Plaid and Labour: Pals for how much longer, I wonder ?

All smiles then, but are the baseball bats coming out ? Only time will tell.

by johnofgwent

It was one of those truly historic moments. May 2007, and the latest round of so-called elections for the seats in the hot air pit in Cardiff Bay leave Rhodri Morgan castrated as he finally realised Blair's legacy of lies obfuscation and subterfuge had robbed him and the party he "led" of what he, until then, glibly assumed was his eternal god given right to a seat on the gravy train courtesy of a red rosette.

For one brief period it seemed that a Rainbow Coalition (not to be confused with a Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered Rainbow Alliance) might be formed from the ranks of Conservative, Lib Dem and Plaid Assembly members returned by the rigged voting mechanism.

The mechanism of deciding who gets the seat, and who gets told to go away, is structured, of course, to assure "buggins turn" hands power out only to Labour, Tory and Lib Dem arse kissers, and prevents at all cost the election of Green, British National Party or other troublesome AM's, who are pledgedto listen to the people and do what they want. Something that would never do in Rhodri's fiefdom. Well, not on his watch, anyway.

So, as I said, for one brief glorious moment it did seem that a series of complicated machinations that would put both the Jewish Knesset and the Eurovision Song Contest to shame was going to oust Rhodri from his throne.

But then Lembit Opik decided he fancied getting his teeth into a bit of a cheeky weekend and left the negotiating table, throwing Mike German's bid for power into the waste paper bin,.

And so the Plaid-Labour coalition was born. An ugly child, the product of a marriage of convenience, having neither the charm, nor the looks, you might hope it would inherit from its parents. Many pundits said it would not last. Messrs Coral and Ladbroke were most reticent at quoting odds for the offspring surviving its first year, and I know, for I tried to get some !

But time has now passed, and whilst the obnoxious child has survived, the river of subsidy that has flowed out from Cardiff Bay, which is of course de rigeur for a party whose politics are somewhere to the left of Michael Foot, has drained even Rhodri's coffers and exhausted his patience. And before long, it seems, the economy measures will mean the party will be over. And this is what will kill it.

Students. Or rather, their fees, and the subsidy welsh kids get for studying in wales.

For it seems the sacred cow of subsidies for welsh students in welsh universities is about to be turned into burger filling. And whilst the Plaid Party Faithful are up in arms, the leader has been forced to admit that he is impotent when it comes to getting Rhodri to write the cheque for this one for much longer.

Check out the details here but in summary Plaid's National Governing Body had "a bit of a summit" last weekend, and voted to maintan the subsidies to university students from wales studying in wales. After which Ieuan Wyn Jones had to stand up and tell the party faithful that there was no prospect of him being able to swing this one.

Probably because Rhodri knows he missed the executioner's axe last time by the most slender of margins but this time he's in for a (brief) pain in the neck.

So, gentle reader, think backto 2007 and ask yourself who you voted for, and why, and stand back and look at what you got as a result ?

And now ask yourself if you're going to make the same mistake again.