‘Welsh Conservatives offer ‘clear blue water’ to Cardiff Bay bubble’
Welsh Conservative leader Paul Davies lays out his view of his party’s purpose in Wales today
POLITICAL parties change. Politics changes. Priorities change. And sometimes, dare I say it, political minds change too. We all listen, we all think, and some of us even learn.
I was one of the many Conservatives who accepted Welsh devolution after the 1997 referendum. We put aside our old opposition and determined to make it work for the people of Wales so that we had the services we deserved.
But we are 23 years on from the referendum, and anyone who assumes we should go into the next Welsh Parliamentary election with the same sort of approach and the same sort of policies as three elections previously is frankly out of touch with where the Conservative Party is now, and where the people of Wales are now.
So many things have changed in a decade and a half. One of those huge changes is the Brexit vote. I campaigned to remain in 2016. But, like a proper democrat, I accepted the result and respected the decision taken by the public.
I am proud that the Conservative Party has pulled together to deliver Brexit, whether we voted for it or not.
Compare that to Labour. Compare that to Plaid Cymru. Compare that to what’s left of the Lib Dems. What unites them all is their utter loathing of the people who voted for Brexit, and their total contempt for the result of that vote. And that has changed how lots of people see them, as we saw demonstrated in last year’s general election.
Labour losing red wall seats in north Wales; The Lib Dems confined to irrelevance losing their only seat; Plaid Cymru inching closer to 20 years since they last won a new seat in Westminster, fighting the same battles over and over again making little progress.
Covid has changed things too. It has made us all more cautious, more fearful, more threatened, and also more unsure. It has shaken us more than we quite realise yet, as people, as political parties and as democratic institutions.
And the other profound change has been a decade of Conservative government in Westminster. And that is a crucial point. The magnetic force of the party occupying Number 10 has a powerful reaction on every party operating in Wales.
When Labour was in power, the magnet drew Conservatives, Plaid Cymru and Liberals potentially together. With a Conservative prime minister it would be a mistake to suggest that those magnetic forces were still pulling in the same direction.
Other changes have been significant too. Plaid Cymru has embraced independence with a dangerous fury. No longer is independence for Wales a footnote policy hidden behind Plaid pledges to nationalise the railways. They have lurched so far left the only thing that distinguishes them from Corbyn’s Labour is the prominence of the daffodil.
There are no circumstances, no scenario, where I would ever support independence. I am Welsh-speaking, a proudly Welsh and British politician and I will fight with all my energy to put the UK at the heart of what we do.
We are ready for the Welsh Parliamentary election next May, to win that election and to lead Wales for the first time. Our focus now is on a devolution revolution. A whole new way of governing in Wales: smaller, leaner, and more accountable government. Less empire building. Less virtue signalling. Less wasting your hard earned money. Less of doing things differently just because Wales can. Less pandering to the chattering classes.
After all, these chatterers are a group of cosy chums with the same sort of agenda. They are academics and commentators who are pinning on party rosettes one minute, and passing themselves off as independent commentators the next. Analysts whose constant refrain for two decades has been that all parties should be more Welsh. Be more committed to devolution. Be hungrier for more powers. Be as committed to the same principles as each other. Look like each other. Talk like each other. Think like each other. Be like each other.
The commentariat of this bubble and the soggy centre-left feel threatened by the new radical energy of the Welsh Conservatives.
Their view of us is that we are tolerable providing we oppose a Welsh Labour Government in a way that doesn’t challenge the central values Labour and their Plaid helpers have hardwired into devolution.
They even have the cheek to define what a Conservative should be. Let me be quite clear: thanks, but we Conservatives will define ourselves.
The Cardiff Bay Bubble want a Conservative Party in Wales that is as close to Mark Drakeford as it is to Boris Johnson. They almost want clear blue water between us and Westminster.
Well, they will get that clear blue water.
But it won’t be between my team and Boris’ team. It will be between the Welsh Conservatives and the parties of the Cardiff Bay Bubble, the parties that have been Labour’s little helpers for 20 years.
We are the party that is listening and will take action on people’s priorities.
Priorities which have been ignored by Labour and the rest of the Cardiff Bay bubble for 20 years.
As I’ve said time and time again, people feel ignored right across Wales. In the north, our health services were left to languish in special measures for nearly six years, only to come out six months before an election!
For 20 years we may have had consensus but we haven’t had leadership.
We will deliver that leadership. We will deliver the public services the people of Wales deserve. We will deliver the infrastructure that Labour has neglected.
Wales deserves better and we will deliver.