Western Mail columnist David Williamson seeks to portray First Minister’s questions yesterday as Rhodri Morgan’s swansong with the Labour front bench ‘like greyhounds coiled for the starting gun.’
Indeed that was how it looked in the chamber too, but it was Plaid Cymru members who seemed most anxious for a resolution to the speculation, with Leanne Wood referring in the very first question to the First Minister’s departure and urging that he head up a ‘yes’ campaign once the All Wales Convention reports later this year.
Other Plaid Cymru members also raised the referendum and there seems to be a sense of expectation on their part that now the convention has done its job, the campaign can begin. However. nobody yet knows what the convention’s report will say nor whether Labour will use it to say that now is not the time.
My view is that the report will suggest more work is needed to educate the Welsh public and that as a result the referendum will be put on the back burner. If that happens then there will be a huge sense of being let-down on the part of Plaid Cymru and maybe a realisation that they have been misled on this agenda from the start.
I hope that I am wrong but we will see. The fact is that the commitment to a Convention has wasted two years in which we could have been building a cross-party campaign for a vote that will abolish the costly, time-consuming and ineffective LCO system. Plaid Cymru were party to that decision so if they are disappointed then they only have themselves to blame.
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You Lib’s are really starting to look desperate. The haystack’s gone. You’ve grasped at all the straw there was to grasp.