Plaid Cymru and its leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, made political history this month: they won the Senedd. For the first time ever, Wales now has a progressive majority that is not dependent on Labour. Polls had put Plaid and Reform UK neck and neck. In the run-up to the election, some of my Welsh friends were panicking. They were relieved that Reform came second.

I was never convinced that Reform’s brand of essentially English ethno-nationalism was ever going to triumph in Wales. The party seemed to think it could transpose its tactics from next door and that they’d work in the same way. Yet unlike Plaid, Reform UK has no story to tell about what it means to be Welsh.

Plaid’s victory brought to mind an incident that took place around the time of the Brexit referendum. Days before the vote, a Muslim woman on a rail replacement bus from Cardiff to Newport was allegedly told by a racist to “speak English,” only for another passenger to point out that she was speaking Welsh. That such overlapping identities could exist was beyond credulity to some at the time. Yet in the May elections, voters made a clear statement against the sort of politics that demands that a stranger on a bus “speak English”, just as they did in the Caerphilly byelection last year.

Plaid Cymru – despite being a “nationalist” party – represents a diverse and inclusive Wales that is forging ahead with its own idea of national identity against a rising tide........

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