, with people in Wales having to wait longer for basic diagnostic tests, or being unable to access treatment or medicines for their diseases in comparison with people in England, then people deserve to be able to consider that record.

So do we want to carry on in that vein? I hope that people will come to the conclusion that they want a change in terms of health and education and the economy in particular.
And Plaid Cymru is offering that alternative government. The problem that we have in Wales, of course, is that many people are of the impression that the health service is run by the Tories in London. And so we have a job of work to do as well informing people where specific areas of responsibility lie. And so my narrative in my speech yesterday was around that.

Meic Birtwhistle: Mark Serwotka called for a red-green coalition to oppose the Westminster austerity measures. Do you feel that some of your attacks on the administration are going to threaten that possibility?

Leanne Wood: We need to draw the line between Westminster and Wales. We can work together in Westminster on things such as Trident replacement and on issues like cuts.
I said in the general election that we would be prepared to work with Labour in opposing and defeating the Tories — and that still stands.
But in Wales the Labour Party has been in office for a long time and they are not a progressive organisation.
They’ve defended some of the more regressive policies [of the Tories].
The First Minister of Wales, for example, has not only welcomed Trident replacement but also called for Trident to be located in Wales. We can’t work with that.

I suspect the majority of Plaid members many of who see Labour as the main enemy in Wales will be cheering this.

It does not mean it will not happen if Labour do badly and are well short of 31 seats needed to be a majority but are still the largest party  then Carwyn may well resign and  Plaid could then claim that there a new leader who they could "deal with". However looking at the potential replacement for Carwyn among the ranks of the current AMs its hard to see anyone who with the sought of progressive ideas Plaid may want to include in any deal.