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Peredur Owen Griffiths, who represents Plaid Cymru, is one of four regional Senedd Members serving the South Wales East region.

It has been just over a week since we had the surreal sight of the Tory Prime Minister trudging out in a heavy rain burst to announce he was calling a general election.

After a far from convincing speech about his government’s record and electoral promises, Sunak squelched back to 10 Downing Street with the look of a beaten man.

With many of the general public and even his own party turning against him, the soaking wet announcement suggested that Sunak has even fallen foul of Mother Nature.

In the days that have followed, the Tories have stumbled from one PR disaster to the next on the campaign trail.

Whether it was asking Welsh people if they were looking forward to the football at the Euros that will be missing the Welsh national side, launching an ill-conceived plan to revive National Service, or taking part in a workers’ forum that was later revealed to be made up of a group of Tory councillors pretending to be Joe Public, Sunak has been having an absolute nightmare.

All the while, he has been flying around the UK from one gaff to the next because nothing quite says ‘man of the people’ like a private helicopter.

With such an open goal, you would have to conclude that this is an election that Labour cannot mess up. But the last week has exposed many of the fault lines which remain in their party.

The purging of left wing Labour politicians by Starmer was laid bare by the revelation that Diane Abbott is probably being barred from standing again despite having the party whip returned to her following an investigation that concluded last year – but has been kept secret until it was leaked. In the same period, Starmer has welcomed to the Labour Party Natalie Elphicke, an MP that emerged from the murky fringes of the Tory Party.

Starmer’s strong support for an unrepentant and brutal Israel regime is also looking more and more ill-advised as the death toll rises in Gaza.

People who are appalled by the bloodshed in Palestine will not forget, nor forgive, his unequivocal support for Israel and his insistence that they had the right to withhold power and water from the people of Gaza.

As a former human rights lawyer turned state prosecutor, he really should have known better.

Closer to home, we have had the bizarre sight of Labour health secretary Eluned Morgan posing for a photo with a Labour placard emblazoned with the campaign promise to ‘Modernise the NHS.’ I would love to see the look on her face when she realises who has been running the NHS in Wales since 1997.

There’s also the questions over dodgy donations for the First Minister’s successful but tainted leadership campaign. I understand there are big splits within the Labour group that is not normally known for dissent and disunity.

Meanwhile, while the two main London parties fight performatively like Punch and Judy, Plaid Cymru has been busy getting on with the job of campaigning in the communities we hope to represent or raise our vote ahead of the Senedd elections in two years’ time.

As a grassroots party that relies heavily on the goodwill of our members, there is no razzamatazz or gimmicks, just good old-fashioned campaigning from door to door right throughout Wales.

I will be doing my best to have as many of those conversations as possible ahead of polling day on July 4 and beyond because door knocking is not just for elections when you’re in Plaid Cymru.

Our aim is to show that, here in Wales, there is a real alternative to the same old, same old Westminster politics.

From the conversations I have had since the announcement of the general election, there is significant traction from the people we want to represent.