[This article originally appeared on our Facebook page]

THE new Welsh National Party has been shut down overnight.

In deregistering the party, the Electoral Commission has effectively put the spanner in the works of Neil McEvoy’s new party for the foreseeable future.

What’s unbelievable about all this is that it’s the Electoral Commission’s own cock-up which is at the root of it all.

In writing to the WNP to inform them of the decision yesterday, the Commission admitted that they were at fault in allowing the initial registration on January 15.

This follows a High Court threat by Plaid over the use of the ‘Welsh National Party’ name.

Now, 4 months down the line, with new members and councillors already in place for the WNP, the party has been torpedoed to all intents and purposes.

As a party, GWLAD extend our sympathies to Neil McEvoy and the WNP. This is not just bad news for them, it’s bad news for Welsh democracy and for Welsh voters in general.

The whole issue reeks of an establishment stitch-up – and they don’t come more establishment than the Electoral Commission in London.

We have first hand experience of all the loops that we had to jump through to set up as a party – a never ending process which took almost a year to achieve.

Now, it looks as if they’ve decided to try and throttle another new nationalist party at birth.

One doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to entertain the possibility that the British establishment really don’t want TWO new nationalist parties in Wales right now.

They probably feel that they can control things just with Plaid in place, and almost a 100 years of the virtual status quo in Wales’s fortunes since Plaid’s formation in 1925.

Perhaps they could handle one new party, but two suggests the natives are really getting restless, and we can’t have that now can we?

Neil McEvoy will now have to regroup and prepare a new application to the EC, along with a new English language name and a new Welsh language name for his new party.

For the sake of Welsh Democracy, we wish him well. We are here to share that load.