Plaid Conference

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Adam Price MPs address to the Plaid Cymru Conference this afternoon. Agree with what he has to say or not, nobody can deny that the boy is an exceptional orator, who knows how to hold and entertain an audience.

I was particularly pleased with Adam's comment that there is room in Plaid for "small C conservatives. That was some concession coming from the big beast of the party's left wing, and perhaps the beginning of an acknowledgement that the continuous over emphasis on creating a hard left image is harming the party in some quarters.

Most of Adam's speech was dedicated to an attack on the big C Conservatives. I was surprised that the political commentators, Rhun ap Iorwerth and Richard Wyn Jones, couldn't understand why Adam should do this. They thought it was odd, because all of Plaid's main challenges are either in Labour seats (Anglesey, Aberconwy and Llanelli) or a Liberal seat (Ceredigion). However it seemed perfectly obvious that Adam wasn't trying to win over Conservative voters in his speech, but that he was trying to appeal to peeved Labour supporters.

Elfyn Llwyd's speech earlier in the day didn't quite hit the mark. I couldn't understand the point of his comments about what a Plaid Cymru (Westminster) government would not have done. There never ever will be a Plaid government in Westminster and I wouldn't have thought that the party had aspirations to form one. Given Ieuan Wyn's earlier concession to the traditional supporters of the party that Plaid no longer needs to be embarrassed by its aspirations for independence it might have made much more sense If Elfyn had said that an independent Welsh government wouldn't do things such as send troops to Iraq.

I had hoped to pop into the conference for a couple of hours today as an observer but circumstances got the better of my plans. All I saw of the conference "in the flesh" was about five minutes on Friday night when I went into the Venue box office to pick up some tickets for a show next month. Still I had a chance to say a quick hello to Elfyn Llwyd and Angus Robinson, and to wave to the remnants of the old Hydro group who were enjoying the sunshine and an al fresco bottle of wine.

However from what I have seen on the telly and read on the blogs Plaid appears to have had a fairly successful conference on the whole.

Conference Blogging

I have received an invitation to live blog Plaid Cymru's annual conference.

I am extremely grateful to Plaid for the invitation. I think that Plaid is being very progressive in extending such an invitation, and very brave too, considering some of the things that I have said about Plaid on this blog!

Unfortunately, because of previous family commitments I won't be able to accept the invitation. I hope that most of the other Welsh bloggers who have been asked will be able to make it and I look forward to reading their contributions.

Blogging the conference has been an important part of the presidential campaign in the USA this year. I doubt if blogging Plaid from Aberystwyth will be quite as important, but those things that are big the other side of the pond today have a way of becoming important on this side sooner or later! So Plaid's invitations to blog are probably on the right track.

I am kicking myself that it will be impossible for me to accept Plaid's invitation this year, I'm hoping that it was a genuine invitation and not just an administrative error. I would love to be able to live blog a conference!

I hope that I get an invite next time round, and as I am pushing myself, if the Wales TUC, Welsh Labour, Welsh Conservatives, Welsh Lib Dems, Llais etc feel like making a similar offer ..........!

Other Party Conferences

Plaid Cymru is not the only party to hold a conference this week which has been ignored by the media.

The Co-operative party has been meeting in London to celebrate the party's 90th birthday. The Co-op party doesn't stand in elections as an independent political party, it sponsors some Labour candidates. We use to have a number of Co-op MPs in Wales at one time most notably former Attorney General John Morris in Aberafon, I'm not sure if we have any now. I can find absolutely no news from the conference in Google's news search, but Political Penguin has posted a couple of blogs from the event.

The Green party's get together is being held in Liverpool. With an item on the BBC and another in the Guardian, the Greens haven't been totally ignored, but given the importance of environmental issues in the current political debate I would have thought that they deserved better. The Green conference has blog coverage in Another Green World.