Welsh Conservatives fragment in the face of poor leadership

News that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has deliberately snubbed the Welsh Conservative leader is the latest blow to the demoralised Tory ranks in Wales.

According to media reports, Johnson failed to inform Welsh Assembly group leader, Paul Davies, of his plans to prorogue parliament.

To add insult to injury, Johnson had taken care to alert then Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, of his plans to suspend parliament.

Deliberately sidelining Davies will do little to ease the Tories’ mounting woes in Wales, where the Conservatives are under pressure both from the Labour party and the pro-independence Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales).

The situation is made worse by Tory in-fighting, spurred on by Johnson’s no-deal Brexit strategy. Senior Welsh Tory, David Melding, has said he wants “no part” in a no-deal Brexit strategy that would hurt “the most vulnerable”.

In a speech to the Welsh Assembly on September 05, Melding said Britain faces its “greatest peacetime crisis since the Irish crisis [a century ago]”.

According to the BBC Wales political editor, Felicity Evans, Melding is the first Welsh Tory Assembly Member to “openly, strongly, and publicly” criticize Johnson over Brexit.  

Tory in-fighting in Wales is exacerbated by a weak organization and the apparent lack of a clear hierarchy.

Davies, who is the official Welsh Tory leader, has a low profile and is not widely respected by the Welsh Tory rank and file.

There is widespread concern that Davies has failed to improve the Tories’ political position since being elected in September 2018 as the leader of the Welsh Conservative party group in the Welsh Assembly.

According to Professor Roger Awan-Scully, of the Welsh Governance Centre at Cardiff University, “polling data” since Davies’s election last year suggests he has “made pretty much no impact on the Welsh public at all”.

Awan-Scully adds that the “problem” stems in part from “confusion” within Welsh Tory ranks as to whether their leader is Davies or the “Welsh Secretary, Alun Cairns”.

Meanwhile, the Welsh Labour party has seen fit to go on the offensive against Johnson, and by extension, the Welsh Tories.

In a blistering attack on Johnson’s administration, Mark Drakeford, who is Wales’ First Minister and the leader of the Welsh Labour party, said that this was a “government which has lost all respect for the truth” and has “lost its moral compass”.

Addressing the Welsh Assembly, Drakeford said: “A government which has no respect for the truth has forfeited the respect on which our democracy relies”. 

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