DET to stand down from Senedd at next election.

The news that Dafydd Elis-Thomas, who has represented the Assembly seat of Dwyfor Meirionnydd  (with a number of border) changes since the Assembly elections of 1999 and who had previously been the first Plaid MP for the area, comes as bit of surprise, as he is now an independent member and did not have to allow his former party time to select a new candidate.


It does mean that Plaid  are favorites to hold the seat next year.

Welsh Assembly Election 2016: Dwyfor Meirionnydd

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±
	Plaid Cymru	Dafydd Elis-Thomas	9,566	47.3	0.7
	Conservative	Neil Fairlamb	3,160	15.6	4.8
	Labour	Ian MacIntyre	2,443	12.1	0.6
	UKIP	Frank Wykes	2,149	10.6	10.6
	Independent	Louise Hughes	1,259	6.2	6.2
	Liberal Democrats	Stephen Churchman	916	4.5	0.3
	Green	Alice Hooker-Stroud	743	3.7	3.7
Majority			6,406	31.7	5.6
Turnout				46.7	0.4
	Plaid Cymru hold		Swing	0.4

The Plaid candidate Mabon ap Gwynfor  has been seklected  for the seat  76 years after his Grandfather Gwynfor Evans first stood for the parliamentary seat 

Unless he changes his mind (as he often does) DET will still be a member of the House of Loeds

Although the news was met by some scepticism  by Sian Caiach

As the new Assembly Election Rules don’t allow members of the house of Lords, or County Councillor’s to sit as Assembly Members,
Dafydd needed to make a choice between the House of Lords and the Assembly.
I suspect the new rules may have been formulated with Lord Dafydd and Councillor Neil MacEvoy in mind.
I suspect that Neil would chose to stay in the Assembly and step down s a Councillor.
The official explanations can be found here:
https://www.assembly.wales/en/abthome/role-of-assembly-how-it-works/Pages/AssemblyReformFAQs.aspx

Actually members of the House of Lords will be disqualified from serving in the Assembly unless they have applied for leave of absence from the House of Lords. The same rule will apply to Baroness Eluned Morgan if she was to retain her regional seat next year for Labour.

For one of those who were avid supporters  of  DET in the 1980's and who still adhere to the concept of decentralised socialism

As Simon Brooks says  on Nation Cymru

For those of us who came of age during the long years of Thatcherism, Dafydd Elis-Thomas was an inspiration. He re-made Welsh nationalism, building on its bedrock of Welsh-language community support to make common cause with other minority groups in 1980s Britain. Branded the ‘Merioneth Marxist’ , he was very much both instigator and leader of a Welsh wing of the European ‘New Left’.He was supportive of many causes of the Left: CND, campaigns for ethnic minorities, feminism and for the LGBT community. He was at the heart of broad alliances in Wales at the time like those between the ginger group, the ‘National Left’, the magazine Radical Wales, the historian Gwyn Alf Williams, campaigners like Adam Price and Alun Davies within the Plaid Cymru Youth Movement, and many others on the Welsh Left in general.In many ways, he laid the intellectual base for the Welsh Left in nationalism, and for the politics which saw Leanne Wood elected as Plaid leader and which still have tremendous resonance within the party today.

In recent years however he made a strange and often incomprehensible drift , blowing Hot and Cold over independence and a fondness  for Royalty.

He may have left Plaid to sit in the Welsh Labour Government, but did not join Labour and that may reflect he still had internal conflicts.

I doubt that he will not leave the field entirely and he may well pop up occasionally to comment on the nature of Welsh Politics


However by his very nature we may be surprised by the very nature of future role asan elder statesman.