Wales is in grave danger of being considered a nation of narrow-minded hypocrites in the wake of the Rev Rhodri Glyn Thomas being forced to resign as culture minister after mistakenly walking into a Bay public house with a cigar in his hand .

Apparently, the resignation followed a tete-a-tete on his future with party leader Ieuan Wyn Jones.

Yet it could all be for a future good – which could propel Plaid Cymru towards the Assembly stratosphere, and Labour towards the exit almost everywhere in Wales.

Mr Jones often seems buttoned up, sometimes even the first minister’s poodle, as if he’s keeping an ear open only for what emanates from the fifth floor Ty Hywel room occupied by the FM overlooking the Pierhead building.

But I feel the DFM is much wider awake to the world than he seems.

The minister’s son must know a bit about sin (when performed by others); the former solicitor should know about the importance of keeping away from the clutches of the hypocrites-in-chief who run certain London newspapers; while the political leader should have been asking himself whether his selected minister was handing far too many votes to the Conservative and Liberal Democrat opposition through his decisions and opinions on the (now-vanished) Welsh language daily paper.

In other words, the Rev Min was ruining his own future. And it was no help that he was doing so in an arrogant fashion – possibly in a worse way than even health minister Edwina Hart.

The cigar was a quickly-corrected mistake; the misread literary prize-winner was because of vanity (refusing to wear glasses); and the arrogance a human failing.

But the possible eventual interest of certain newspapers is a different matter – London hypocrites of that type, we know, always exaggerate beyond truth, so it’s far better not to attract their attention.

This is where – rather ironically – we reach another world…that of the future of Plaid Cymru.

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