The importance of 'closing things down'

A disciplinary hearing could decide whether Neil McEvoy remains a member of Plaid Cumru

In a guest blog, Aled ap Dafydd asks how Plaid Cymru will solve its long-running dispute with AM Neil McEvoy.

Today I'll be standing outside a Plaid Cymru disciplinary hearing, again.

I was here in 2015 when Lord Elis-Thomas was fighting for his Plaid Cymru survival.

That fraught relationship lasted a further 15 months before he walked away.

But when it comes to Neil McEvoy it's a different matter. He's going nowhere and neither, it seems, does the problem for Plaid.

More than a year since complaints were received about his behaviour he faces a disciplinary hearing at the party's HQ.

As things stand Neil McEvoy is half in, half out of the fold; elected as a Plaid AM and still a party member albeit expelled from the assembly group.

I suspect that if found guilty he fears expulsion from the party - even though that could solve one problem it could create another.

There would, no doubt, be an appeal - and a fringe meeting arranged by Neil McEvoy at next week's conference would still go ahead and become a box office event.

His supporters would become more vocal and entrenched and a movement within a party could gather steam.

A slap on the wrist, however, would be just another reprimand on a long charge sheet. Neil McEvoy has already been found guilty of "bullying behaviour" by a tribunal, suspended by his assembly group and ultimately expelled.

This tweet referring to an interview with Leanne Wood was deleted after an outcry

Several Plaid AMs have told me that they reached breaking point with him. They tell of how they treated him with kid rather than boxing gloves, and tried to build bridges when he was first suspended from the group. It's hard to see a way back.

Both the Dafydd Elis-Thomas and Neil McEvoy sagas share a common thread. They've hogged the headlines, caused division and taken up a lot of the party's time and energy.

It's worth reflecting that today marks six years since Leanne Wood was elected Plaid Cymru leader - a politician known for her dislike of confrontation.

It would be an exaggeration to say that disciplinary matters have dominated those years - they haven't. But they've been there, lurking and hanging around, never fully going away.

Senior figures in the party have told me of their frustration with the voluntary wing of the party, paid officials and the elected leader for not addressing the issue sooner.

The importance of "closing things down" in politics can't be overestimated. It gives a party control when the things seem to be slipping away.

On the eve of her six-year anniversary Leanne Wood wanted to talk about her vision rather than division in an interview with journalist Martin Shipton.

But it's proving as challenging today as it was on a balmy summer's night in Porthmadog nearly three years ago.