No post-election deal with Tories, says Plaid leader

Rhun ap Iorwerth: "No, we're not going to be working with the Conservatives."

Plaid Cymru's leader has ruled out a deal with the Conservatives after next year's Senedd election.

Rhun ap Iorwerth had already said his party would not work with Reform.

No party has ever won a majority in Cardiff Bay and changes to the voting system mean it is even less likely that any party will win more than half the seats.

Plaid Cymru was close to agreeing a so-called rainbow coalition with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in 2007 but the deal collapsed after it was blocked at a meeting of senior Lib Dems.

Speaking to BBC-produced NewyddionS4C, ap Iorwerth insisted such a deal was not on the cards again.

Current polling suggests Plaid Cymru and Reform are vying to be the biggest party after May's vote, with Labour third and the Conservatives fourth.

Asked by NewyddionS4C presenter Bethan Rhys Roberts about the possibility of Plaid Cymru working with the Conservatives, ap Iorwerth said: "No, we're not going to be working with the Conservatives.

"We don't know if the Conservatives will be there in any numbers - they have their own serious problems at the moment.

"The Conservatives and Reform are more or less one party, with one trying to go further to the right than the other."

UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and the party's Senedd leader Darren Millar recently declined to rule out deals with Plaid Cymru and Reform after next year's election.

Responding to ap Iorwerth's comments, Millar said voters had a "simple" choice at the next election - "more of the same with Labour and Plaid, or real change with the Welsh Conservatives".

After the prospect of the rainbow coalition disappeared in 2007, Plaid Cymru's leader at the time Ieuan Wyn Jones struck a deal with Rhodri Morgan's Labour to form the One Wales Labour-led coalition with Plaid Cymru as the junior partner.

Plaid has worked with a minority Labour government on further occasions since then, most recently through the Co-operation Agreement signed by the then Plaid leader Adam Price and the then Labour First Minister Mark Drakeford.

Ap Iorwerth, having replaced Price, brought that agreement to an early end in May 2024 amid concerns over the leadership of Vaughan Gething, who by then had succeeded Mark Drakeford.

Asked about the possibility of working with Labour again after May 2026, ap Iorwerth pointed out that the SNP had managed to govern alone as a minority government in Scotland in 2007.

However, he added that having parties working together was "completely normal".

"That can happen formally and informally," he added.