We in the Welsh Assembly are in danger of thinking that the whole of the world revolves around us

Dafydd Wigley

Plaid's new leader will be decided in August. Wigley, meanwhile, is engaged in a long bowing-out from the forefront of the party's activities.

As a result he gives a franker assessment of his own time at the helm and the challenges facing Plaid than might otherwise have been the case

One criticism made of Wigley within Plaid concerned his insistence on making too many decisions himself. The criticisms cover the time since the assembly elections, which resulted in Plaid being the second largest group in it.

Wigley, went the sotto voce moaning, devoted insufficient attention to assembly affairs and too much to Westminster. He acknowledges the complaints in order to reject them.

"I know there has been criticism that I haven't been delegating. That is absolutely nonsense," he says.

"If there is anything that I am open to it was delegating too much, in that I stood back from some of the day to day leadership in the assembly because there are people there who were working in the assembly alone.

"I as president of the party had a responsibility to also be at Westminster where there are at least equally important decisions being made with regard to Wales."

'Background noise'

Ieuan Wyn Jones: Frontrunner to inherit Plaid top job

Indeed he cautions against Plaid taking too parochial a view of where the crucial political decisions are taken, warning that "we in the assembly are in danger of thinking that the whole of the world revolves around us, that it is the only point of power that is relevant to us".

"Everybody in the party doesn't see it that way. Certainly everybody in Wales doesn't."

"We have to be fighting on a broad front, particularly with a general election coming up now. And the general election is about what happens here [at Westminster], not what happens in the assembly.

"The assembly is part of the background noise to it but the focus is on Westminster, and we will ignore that at our peril. Because we have to keep the momentum going through the election as far as Westminster's concerned."

We could have stood down, three of us, from Westminster immediately after the assembly elections. With hindsight probably we should have done so

Dafydd Wigley

Whoever succeeds him as leader, he believes they will have failed if at that election Plaid does not win at least one extra Commons seat and a significantly increased share of the Welsh vote.

"Our Westminster vote last time was at the traditional low level of about 10%," he points out. "We need that to be between 15 and 20% to show the momentum is still running. So that is the challenge whoever is president of the party."

My mistakes

Looking back on his own time as leader, what mistakes does Wigley believe he made?

He confesses that one of the "difficulties" he had after the setting up of the assembly was "changing gear" from having just a small team of four MPs at Westminster to an assembly group of 17.

He also believes he may have been wrong to persevere as an MP after he and two of his Plaid Westminster colleagues were elected to the assembly in May last year.

Of them, only Cynog Dafis gave up his Commons seat, sparking a by-election in Ceredigion.

Dafydd Elis-Thomas: The avowed republican and Welsh nationalist faced heavy criticism when he accepted a peerage

"We could have stood down, three of us, from Westminster immediately after the assembly elections," Wigley says now. "With hindsight probably we should have done so."

The frontrunner to succeed him, Ynys M�n MP Ieuan Wyn Jones, declared in a newspaper interview last month that Plaid must clearly define its keynote policy positions.

His comments surely implied that under Wigley things haven't been so clear?

The Plaid leader says he hasn't seen the interview but agrees that clarity is important.

On most of the fundamental issues, he believes it is there: the commitment to gaining full national status for Wales within the European Union, to being willing to increase taxes if public expenditure requires it, to the full status of both the English and Welsh languages in Wales.

But "there are a range of nitty gritty issues on which we need to be clear," he accepts.

"On things like our adherence to the CND profile of doing away with nuclear weapons, which I believe in and perhaps we've soft-pedalled a little on - I'm at fault on that."

Challenges for Plaid

No - I rule that out

Dafydd Wigley on accepting a peerage

What of the prime tasks his successor faces? Wigley believes the first is to keep the party in good shape and healthy morale. That taken care of, Plaid must then "develop our relevance in terms of industrial Wales".

He is anxious the party continues to fight the battles for the "socially deprived, those who are being excluded".

"We've got to show we're on their side when the chips are down. That means some hard choices.

"It means you can't run with both sides simultaneously. There are people for whom life is very comfortable in Wales and it may be that they have to go into their pockets through the taxation system, or whatever to help those for whom life is less fortunate.

"There has to be no fudging on that."

Plots and peerages

And what does Wigley make of the stories, from some Plaid members, that Wyn Jones had been plotting to undermine Wigley?

"So I'm told," he says.

But he takes a statesmanlike view. "Goodness knows in any political party you're bound to have people who have ambitions.

"If there were people who had ambitions who were plotting, so be it. I have little doubt that I had the confidence of the party as a whole and the assembly group."

Finally, will we one day see Lord Wigley of Caernarfon sitting in the upper house?

In what many will see as a sideswipe at his predecessor Lord Elis Thomas, now presiding officer of the Welsh Assembly, Wigley unequivocally rejects taking up the ermine: "No - I rule that out."

So he would turn any such offer down? "Yes. It won't be offered - and I wouldn't accept."