LONDON: They may only win a handful of seats at next month’s general election, but the Welsh nationalists could find themselves propelled from relative obscurity to influence across Britain.

With no party likely to win an overall majority on May 7, Plaid Cymru, a pro-independence socialist party, hopes to team up with others to propel the opposition centre-left Labour Party into power — while extracting concessions for Welsh nationalism.

“This election provides Wales with an unprecedented opportunity,” their leader Leanne Wood has said.

The party, whose heartland is in Welsh-speaking northwest Wales, is defending three of Wales 40 seats in the British parliament’s 650-member House of Commons.

However, Plaid Cymru — meaning the Party of Wales — is hoping to replicate the rapid advance of their ideological soulmates in Scotland: the pro-independence Scottish National Party.

They have pledged to join forces with the SNP and the Greens in a bid to keep Prime Minister David Cameron’s centre-right Conservatives out of power — then call the tune in propping up a Labour minority government.

All three parties are opposed to spending cuts to eliminate Britain’s deficit — something pledged by both the Conservatives and Labour.

Post-debate poll boost

Previously little known outside Wales, Wood stepped into the UK limelight on April 2 in the only seven-way televised leaders’ pre-election debate. She got the biggest round of applause as she slapped down populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage.

Though UK-wide snap polls said she was the worst performer in the first debate, it is only how voters in Wales see her that really matters.

“Plaid had already won that debate just by being there. It gave Leanne Wood a level of profile that she didn’t have before,” said Roger Scully of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre (WGC).

The first post-debate opinion poll in Wales — a YouGov survey of 1,143 adults for the WGC and ITV television conducted between Monday and Wednesday — showed only Plaid making ground.

The poll gave Labour 40 per cent (no change); the Conservatives 26 per cent (down one); UKIP 13 per cent (no change); Plaid Cymru 12 per cent (up three) and the Liberal Democrats six per cent (no change).

Wood, a 43-year-old trenchant republican, has been in charge of Plaid since 2012 and has stamped her authority on the position.

“The direction of the next government could come down to how strong a presence of Plaid Cymru MPs there are in parliament,” Wood told supporters when she launched her party’s manifesto in Bangor, northwest Wales.

The party is piling resources into retaining their three seats and winning three further target seats.

“If Plaid Cymru holds the balance of power, we will use that to rebalance power and wealth throughout the UK, away from the financial sector in the City of London and to those communities in Wales that need the investment,” said Wood.

Independence for Wales?

Plaid Cymru was formed in 1925, chiefly as a Welsh language pressure group.

They won their first parliamentary seat in 1966.

They were Labour’s junior partners in the devolved Welsh government from 2007-2011. Plaid now holds 11 of the Welsh National Assembly’s 60 seats.

They came fourth in Wales in the 2010 general election, winning three seats with 11 per cent of the votes cast there.

Separatist sentiment is not as strong in Wales as in Scotland, but Plaid hope this election could be their springboard, calling for the same powers and funding as Scotland currently gets.

The SNP, Plaid and Greens could be set to win up to 55 seats between them, according to poll projections, and could potentially lay down the law to Labour over unpopular spending cuts.

Though they would put Labour in government, “they may well have considerable power over what that government does,” political science professor Scully said.

“They have quite a lot of potential for influencing the content of budgets, further devolution.

“The SNP and Plaid can just obstruct all legislation if they don’t get what they want. They can leave them swinging.”—AFP

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play