General election 2019: The campaign in Wales so far

Felicity Evans, political editor,Wales

With the main Welsh parties having published their manifestos, now seems like an appropriate moment to review the election campaign in Wales.

The Conservatives

The Welsh Conservatives had a very shaky start a few weeks ago. The resignation of Alun Cairns as Welsh Secretary has left their campaign leaderless here, but they are riding the coat tails of the UK-wide campaign.

If some of the dominant issues continue to be Brexit and who becomes the next prime minister, that strategy could work well. Boris Johnson has already made several visits to key target seats - expect more in the coming weeks.

Labour

For Welsh Labour there's a lot to lose in this election. That's because of their strong performance in 2017 when they took 70% of Welsh seats and nearly half the total vote. So they have a lot of marginal seats to defend.

They're fighting a very different campaign this time around too. It's a lot less "Welshified". That's partly because their leader, Mark Drakeford, is less well known to voters than his predecessor Carwyn Jones, but also because Mr Drakeford is a genuine supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.

However, it's notable that Mr Corbyn has not yet visited Wales in this campaign (even though Tony Blair has!).

Plaid Cymru

Plaid Cymru's election outcome depends on some very fine margins. So for their leader Adam Price, very few votes could make the difference between a great result and a disaster.

General elections are always a challenge for Plaid, when the focus tends to be on the battle for Number 10, but they will want to use this campaign as a platform to introduce their relatively new leader to voters ahead of the Welsh assembly elections in 2021.

The Lib Dems

The Liberal Democrats hope to build on their success in the summer by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire. They're part of the so called "remain alliance" with Plaid and the Greens in more than a quarter of Welsh seats.

We don't know for sure what the impact will be on the results, but it's notable that an alliance of parties who say they want a second referendum have chosen (for the most part) to focus their pact in seats that Labour is defending, even though Labour's policy is to deliver a second referendum.

The Brexit Party

It's difficult to tell how significant the Brexit Party will be in this election. They're not standing in the eight Welsh seats that the Conservatives won in 2017. But they are standing in key Conservative target seats.

Could that take crucial votes away from the Conservatives? The lesson of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election is that it could. But since then Boris Johnson seems to have neutralised some of their appeal.

What do the main parties offer?