Leanne Wood’s vision for Wales

Leanne Wood has been touring Wales this week to launch Plaid’s campaign for next May’s Assembly election. After 16 years of a Labour government in Cardiff Bay she says it’s time for a change and that Plaid can offer better policies on the economy, health and education.

To succeed she has to persuade voters that she would be an effective First Minister. She certainly has recognition. As a result of the television debates in the general election this year she became a household name across the UK, and mobbed on the streets from Carmarthen and Wrexham to her native Rhondda. Polling after the election gave her a higher visibility than Carwyn Jones, the current First Minister - 78 per cent recognition against his 74 per cent.

Electing an English speaker from the Valleys as leader in 2012 marked a distinct departure for Plaid Cymru. Living in the same Penygraig street as she was born, she is as far from the party’s rural Welsh-speaking heartlands as it is possible to be.

 

Born in 1971 she was educated at Tonypandy Grammar School and the University of Glamorgan. In the 1990s she worked as a probation officer in Mid Glamorgan before becoming a lecturer in Social Policy at Cardiff University. She was first elected to the Assembly in 2003.

Why did she join Plaid in 1991, aged 20, rather than Labour? She says that when she was growing up in the Rhondda the local Labour Party came across as right wing and reactionary, or as she put it: “Sexist, homophobic – and just generally representing old-fashioned dinosaur politics, which in my view had no place in my life.” More fundamental was her teenage experience of the 1984-5 miners strike. “It had a profound effect on me, to be honest,” she said. “When you live through a historical period you don’t realise it, but looking back now I can see that.”

She has an eye for practical policy innovation. Opponents said her call for a tax on sugary drinks to combat diabetes and obesity was impractical, but it has now been taken up by the BMA

Leanne is a departure for Plaid Cymru because of her emphasis on a modern, inclusive sense of who we are. “All people have a stake here, if they live here,” she says. “Nationality and identity - those kinds of questions - are not really important from a political perspective.”

She has two aspirations for Wales. First she wants to see Plaid Cymru leading the Welsh Government after the Assembly election. Then her priority will be putting the economy on its feet.  After that she says it will be up to the people to decide: “I think most people in Wales want to see improvements in our economy before being able to contemplate voting yes in a referendum on greater self government.” That she says involves building a new Britain, involving co-operation between England, Scotland and Wales on the basis of equality and shared interests in common.