2007 was the year that everything changed for the governments of the UK. In England, Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister after an unprecedented series of electoral wins for Labour, in Scotland the SNP were forming their first government as a minority in Holyrood, in Northern Ireland the institutional 'moderate' unionists were being supplanted by the DUP, and in Wales the traditions of nationalism and socialism were about to combine to form the 'One Wales' government of Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru.
For Plaid Cymru, the opportunity to go into government for the first time was a relatively easy decision but for Labour, the very idea of going into a coalition with the 'nats' exposed deep divisions between the party's British, Welsh, 'materialist', 'devolutionist', and traditionalist wings. Public and private battles were fought over the proposal and it can be argued that the resulting stable government between the two parties changed Welsh politics forever.
In this episode, recorded between Plaid Cymru & Welsh Labour Spring Conferences 2023 and as the parties again are in a governing agreement together in the Senedd, we speak with Dr Dai Moon who has written about the now infamous 2007 Labour Conference and its legacy on Welsh Labour and Welsh politics more broadly.
You can find Dai on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/David_S_Moon
And you can read one of Dai's papers on the 2007 conference here: https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/134634001/Internationalists_not_Nationalists_CBH.F.pdf
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