The challenge facing Wales’ first minister in independence debate

It should also be said that, as leader of Plaid Cymru, he is doing what it says on the tin.

After all, it would have been odd for him to barely mention independence having become his party’s first first minister.

As well as reaching out to those undecideds, all party leaders have to keep their base happy – those supporters who have knocked on doors for years, and got the party to where it is today.

And turning out on a Saturday afternoon in Aberystwyth to say that there is no turning back on the journey to independence, or declaring alongside other nationalist leaders that Westminster’s time is coming to an end, are the kinds of things that go down very well with the party faithfuls as they gear up for their conference in Llandudno next week.

Talking of undecideds, I was in the centre of Cwmbran interviewing shoppers for the Politics Wales programme about the long-term prospects of independence.

While not all of them agreed with the idea, they engaged with the question in a way that would have been hard to imagine if I had done a similar television package a decade ago.

So ap Iorwerth will feel he is simply reflecting a changing mood in the country, even if polling is broadly showing no more than a third of people support independence.

Also, the photocall with nationalist leaders was always going to happen at some point, so by getting it done early on he can at least feel he has unambiguously set out where he wants to take Wales in the long run, and now focus on the day of job of dealing with the daily challenges of running a government.

However he spins it, it feels like independence is not going to be too far away from the headlines over the next four years.