大象传媒

Well said Ieuan Wyn Jones. And more pettiness from "one of the strong-minded women" who should be thinking of "their duty to the people of Wales" not of taking a snipe at their leader.

What about Labour's dodgy dossier?

Why not spill the beans on the fact that they gave you one version and Plaid another?

The Lib Dems and "strong minded women" of Plaid should be commended for having principles.

How any of the opposition parties can argue that they have legitimacy to form a government in which the strongest party by far is not involved beggars belief.

The people of Wales did speak and it was to give Labour a stern talking to - not a hiding, and certainly not a government in which the Tories would be involved.

All Parties involved need to grow up and wake up to the fact that devolution was not won on the premise that ego would get in the way of governing the people of Wales. There are at least two leaders who are long past their use-by date...

The people of Wales did not vote for Ieuan to put their finances in the Tories' hands. Without this shameful pact Plaid can look forward to a majority government in 2011 - full, I hope, of its strong-minded women. As a Pliad member I am proud to know them.

Labour labour moan moan Labour moan moan. Get a grip: I'm not Labour voter (honestly), but the prospect of the Tories getting their hands on public services was sickening.

Oh, and as for 'democracy', last time I looked Labour nearly half the seats in the Senedd, whilst the Tories - who would have been rewarded with several minister posts - got only 1/5th!

It seems as if the Lib Dems might just give Wales what it wants, a government that brings Labour and Plaid together to defend services, strengthen the economy and keep the Tories out for a generation.

Wales has always been loyal to Labour, and yet all the statistics on poverty, employment, income, health etc show that Labour hasn't done enough on our behalf. So Wales also wants a bit of Plaid, if only to keep Labour on its toes and let it know it needs to be more radical and bold.

Bring it on!

Vote Lib Dems get Labour, what a bunch of 'wishy washy' misfits. No wonder they made no progress at the last Assembly elections. We will now have Rhodri and more of the same spin.

Well it looks like HMJ has done it again. Well hang on I hear you say it was the LD's who scuppered the deal. True, but the HMJ group's ( yes it's that group within a group scenario again)comments must have influenced the LD decision to some extent.

Looks like curry is back on the menu !

It turns out that the planned three party deal was a 'straw coalition'. Good job that we found out now. As a strong Plaid supporter, I was horrified at a Tory Coalition. But it's now clear Plaid could have been left 'holding the baby' at any time. So it was bad in principle, bad in practice. That doesn't say much for Ieuan Wyn Jones and his Dewis allies, does it?

And with this also dies any chance the Liberal Democrats ever had of inflicting PR on the elections at Westminster.

One hates to say it, given the last 10 years of 'presidential' style governing by Tony Blair, but people want certainty when they vote. They don't want cabinet members to be decided by vast committees of people they have never heard of.

Of course, Tony Blair took it too far the other way with his 'kitchen cabinet' and exclusion of Parliament, but this PR fiasco has shown once-and-for-all that this cannot be the way forward for the Westminster Parliament.

By all means make Cabinet Government more accountable, and bring back the primacy of Parliament-but PR ? Never.

Now Plaid are stuck between a rock and a hard place... They could do nothing and go into effective opposition alongside the tories, and face the fact that if they had done a deal with labour some of their policies might now be going through. Or they could come back cap in hand to Rhodri Morgan and see what scraps of power they are offered.

The possibility of a rainbow coalition was the ace up their sleeve, but was it ever going to be stable enough to hold together? My personal opinion is that they should have bluffed a good deal out of Labour and gone with it (and I suspect they probably already had forced a good deal out of Labour.)

Maybe I'm speaking too soon, I'd be interested to see what the last minute deal labour offered them was, maybe it was too weak an offer to accept. But if so, I doubt those strong minded women would have taken such a strong minded stance against the rainbow.

And if this does go down to the wire and there's a second election, who on earth is going to vote liberal now?