Plaid leader to stand down
Ieuan Wyn Jones has announced he is to stand down as leader of Plaid Cymru in the Welsh Assembly.
Speaking to the press in front of the nationalist party’s Cardiff HQ this afternoon, Mr Wyn Jones said he would stand down after a replacement has been chosen, hopefully by September.
He will also quit as president of the party, which returned 12 AMs after voting on 1 May.
He said that after the ‘deeply disappointing’ result in last Thursday’s assembly election he had initially decided to stay on. Indeed, he told journalists, he had been encouraged to do so by senior party figures.
‘This morning I was informed by the chair of the group in the Assembly that six of the members felt it was better if I stood down immediately’, he continued.
Given the ‘fundamental change’ needed in the party and the strong support necessary to achieve it, he believed that it would be ‘impossible’ to go forward without the support of a clear majority of AMs.
Ieuan Wyn Jones has been under pressure to go since Plaid’s poor performance in the Welsh Assembly elections a week ago. Before today’s announcement, his term of leadership had been set to continue until 2004
