I FIRST joined the Labour Party as I was undertaking my GCSEs. Having grown up moored in a working-class community with working-class parents, one of whom was a trade union representative, joining Labour seemed the obvious thing to do.

In Wales, it’s scarcely questioned. Electoral muscle memory and hereditary Labourism run almost gene-deep.

As my political interests burgeoned and my engagement grew, the idea that I would be able to contribute to the socialist struggle via my involvement in Labour was dissipating.

The more I engaged, the more it became evident that socialism wouldn’t be advanced within a party devoid of a robust left — in the Senedd or, indeed, in Westminster.

Being part of Labour seemed more of an identity, a culture, rather than a form of politics to be practised.

Performative gestures of solidarity trumped making positive material differences to Welsh communities — communities that have been devastated by the worst excesses of capitalism.

I looked for an alternative to Labour and one which would accommodate my inclination to more radically left-wing, community-focused politics. I found it in Plaid Cymru, and at the end of 2016, I joined.

Within Plaid, there exists an argument that says if socialists aren’t happy with Welsh Labour, they can find an alternative in Plaid.

However, it is often overlooked that the internal frictions within the Labour Party are perhaps more acute than Labour’s frictions with other political parties.

It is important for socialists within Welsh Labour — and, indeed, all-Britain Labour Party — to see that these internal frictions are irreconcilable.

Ideas of unity within the Labour Party are ultimately articles of faith. Time and time again, when it looks like socialists might get a win under their belts, they get taken out at the knees.

Socialists in the party are then entreated to remain, to “stay and fight” in the name of party unity, knowing that there is no fight to be had.

Among the well-worn arguments that shore up the stay-and-fight argument is that there is no credible alternative: where could they possibly turn? I’m here to say: there is an alternative.

It can be said that Wales features in the popular left-wing imagination as something of a bastion of radicalism, boasting a proud working-class history of popular protest, dissidence and socialist politics. The truth today is that Wales is a troublingly neoliberal country.

The stark reality is that we remain largely vulnerable to political negligence at home and from across the bridge.

We can go begging to Westminster, or keep asking the Welsh Labour government to use all the powers at their disposal to their fullest capacities — both seem like pretty futile endeavours, it must be said. Both options offer inertia at best.

Granted, the Welsh government is fighting its battles with one hand tied behind its back, without the full array of economic levers that would allow it to adopt blanket changes to economic policy.

However, we do not seem to have a government in our Senedd that even resists or combats this system with what it has at its disposal.

In a Senedd debate at the beginning of March on the need to oppose the Tories’ anti-strike Minimum Service Levels Bill, the Labour benches were empty. Not a single contribution was made, and Plaid’s call for the devolution of employment law to protect Welsh workers was rejected.

On a grander scale, it is significant that the plaudits Welsh Labour receives today for pushing through radical policies are part of an agreement with Plaid Cymru.

The introduction of universal free school meals in primary schools, for example, necessitated years of demands, years of dragging Welsh Labour to the left, and eventually a co-operation agreement for it to become a reality.

The Labour-led Welsh government is all too happy to see Wales short-changed. It accepts the Tories’ robbery of £5 billion in rail infrastructure funds. They are content to sit on their hands while Wales is denied powers over natural resources and policing.

Wales suffers from Groundhog Day politics: the same scenarios play out again and again. We see a party in power that has been content to tinker with schemes, initiatives and pavement car parking as the system it administers continue to immiserate people.

It is quick to tell us about all the things that it cannot do because it lacks the political and economic wherewithal, yet won’t wrestle to obtain these powers for fear of upsetting its relationship with the Union.

And this, in many ways, gets to the crux of the problem: Welsh Labour is structurally wedded to the Union, and this will therefore always come before their desire to implement policies that benefit our communities.

Our current neoliberal Wales will reach an impasse, if it isn’t already there, and Welsh Labour’s dominance will dwindle — the rift between rhetoric and reality cannot sustain its electoral vehicle.

If socialists in Wales have grown tired of the mismanagement and exploitation of Wales, or if they believe that Wales’s best interests will never be realised while it exists as the silent child on the periphery of the British state, then there is only one alternative in Wales: Plaid Cymru and the road to independence.

Luke Fletcher is MS for South Wales West and the Plaid Cymru economy spokesperson. Follow him on Twitter @FletcherPlaid.