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- Crime pays unfortunately - 3rd June 2026
During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, covering major political stories (and more recently on The Eye the election result in Caerphilly) was pivotal, now we could be on course for one of the biggest of all – a nationalist party upsetting the dominance of Labour in Wales, although in coalition with its rival.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
At Westminster the churn rate of Prime Ministers has been incredible.
It has also been unbelievable to see political parties being rock bottom in the polls, then coming back to form an administration.
Throughout it all there has been the certainty of knowing that Labour dominates in Wales – in South Wales particularly.
This, too, though could be about to change with the leader of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru (Plaid) Rhun ap Iorwerth possibly becoming First Minister of Wales (FMW) at the elections to the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC) in a few weeks time, albeit with his party in coalition – the wrangling for which I have witnessed many times.
A recent poll put Mr ap Iorwerth in the lead to be the next FMW, with a projection of 43 seats for Plaid, just six short of the 49 needed for a majority in the now 96-member WP/SC.
Although the party has been a junior member of the Welsh Government (WG) in the past, this would be the first time the nationalist party has come first across Wales in a major election, and marks a substantial gain on the 24 seats the party are estimated to have won in 2021 had it been conducted using the new electoral system.
Yet coalition negotiations are difficult and sometimes can take weeks.
They involve parcelling out key jobs (in ‘smoke-filled’ rooms, as some papers like to call them – although I suppose this cliché won’t be used now!).
We saw this in spades at the 2010 General Election (GE), when the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats came together, and we have seen it closer to home too.
‘One Wales’ was the coalition agreement between Labour and Plaid agreed to by Rhodri Morgan, then FMW, and Ieuan Wyn Jones on June 27 2007.
So hold on to your hats.
This won’t be over the day after the election – we’ll see journalists camped outside non-smoke filled rooms to glean any information, for AGES afterwards!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when he interviewed many politicians of both left and right, often in coalition), as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Next week – how the owner of media outlets covering north and south Wales condemning the BBC as a “threat to…independent journalism”, highlights extraordinary scandals that have hit the giant corporation, but executives there REFUSE to answer The Eye’s questions about them.
