Having spoken to friends, colleagues and watched the coverage the mood is very upbeat, and righly so.Party leader Leanne Wood gave a tremdous speech on Friday afternoon.
"Wales isn't on its knees. Its a nation being held back by an under performing government." she said.
The reality is of course that in England the Conservatives are the establishment but in Wales, Labour are and have been for decades the established party. Believing that the voters belong to them, that they somehow own them. Labour is clearly in panic mode too - the usual tried and tested line of (prepare your shocked face!) "its between us and the Tories" was shouted from the rooftops again by AM's and potential AM's alike. Strangely enough during the Plaid Cymru conference in Llanelli, surely a coincidence and not intnetional, surely. Labour is in meltdown.
Labour have spun this tired, tried and tested line for decades, and normally it seems to work. This time the game up. The political landscape of the Welsh Nation is changing fast, very fast (it doesn't need a relief road even) and Labour is at the wrong end of that change, and they know it.We need a new Wales and I say to those Labour voters (my family were all Labour at one time) - don't vote Labour for your father or grandfather, vote Plaid Cymru for your children and their children.
Plaid Cymru politicans took to the stage with confidcence and passion. The shadow cabinet and others talked Wales up, not down. Talked about what we can do as opposed to what we can't. Talked about positive change and not more of the same.
On the NHS...
“The average wait for a hip operation is now 197 days. We have some GP practices turning all but emergency cases away, and people lying on the floors of A&E departments waiting for hours to be seen.
“The conditions hardworking front-line NHS staff have to endure because so many of their colleagues quit in despair are shocking.”
On education...
“Funding for part-time further education college courses under the current Labour government has been slashed by 50%, and there are 90,000 fewer adults in part-time learning than there were 10 years ago in Wales.
“We have fewer engineers per head than any other nation in the UK – you know, the people who make things. Too many schools are in a state of disrepair."
On the economy
"This nation – the leading light of the last industrial revolution, now lags behind in terms of wages, GVA [Gross Value Added – a variant on GDP], business start-ups – in fact, by almost every measure our economic performance is either stagnant or in decline.”
So friends UNLEASH THE DRAGON! UNLOCK OUR POTENTIAL!
