Welsh watershed

John Osmond (Cardiff): As someone who contested the election in Wales - for Plaid Cymru, in Preseli Prembokeshire - the main message came across loud and clear: "Anyone but Labour".  Across the country voters coalesced around whoever had the best chance of defeating Rhodri Morgan's incumbent government. In Pembrokeshire, north and south, Clwyd West and Cardiff North it was the Tories. In Llanelli, Ceredigion, and Aberconwy it was Plaid Cymru.  In Blaenau Gwent it was the Independent Trish Law. Labour might well have lost Caerphilly and Islwyn to Plaid if independents, including devolution architect Ron Davies, had not intervened and split the anti-Labour vote. True, Labour only lost three seats overall. However, they lost five constituency seats while they gained one (dissident John Marek's Wrexham) and picked up two on the list in Mid- and West- Wales. Yet they came within a handful of votes of losing the Vale of Glamorgan, the Vale of Clwyd and Delyn to the Tories. This would have meant a Plaid-led coalition government, with Plaid's Dafydd Wigley being returned on the North Wales list. Understandably, the big story is Scotland. But it was not that long ago (1955) that the Tories were the largest party in Scotland, and important though it has always been for Labour in Britain, Scotland  has rarely been in the Labour Party's pocket. On the other hand, in Wales we have had a century of Labour hegemony. This is now ending. There will probably be another Lib-Lab pact here but next time most of the marginals will be Labour's to lose. Then Wales will really be on the way to greater pluralism and more self-government and, I suspect, 2007 will be seen as the watershed.