John Osmond (Cardiff, IWA): Nearly two months of tortuous negotiations over forming a Government for Wales in the wake of the 3 May elections reached a denouement today when Plaid Cymru opted for a red-green coalition with Labour. The party was faced with perhaps the most momentous choice in its 82 year-old history: whether to become a junior partner in a Government headed by Welsh Labour's Rhodri Morgan, or alternatively to head up the so-called ‘Rainbow' alternative, with Plaid's leader Ieuan Wyn Jones as First Minister in a coalition with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
They opted for the Red-Green power-sharing document One Wales (opens as pdf) which outlines key pledges including moves towards a full Welsh Parliament, and grants for first-time house-buyers. The document also includes promises on help for pensioners and students and an end to private sector involvement in the Welsh NHS.
However, there is little doubt that a large number of Plaid activists around Wales would have preferred to see their leader as First Minister. But the 15-member Group in the Assembly voted by a majority for the security of what Ieuan Wyn Jones described as a stable government that would last four years. He will now become Deputy First Minister and Plaid will have probably another two seats in a nine-strong coalition Cabinet.
Between them Labour and Plaid have a clear majority of 41 seats in the 60-strong Assembly. A Rainbow coalition would have had 33 seats (15 Plaid, 12 Conservative and 6 Liberal Democrats). Ieuan Wyn Jones was unwilling to face the undoubted challenge of keeping this potentially fissiparous group together. At least four of his own AMs were implacably against going into a coalition with the Conservatives, while the Liberal Democrats originally voted against the deal, before reversing their position. There was a possibility that at least two of the Liberal Democrats might peel away under pressure at some future point.
A more philosophical justification for the deal came from Plaid's Carmarthen East AM Adam Price, who actually brokered the Rainbow deal, being the main author of the All-Wales Accord (opens as pdf) that expressed its aspirations. Writing on his blog he called in aid Antonio Gramsci, writing: "In seeking to challenge a dominant hegemony there are basically two choices, Gramsci said, either a ‘war of movement' - a rapid, frontal assault on the citadels of power or a ‘war of position' a slower, broader and less dramatic attempt to appropriate the ruling hegemony for one's own political purposes."
A quarter of a century ago Plaid Cymru opted for the latter strategy, positioning itself as a socialist party within the dominant discourse of Welsh politics but seeking at the same time to burrow into the contradictions thrown up by the Labour Party's undying support for the unitary British state. The strategy has been electorally and politically successful, gaining Plaid Cymru seats and dragging Labour, however, unwillingly in a nationalist direction. The historic Plaid-Lab agreement which is being finalised this week is the latest step in this twenty-five year strategy.
Many in Plaid Cymru will reject this analysis, arguing that Labour is no longer the socialist partner that Price describes. Instead, they say, it represents the last bastion of British imperialism in Wales that was decisively rejected at the polls on 3 May. They fear Plaid will pay a heavy price in the next election in 2011 for propping it up. They will have their say in the party's National Council on 7 July when the deal could be overturned while Labour's Welsh Executive's approval of the deal goes to a special conference on 6 July. But it looks as if Plaid will now enter government - as junior partners and take a different course from the SNP's in Scotland where Labour has always remained an opponent not an ally of the nationalists.
