Plaid Cymru and SNP discuss forming ‘progressive alliance’

Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth and SNP leader John Swinney have held talks to develop a “progressive alliance” between their pro-independence parties.

Scottish first minister Swinney vowed to worked with the Welsh nationalist party to show their respective nations there is a “positive alternative to Westminster’s despair and decline”.

Ap Iorwerth, who hopes to become Wales’ first minister in next year’s Welsh elections, said they had a “genuine opportunity to show the power of progressive politics”.

The meeting also focused on efforts to tackle child poverty, with Plaid Cymru having already pledged it will pilot a version of the Scottish Child Payment if it forms the next Welsh government.

Speaking after the meeting, Swinney said Westminster was “not working for Scotland or Wales” and that the UK Labour government had been an “unmitigated disaster for both our nations”.

He added that electing “strong, centre-left SNP and Plaid governments, we will also be sending a clear message that the hateful, extreme politics of Nigel Farage will never be allowed to win in our nations”.

Ap Iorwerth, whose party scored a dramatic win in last week’s Senedd by-election in Caerphilly, said a Plaid government in Wales and an SNP government in Scotland would result in “a powerful bloc”.

He said: “By electing a Plaid Cymru government able to forge a strong relationship with an SNP Scottish government, we can make our nations’ voices heard in Westminster and demand that Wales gets parity of funding and powers with Scotland as the first step towards taking our future into our own hands.”

The Welsh Conservative leader Darren Millar said the pact between Plaid Cymru and SNP was a “regressive alliance”.

“There’s nothing progressing about Plaid and the SNP’s plans to tear apart the United Kingdom.

“These political parties pose a danger to our economic security that would cost every single family in Wales thousands of pounds each and every year, and put pensions, jobs and livelihoods at risk.”

A Reform UK Wales spokesperson said the meeting had “raised the stakes for next year’s Senedd elections even further”.

“Plaid Cymru are copying the SNP’s homework, even though they have delivered the highest drug deaths in Europe, higher income tax than the rest of the UK and an obsession with breaking up the union to the detriment of our NHS.”