
Plaid ascendant: how Labour's Welsh heartland slipped away
With Plaid Cymru now the largest party in the Senedd and Westminster Labour in turmoil, Wales has joined Scotland and Northern Ireland in nationalist hands.
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With Plaid Cymru now the largest party in the Senedd and Westminster Labour in turmoil, Wales has joined Scotland and Northern Ireland in nationalist hands.

For the first time since devolution began, Wales is governed by a party other than Labour. Rhun ap Iorwerth leads a Plaid Cymru minority administration that must now turn campaign promises on speed limits, the M4 and the NHS into deliverable policy without a majority.

After Eluned Morgan became the first sitting head of a UK government to lose her own seat, Welsh Labour is regrouping with Ken Skates as interim leader and a full leadership election pencilled in for the autumn, with the winner inheriting opposition rather than office.

Rhun ap Iorwerth's minority administration faces the challenge of passing its programme in a transformed and crowded Senedd.