Plaid Cymru prepares for election fight

As Plaid Cymru supporters gather in Cardiff for their spring conference, John Stevenson examines how the party is approaching the challenge of the looming general election.

Plaid's leader says the election will be fought during an "age of mistrust"

"You've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with Mister In-Between".

It was recorded way back in 1944 and made famous by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. But in those simple lyrics lies the key to success for any political conference.

As members of Plaid Cymru go into its spring conference in Cardiff, the leadership - as do all parties at such events - will play up the things that make the party and its policies look good and down play those issues that don't.

"Don't mess with Mister In-Between" will be a constant backdrop to the deliberations.

Speaking on the eve of conference, party leader Ieuan Wyn Jones underlined his message that the election will be fought in what he calls "an unprecedented age of mistrust".

He argued that the mistrust isn't there because of the expenses scandal, but rather created by a gradual build-up, "because many people watch their MP taking action clearly not in the best interests of their communities".

Public spending

Earlier this week, Mr Jones, who is the deputy first minister and minster responsible for the assembly government's economic policy, released a document which set out the party's broad-brush thinking on economic and fiscal policy.

On Thursday night, at a meeting of the Welsh business community at the Swalec stadium in Cardiff, Mr Jones will seek to put flesh on the bones, by arguing that economic success in Wales can only be achieved by encouraging home grown development.

In his policy document, Mr Jones warned of massive cuts in public spending as a result of Labour's mismanagement of the financial crisis.

In Cardiff, the party will highlight the simple issue of asking: what point voting for "London parties" who caused the economic mess in the first place?

Plaid's leader accepts that public spending cuts will occur and dismisses those people who rubbish the party's policy pledges on pensioners as being no more than fantasy economics.

The pledge, Mr Jones maintains, has been fully costed.

Plaid's political opponents, of course, will be straining to hear how they intend to set about paying back the debt.

Westminster agenda

Plaid is now a party of government in Wales, and under Elfyn Llwyd's leadership of his small group at Westminster, the party has also managed to grab the headlines on a range of UK and international issues.

At Cardiff, the party will want to capitalise on that profile: Cardiff is clearly the beginning of the party's general election campaign.

Their message is simple: that all Welsh communities deserve strong, locally focused representation at Westminster "from a party determined to put the interests of Wales at the top of the agenda in the event of a hung parliament".

Plaid Cymru has been in a similar situation before.

In the dying days of the Callaghan government back in 1979, by a mixture of political opportunism and shrewd bargaining by Dafydd Wigley and Dafydd Elis Thomas, the party secured a number of important concessions on issues which were of importance to their constituents.

Compensation for former slate workers is the prime example.

This weekend in the Welsh capital, surely the Plaid Cymru leadership will savour the possibility of being in a similar situation later in the year after the UK general election.