LUKE FLETCHER has been an elected member of the Senedd for just four years but his party’s hopes for electoral victory in next year’s election rest on his shoulders as he gets ready to publish Plaid’s economic strategy for Wales.

Fletcher is due to unveil the economic strategy he has been working on for a number of years now at Plaid’s conference in Llandudno tomorrow with the details to be published in a few months’ time.

We started by talking about his political influences when he grew up in Pencoed in the county borough of Bridgend in South Wales.

He says that his mum and dad were both lifelong Labour voters and didn’t influence his political development, although his dad and grandmother’s trade union activism must have rubbed off as Fletcher is Plaid’s lead on relations with unions.

“I remember when I was a kid coming back from school and dad would be in union meetings in the kitchen and people he was representing would come to the house.

But we never really talked about party politics — it was always workplace politics.

“I remember my mum telling me she stayed up all night in 1997 to see Tony Blair get elected.

“When the coalition government came to power I remember my mother being gutted about that and the first thing she said that morning was we are in for a number of years of hardship.”

Fletcher joined the Labour Party when he was around 15 years old after he took part in public speaking competitions at school and a party member who was at one of the events asked him to join.

Apart from four years when Fletcher gained a degree and masters in Cardiff he has lived in the same village all his life.

I asked what changed for him to leave Labour and join Plaid Cymru.

“My parents made a deliberate choice to send me to a Welsh language-medium school and when I got to university I chose to go into accommodation where the other students also spoke Welsh.”

Fletcher told me that through the Welsh language lessons he was exposed to a greater focus on Welsh history.

“The fundamental thing that forms the basis of my politics is the principle of fairness and that sort of trade union background that I’ve grown up with.”

I ask whether Fletcher’s economic outlook is more Marx or Keynes and he again talks about his upbringing where what was right and wrong in how employers treated their staff was a big factor in influencing his politics.

Fletcher says the Plaid strategy for the economy of Wales is based around what people want and how happy they are.

“They have enough money to be able to have food on the table, heat their homes, go on holiday once a year, take the family out at the weekend and use their money to spend time with family and enjoy life.”

Fletcher was clear that ownership of the economy was a vital question and said resources in Wales like water should be in public hands.

“There’s one critical problem at the root of so many issues facing the Welsh economy which is an ownership gap.

“We do not own enough of our own resources, institutions or businesses to begin to turn the economic tide.

“This is reflected in low-wage, low-skilled jobs, low rates of productivity, stagnating living standards and the decline of town and city centres.

“A lot of my frustration in politics is just the unwillingness of the Welsh government to do stuff.”

We talked about Tata Steel, the closure of the blast furnace and the loss of thousands of well-paid jobs in South Wales.

At the time Plaid and Fletcher were the only ones calling for nationalisation of the steel industry.

He explains that the economic strategy he has developed for Wales will allow for nationalisation, but then it would move beyond that into a form of co-operative ownership with the workforce having a stake.

“I would have liked to have seen nationalisation happen and then look at how we could create a workers’ co-operative within the steel industry with the government keeping a stake in that co-operative,” Fletcher said.

He explains that similar co-operatives are working in the Basque country (Mondragon Corporation) where it is considered normal.

As the lead in Plaid for relations with the trade union movement in Wales I ask him whether he has entered into talks with the unions yet on Plaid’s plans for the Welsh economy.

“We are in the process of going out for feedback and the unions will be part of that consultation.”

We talk about the endemic poverty in Wales which has remained stubbornly high at 20 per cent and with 30 per cent of children living in poverty.

I ask how Plaid plan to tackle that and bring jobs back to the de-industrialised valley communities.

Fletcher says the issues with the Welsh economy will need several terms of government to fix but there are things they can start from day one and outlines plans to bring more business opportunities to the valleys.

Tomorrow’s Morning Star will include a feature by Luke Fletcher about his soon to be unveiled plan for the Welsh economy.