Gay MP Adam Price will not stand at next election
Openly gay Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price has confirmed that he will be stepping down at the next election.
Price, who came 37th in this year’s PinkNews.co.uk list of the most influential LGBT people in politics, announced in a statement today that he intends to take up a year-long Fulbright scholarship in the United States.
He then wants to stand in the 2011 Welsh assembly election.
The MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr made headlines when he kick-started a campaign to impeach Tony Blair for going to war with Iraq.
He added: “I do not think it would be right to return to Westminster at the next election when my passion is in Wales and at the assembly.
“My aim will be to seek nomination and stand for election in 2011 as part of party leader Ieuan Wyn Jones’s assembly team.
At Plaid’s recent conference, he spoke of his frustration at being an MP.
“I do want to come home.
“I’m tired of hitting my head and my hand against the dumb cold walls of Westminster. I will never feel that I belong in that Parliament, though I have to breathe its dust-laden air.”
Widely regarded as a future leader of Plaid Cymru, the Plaid Cymru MP was one of the authors of the One Wales Agreement, the basis of the Labour-Plaid coalition Welsh Assembly Government formed two years ago.
Adam Price was elected to Parliament in the 2001 general election. He belongs to Plaid’s left-wing and has said of himself “I was a socialist before I was a nationalist”
Price has been praised by LGBT right group Stonewall for persistently voting for gay rights.
