Labour endorsing Leanne?

Happy New Year/ Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

With nominations opening for the Plaid Cymru leadership today the phoney war can finally end and the four contenders Elin Jones, Simon Thomas, Dafydd Elis Thomas and Leanne Wood can finally start campaigning in earnest for the party leadership.

And in every leadership contest beside the appeal to party members, the battle for public opinion is as crucial, and everyone has a view on who the best candidate is and who will win, including the other parties, who will want to define all four candidates to the public before they get a chance to do in on their own terms in the weeks ahead.

So right on cue the Labour Party leadership over the weekend seems to have decided that Leanne Wood is the most serious threat to their hegemony and has declared her a maverick and far to the left or your average Welsh voter - who knew.

Whatever happens Labour has nailed it colours to the mast early and will hope that it can influence Plaid members enough to give it what it wants, an easy ride in the short term and a potential new coalition partner longer term.

The response is a pretty lazy caricature of Leanne, her views on certain issues don’t chime with mainstream admittedly, but you could say that about AM's and MP's from all parties and besides how many people know Carwyn Jones is also a republican and at the first opening of the Assembly refused to stand for the toast to the Queen when so many of his Labour colleague were happy to do so. Did the Labour hierarchy call Carwyn a student politician and accuse him of not representing the good people of Bridgend at the time, of course not, that sanctimonious hypocrisy is only reserved for non Labour folk.

And the lengthy intervention in the Western Mail also told us that Labour is more alert and willing to act against threats to its position, than it is to tackle the social and economic problems facing families and communities across Wales – so nothing new there then.

2012 will be a year like most others in Welsh politics, lots of heat and little light generated as the country continues to fall further behind the rest of the UK and Welsh voters keep endorsing that failure at Council and Welsh Assembly level.Any source