Mr Price said his proposal "remains a practical and progressive way forward and it could have made a traditional contest avoidable".
"However, media statements soon indicated the negotiations were being undermined," he said.
"So we must park the proposal for the time being and revert to established procedure."
He said: "But we cannot put off the irresistible call for defining change.
"Change in the way we frame our politics; the projection of who we are, what we stand for, what we have fought long and hard for and what's ultimately important to us."
Well the Shark Fisherman of Wales is 'siomedig' that the Dream Team of Leanne Wood and Adam Price wont materialise but hats off to whoever is behind this carefully choreographed and stage managed Leadership Debate & Challenge. It is raising the profile of Plaid Cymru, a party that has lost more than a thousand of their eight thousand members in the last eight months. A party that outwardly appears to be about Group Speak & Party Line. I thought the Green Party experiment of having Jonathon Bartley and Caroline Lucas as joint leaders was a brave and dare I say 'modern' thing to do. The weakness there was that Bartley was an unknown and Caroline Lucas has effectively tutored him in the Leadership role. She has now stood down and he is now a recognisable figure. Price & Wood would have made a formidable leadership team. Both from solid Thatcher hating stock and both with very good reason to be. They would be able to wipe the floor with the Tories in the next Assembly election of 2021 but if there is a more left leaning, Corbyn supporting First Minister in Mark Drakeford it will make their challenge to Labour more difficult. The sad thing is that now once again it will be about personality rather than policy and politics. Who do the membership like? Whoever wins and it is likely to be Leanne Wood, this election will have raised the profile of Price and Ap Iorwerth so that when Wood stands down in 2021 having not achieved the role of First Minister (but cemented her legacy in Plaid Cymru history) then they will be familiar faces and can stand on their own definitive platforms. It would have been better had it been Price & Wood against Nuclear Energy Jobs supporting ap Iorwerth but there we are, Welsh Nationalism will have to find a way to widen its appeal with all the recent indignities and slaps to the national chops from Iron Ring, Cairns, Liddle & Trago Mills and others too many to mention.
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