Plaid Cymru

Plaid Cymru was founded in 1925, initially as a party seeking to maintain Welsh-speaking communities, but gradually evolving into a pro-self-government (and, eventually, pro-independence) party.

It took over 40 years for Plaid Cymru to win its first UK Parliament seat. This was aided by specific incidents, such as the flooding of the Treweryn valley to build a reservoir to supply Liverpool, and direct action by Welsh language activists during the 1960s.

Plaid quickly solidified its electoral grip in its Welsh-speaking heartlands, but struggled to win seats outside of it. They also struggled, relatively-speaking, at Senedd elections following the narrowly-won 1997 referendum.

Plaid Cymru spent one term in government in coalition with Labour between 2007-2011 (“One Wales”), for which the party was not rewarded, remaining in a distant second or third place in subsequent elections.

The stars aligned for Plaid ahead of the 2026 Senedd election. Labour faced historic levels of unpopularity, while the new voting system presented opponents of Reform UK with limited choices to keep them out.

The result was Plaid Cymru forming a minority government for the first time, ending Labour’s century of political dominance in Wales.

Plaid Cymru is a centre-left Welsh nationalist party. The party’s ideology is based on the concept of “decentralised socialism”/communitarianism, which promotes the idea of communities and workplaces making most of the decisions affecting them for themselves.

The other core aim of Plaid Cymru is reviving the Welsh language as a living first language. They have also (on paper, at least) been as focused on the environment and climate change as the Green Party.

Plaid Cymru supports higher public spending for core services and progressive taxation (the wealthy pay more). Compared to other parties in Wales, they take a much stronger line on supporting Welsh culture and arts.

As well as being strong advocates for devolution, Plaid Cymru’s long-term aim is for Wales to become independent. The party is also largely pro-European Union.

In practice, when in power the party’s idealism is often replaced by pragmatism. They have also long tried to bury policy disagreements with awkward compromises (i.e. nuclear energy, which the party somehow both supports and opposes at the same time).

Plaid Cymru is the only party represented in the Senedd that is wholly stand-alone and not a branch of a larger party. They have full control over their own policies, administration and finances.

The National Executive Committee is the body responsible for the day-to-day running of the party, its organisation and finances. They also set the rules for candidate selections.

Major policy changes are usually agreed at party conferences after being tabled by local party branches.

Prospective candidates are selected using preferential voting by party members in a given constituency. However, if the lead selected candidate is a male, Plaid Cymru’s policy is for the lead female candidate (regardless of the number of votes they received) to be placed second on the constituency list (called “zipping”). Sitting Senedd members seeking re-election in 2026 had to face re-selection.

Plaid Cymru supports the devolution of more powers to Wales.

Plaid Cymru officially supports Welsh independence, but has not set any timetable to achieve it.