"Once in a generation a politician emerges who stands alone in ability. A politician with visionary ideas and perhaps more importantly, the ability to transform ambitious concepts into a reality."
These were the words on a Plaid Cymru leaflet describing Adam Price ahead of the 2016 Senedd election. It went on to describe Mr Price as an "X-Factor politician" who has been "labelled by some the Mab Darogan prophetic son of Welsh folklore".
Adam Price went on to win the seat for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr and became Plaid leader just a couple of years later. However fast forward to May 2023 and he has resigned having admitted that, under his leadership, a toxic culture was made worse leading to what a damning report described "a failure to implement a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment".
Read more: Damning report criticises failures in Plaid Cymru's handling of sexual harassment
So where did it all go wrong for Adam Price? And perhaps more importantly, why is Plaid's implosion bad news for everyone in Wales, not just Plaid Cymru supporters?
From "prophetic son" to damp squib
Listening to Adam Price last autumn deliver his leaders speech on the stage at Venue Cymru in Llandudno you would be forgiven for thinking that this was a man on edge of greatness. This is not a flippant thing to say. On his day, with a receptive audience, Adam Price can be a really outstanding communicator. If you had no context for the wider situation within the party it would have been easy to get pulled along by the show. He was eloquent, thoughtful and many members of the audience appeared genuinely excited by the future of Cymru he was describing. But scratch beneath the surface, and the discontent that led to of his resignation this week was already there.
Just a week before this conference I had spoken to multiple people working for the party who were on the verge of tears because of the culture within Plaid. There had been several alleged incidents of sexual assault that were widely known about within the party. These concerns had been reported to the senior leadership, alongside a myriad of other incidents of bully and sexual harassment, and yet there was a feeling that nothing was being done. Several people told me about these issues - it was an open secret. Many staff had reached a point where they didn't bother reporting things anymore, such was their lack of faith in the party processes and leadership to deal with these issues.
The report by Nerys Evans (a former Plaid MS) last week confirmed all of this. The report stated that people in the party had "seen too many instances of bad behaviour by elected members be tolerated and feel that there is little point in raising concerns".
As well as staff, I spoke to several Plaid politicians at the time who said they knew about the issues, felt that Adam Price and senior leaders were utterly failing to get a grip on it and wanted a change of leadership. There were quite discussions behind the scenes about whether Adam Price could be outed but they ultimately led to nothing. The long knives were out, but no one wanted to pick them up.
If there was a theme of how the Plaid leadership reacted to the appalling incidents it is that they only acted when they had no other option. The report by Nerys Evans was only commissioned when they were backed into a corner because events overtook them. The combination of MS Rhys ab Owen being suspended after an investigation was began by the Standards Commissioner (the leadership had likely known about allegations against him for a year but only acted after the Commissioner began an investigation) and a WalesOnline investigation into the party culture heaped the pressure on to point that something had to happen. Even when the report came out Adam Price tried to hang on to his position (though he claimed in his resignation letter that he had felt duty bound to resign but had been talked out of it).
Clearly the unchallenged sexual harassment was the biggest issue facing Adam Price at that conference last October but that speech he gave pointed to a secondary issue - electoral stagnation.
Mr Price was an MP between 2001-2010. Upon leaving he went to the US to study for a master's in public administration at the prestigious Harvard University and then returned to politics when he ran for a seat Welsh Assembly (now Parliament) election of 2016 which brought us the infamous leaflet. Within a few years he was angling for the top job within the party writing an article for WalesOnline where he called on current leader Leanne Wood to introduce a two leader model for the party. When this was rejected he challenged her for leadership of the party and won the subsequent leadership election.
But ever since becoming leader, the wider Welsh public have not seemed to want to buy what Plaid are selling. The Price is too high perhaps? In the 2019 election, and election where Labour were well and truly battered, Plaid's share of the Welsh vote actually dropped though they kept the same number of seats.. The Senedd election in 2021, where Adam himself said that "anything less that First Minister would be failure", the party gained only one seat in total, lost the Rhondda (the sort of seat they really needed to be winning to really challenge Labour) and ended up as the third largest party overall. This was the election where Adam Price put independence at the heart of the campaign. Moving on to last year in local elections the stagnation continued. Though Plaid took control of three councils (most of which they were very close to holding anyway), they actually suffered a small net loss of councillors and only made any really gains in their traditional heartlands.
In that conference speech last year it was obvious how he had changed the scale of his ambitions in light of this. He actually told Labour to "rebuild their red wall" and that Plaid would help direct Labour to policies rather than seek to seize the reigns of power themselves. That is big fall from 18 months before when "anything less that First Minister was failure".
This doesn't mean Adam Price doesn't have positive things to point to and say "I did that". The free school meals secured through the co-operation agreement has helped thousands of children during a cost of living crisis. He told me last year: "that's the one thing, if I achieve nothing else in politics ever again, I can always take that with me to my grave". He also showed flashes or really astute political savvy. The way he held Mark Drakeford to account over claims made about Betsi Cadwaladr was well executed for example.
But perhaps most damning of Adam Price's ability to cut through to the Welsh public, was the reaction to his departure. Upon eventually announcing he would be resigning after the publication of the report, many people in Wales simply didn't know who he was. His departure was a shrug of the shoulders to your average voter and failed to capture the wider public imagination despite the scandal the party was left in.
Why this really matters for Wales
Now you might be thinking, does the implosion of Plaid really have any ramifications beyond the party itself? After all, a stagnating Plaid Cymru is nothing new. Since 2010, the parties Welsh vote share in General Elections been consistently between 9.9 and 12.1%. In the last three Senedd elections they have won 11, 12 and 13 seats respectively for example.
But the fact that Plaid are currently not electorally credible has a serious impact on the Welsh politics because there is almost no true opposition to the Welsh Labour. Under the leadership of Andrew RT Davies, the Welsh Conservatives have lurched to the populist right (a tactic which has very little realistic chance of winning anything close of a majority in the Welsh Parliament). If Plaid are not able to credibly pose any real electoral threat to Mark Drakeford and Welsh Labour going forward, then there is realistically no opposition at a time when the Welsh NHS is on its knees, schools are totally strapped for cash and the cost of living crisis makes it more vital than ever that every penny of public money is spent efficiently.
You don't need to know a lot about politics to know that having one party able to govern essentially unchallenged is not a recipe for good governance, efficient administration or a prosperous society. The next Plaid leader needs to get a grip on their party. First and foremost they need to do so to ensure no more people suffer in the same way those reference in the report did. But also for the sake of Wales, the next Plaid leader needs to make the party more that an "also ran" in Welsh politics.
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