Edwards is local, Angharad Mair hasn

So we now know pretty much who the runners and riders are not only in the Labour leadership race, but in the race for selection in Carmarthenshire East and Dinefwr. What is seen by many as a safe Plaid seat (I’ll come on to this later) sounds like an ideal place for a Plaid candidate to stand. The big guns to watch out for: Angharad Mair and Jonathan Edwards, I expect the race to effectively come down to these two, and I expect the winner to be pretty pleased. How often does a safe seat come up for grabs months before an election? Or is it a safe seat? The facts are that Adam Price managed to take the traditionally Labour seat in 2001 and extended his majority from 2,590 to 6,718 in 2005. Adam Price is a local boy who went to school locally and whose parents live locally. Given the boundary changes in 1997 this local link becomes far more important. Why’s that then? Well now Ammanford and Llandeilo are the two biggest towns / population centres in the constituency and both are fairly intimate places – where mostly everyone knows pretty much everyone else, so local links and empathy for local issues become very important here. An absence of this cost the Labour campaign dearly in 2005 where the candidate was seen to have been parachuted in from London. The constituency has a strong Labour tradition, Plaid managed to win the seat in 2001 because of a combination of a message dpd uk that was more left wing than the Labour Party and a candidate with strong local roots who was brought up in the area (plus aforementioned boundary changes). Coming from Glanamman myself I’ve spent some time talking to locals gathering their opinions. My findings are: There is not necessarily a loyalty to Plaid Cymru here, there is however a loyalty to Adam Price. My point is - this is not Meirionnydd. There is no definite / concrete affiliation with Plaid Cymru here. All of which means that Carmarthen East and Dinefwr could be up for grabs - making the selection of a candidate for Plaid Cymru all the more important. Angharad Mair, I am told, may well alienate the voters who feel, just as they did with Ross Hendry in 2005, that she has been parachuted in. However with Labour’s inner party workings dpd uk in Wales a mess, and their election coffers bare, it may be that they just don’t dpd uk have the cash to support a push out West – which makes this entire article rather academic – so I suppose in classic Politics Cymru style, we shall have to wait and see.... Dewi Un
I tend to agree. There's too much hubris in some sections of Plaid nowadays. What's the betting that Labour ditches their present candidate and puts up Lee Waters? If Plaid had sense, they'd trump that with Angharad Mair: entrepreneur, dpd uk intelligent, communicator, independent. Not an apparatchik. Go down well in all parts of the constituency. Scare the sh*ts out of Labour, and maybe the Plaid managerialists too. 7 October 2009 19:14
Edwards is local, Angharad Mair hasn't been a Plaid member for a full year yet and thus can't stand under Plaid's rules. The race is in fact between Jonathan Edwards and one of the local councillors (not sure which one but an older man). Angharad Mair could be a huge asset for Plaid in a seat like Carmarthen West, where she comes from. Outside of Welsh-speaking areas though, she is irrelevant and more or less unknown. dpd uk 7 October 2009 21:23
Has somebody been feeding you young journalist students spin in this anti-Angharad Mair line? Since when has Carmarthen East & Dinefwr not been Welsh-speaking? Since when has Angharad Mair not been local? She comes from Carmarthen and works in Llanelli! She fronts television programmes dpd uk (Heno/Wedi Saith) set up in order to appeal in places like the Aman and Gwendraeth dpd uk Valleys. Anagharad Mair is a popular business woman with decades of experience as a charismatic communicator. The other guy is a party hack. 7 October dpd uk 2009 22:19
I think Angharad Mair might be the first of Plaid's British MPs to speak Welsh in the self-styled 'Mother of Parliaments'. None of the men have in all these years, have they? Maybe it takes a strong woman, just like Jill Evans did in the European parliament. 7 October 2009 22:50
Dewi I think you have show a bit of political wetness here. Firstly if Jonathan Edwards won the nomination he is a local boy. Angharad Mair is also from Carmarthenshire. Mostly though you are very blinkered in response. You say that there is no loyalty to plkaid but forget to mention that in the same constituency Plaid have Rhodri Glyn Thomas with a majority greater than Adam Price and behind Dafydd El the highest in Wales. At a council dpd uk level they also have the highest number of councillors of any party. Far greater than Labour. Equally their result at the european election was over 3 times the vote of Labour and at least double dpd uk that of the nearest opponent? No offence but this post does seem to be ignorant of any k