Next Welsh election a choice between us and Reform, Plaid leader to say

Plaid Cymru's leader will portray the next Welsh election as a fight between his party and Nigel Farage's Reform when he speaks at his party's conference on Friday.

Rhun ap Iorwerth will tell party members in Newport that the vote is a choice between "tolerance or division" and "culture or ignorance".

Reform have "zero loyalty to Wales", he is set to say, and could turn against Wales' parliament in Cardiff Bay "on a whim".

Opinion polls have suggested Plaid is vying for first place with Reform for the 7 May Senedd election. Labour has been in power since the institution's predecessor, the National Assembly for Wales, opened its doors in Cardiff Bay 27 years ago.

The pro-independence party has never won a Wales-wide election, and has supported Labour Welsh governments in the past.

Plaid said ap Iorwerth will tell the conference on Friday afternoon: "The election in May will be a choice between two contrasting futures.

"Tolerance or division. Progress or decay. Defiance or deference. Culture or ignorance. Humanity or indifference. Plaid or Reform.

"A Reform government full of ex-Tories would set our country back decades.

"They say they accept devolution, for now. But they'd turn against it on a whim. We all know they have zero loyalty to Wales and our nationhood."

He will say Reform would use the Senedd as an "electoral springboard" with "no accountability, no seriousness" and "no policies".

Plaid Cymru is expected to unveil its plan for the first 100 days of government on Saturday morning.

Ap Iorwerth claimed the party would "do politics differently".

"We aim to be known as a team that runs a better government, or quite simply got the basics right," he will say, promising to be "open, transparent and digitally driven".

He will say that Plaid offers "hope that can overcome people's fears of other political forces leading Wales down a dark path".

Since becoming leader in 2023, ap Iorwerth has moved his party's focus away from independence as a central issue, and is pitching his party as a pragmatic government in waiting.

The Ynys Môn MS has said the Senedd election is not about Wales' place in the United Kingdom, and has ditched a 2021 pledge to hold a referendum.

Recently he abandoned a policy for net zero carbon emissions by 2035.

Plaid is hoping it can win enough seats to form a minority government - meaning it would govern alone but would still need the help of other politicians to get votes through the Senedd.

No party has ever won more than half the seats in the Senedd, and the new system makes winning a majority theoretically more tricky with a new proportional voting system.

Politicians will be elected in large constituencies of six MSs each, with their numbers determined by a formula that tries to reflect how people voted. A total of 96 politicians will be elected, up from the 60 MSs that exist now.

The system intends to give voters more choice than the previous system, where 40 of the 60 seats were elected through the first past the post system.