Bursting the Bay Bubble to cut the cost of politics
Amid perceived disenchantment with Labour in the National Assembly, Paul Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, pledges to act in the interests of Wales
LAST weekend, Welsh Conservative Party members, AMs and our 14 new Members of Parliament met at our spring conference in Llangollen. At that conference I told some hard truths to the members of the Cardiff Bay Bubble.
The Bubble is a fragile and precious entity, and is fiercely protected by the chattering classes and elite within it – and by those who wish to be in it.
Its devotees took to social media to pillory the Welsh Conservative heretic, who dared throw scorn upon their holy idol, with cries of “Hypocrite!”
It is always the case that when politicians don’t hear what they want to, they go on the defensive by getting a bit personal.
And what is this hard truth that warranted such a response from all sections of the Welsh political elite?
Simple: After 20 years of devolution, for some people, their lives had not been improved by devolution, and that politics in Wales is bloated, and to borrow a line – which they won’t like – for a very select few, and certainly not for the many.
Remember, it is two decades of Labour rule that has failed Wales – not devolution – but I fully understand why Welsh Labour would get upset about this inconvenient truth.
It has spent the last few years in power trying to hide its awful management of our Welsh NHS from the people of Wales.
It is scared that as more and more people realise that Labour has been running the NHS for the last 20 years, they might start blaming it for the scandalous A&E waiting-times across Wales or that Betsi Cadwaladr UHB has been in special measures for five years come June, or that they are the only government in the UK to have cut an NHS budget.
It’s a truth that caused much of the consternation.
As I said last week, as a party we will not be abolishing the Assembly, but we do need to listen more to the concerns of those who want to.
People from across Wales feel that the Assembly is just like the European Union. People here feel remote, ignored, and disenfranchised. This is not what people voted for all those years ago.
In 1997, those in favour of devolution argued that a Welsh Assembly would improve how our local services were run compared to being run by an out-of-touch Westminster Government that ignored Wales.
For instance, late last year the Assembly spent more time debating renaming itself rather than the horrific scandal of the Cwm Taf maternity services.
All these years later, those in the “Yes” campaign must be horrified that the perceived injustices and everything else they battled against have now come true – but with their own side in charge.
It’s not just that services aren’t what was promised, but that politics itself is too expensive and bloated.
How is it possible that while some politicians were asking people to cut their cloth in the national interest, the Assembly itself was having an annual £1 million pay rise?
Now, some people last weekend were saying that £1m is not a lot, but it’s the principle. If we really are the
Parliament of Wales, then we should be acting in the best interests of the people of Wales – and not ourselves.
We need to listen to the ignored, not just listen to our own Twitter feeds and echo chambers.
But the Bubble still doesn’t get it. Its plan to re-engage and to listen to the people of north Wales is to take the whole Assembly to Mold at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds of your money.
Why aren’t they bringing investment and infrastructure instead of a travelling circus?
That is why I – if a Welsh Conservative administration is elected – will cut the cost of politics.
On day one as your First Minister I will halve the size of the Welsh Government from 14 ministers to a magnificent seven and implement a freeze on hiring more and more civil servants.
We will then use the money saved from a smaller government to engage more doctors, more nurses, more teachers, and more frontline staff that deliver the public services we all rely on. As the Chancellor said during his budget, the Conservative Party is the party of public services.
And to quote that well-used phrase, we need to make sure that our priorities are the people’s priorities, and finally, we shouldn’t be afraid to discuss the big issues – and to burst that Bubble.
Last year, the Assembly spent more time debating its name than the Cwm Taf maternity scandal PAUL DAVIES AM