Andrew RT Davies is Leader of the Welsh Conservatives and an MS for South Wales Central.
This weekend, the Welsh Conservatives will be in Llandudno for our annual conference. We are in a unique position: we live, work in, and represent the only part of the UK where Labour is in government.
It’s fair to say Labour’s record in Wales is lamentable. The Welsh public don’t get the public services they deserve, with Labour ministers constantly distracted by an extreme ideology and their expensive vanity projects. The message of our conference will therefore be clear: Labour has the wrong priorities and is holding Wales back.
After 25 years of devolution, Wales has fallen behind the rest of the UK. This didn’t just take place under Mark Drakeford’s leadership, but the trend has continued throughout his tenure.
In our Welsh NHS, 25,000 people are currently waiting two years or more for treatment. In Conservative England, that figure is virtually zero. Labour Wales gets £1.20 for every £1 spent on the NHS in England, but Labour shamefully refuses to spend that full uplift on health. Furthermore, Labour twice cut the Welsh health budget – the only occasions on which an NHS budget has been cut in Britain.
On education, Wales is bottom of the British league table in the international PISA rankings and well below the OECD average. Labour rejected the successful reforms implemented by Conservative colleagues in England, leaving Welsh pupils to experience a steep decline in educational outcomes.
These political decisions have put Welsh people at an unfair disadvantage. Unforgivably, they’ve been taken to make time and resources available for Labour’s ideological vanity projects.
For example, when they should have been working to slash NHS waiting lists, Labour’s priority has been changing the speed limit on Welsh roads to 20mph as part of their culture war on the combustion engine (alongside banning all new major road building projects).
Then there’s spending £120m on 36 more politicians; paying illegal immigrants £1,600 a month through its Universal Basic Income pilot; and bringing Nicola Sturgeon’s dangerous Gender Recognition Bill to Wales.
Not to mention hammering Welsh farmers through ideologically-motivated environmental policies, such as blanket tree planting targets which amount to green blackmail.
Sadly, things will not improve under Drakeford’s successor. Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles, the candidates to replace him, have both pledged to retain his core policies if elected. The problems of priorities and the decline of our public services are a Labour problem, not just a Drakeford problem.
This not just relevant to those of us in Wales, who have to live with the consequences on a daily basis, but also to all Britons: it shows them what to expect from a Labour government. Let’s not forget, Sir Keir Starmer described Drakeford’s Wales as his “blueprint” for the UK.
But while it is our duty to call out Labour’s failures, criticism alone is not enough. We must present our own positive vision and plan to the people of Wales.
As Welsh Conservatives, our vision is one of fair play. We won’t tolerate people gaming our asylum system. We want to look after our most vulnerable. We believe that crime should be punished so our streets can be safe. We want everyone to be able to access to first class health services.
We know we can’t favour multinationals over small businesses. We will stop an extreme minority imposing a dangerous ideology on our society and our institutions. If industries and jobs are at risk, we will take a pragmatic approach and do all we can to help. It’s a vision of a real One Nation conservatism.
In recent years, the term “one nation” has been mischaracterised, lazily used by the media to refer to the out of date concept of “wets” and “dries” within our Party. It is also mistakenly used to describe Conservative Party members of a liberal disposition.
This ignores completely the Disraelian roots of the one nation philosophy, which emphasised the natural obligations we have towards one another and a society built upon respect.
Real One Nation conservatism takes the one-nation tradition back to its core. Through a pragmatic rather than an ideological approach to our economy, and defeating the extremism that has become too prevalent in our institutions, we’ll deliver a fairer, more unified country.
Division is not inevitable, but a consequence of a loud yet powerful minority imposing an out of touch worldview on society. The majority of Welsh people want a government focused on improving living standards, not one that prioritises environmental extremism, gender ideology, and critical race theory.
As in the rest of Britain, Labour abandoned its traditional Welsh working-class supporters long ago. For young people being raised in the Valleys, this is not the Labour Party their grandad voted for. They desperately deserve an alternative and that’s what genuine One Nation conservatism offers.
The Welsh Conservatives’ vision naturally focuses on Wales. But our approach will benefit our whole United Kingdom. Our Union is so special because Wales, Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland play a unique yet crucial role in our common country. It doesn’t matter which part you are in: for the vast majority of us, our values are the same.
I’m in no doubt that adopting real One Nation conservatism would deliver unprecedented electoral success for our Party. But it would also secure something far more important: a united Britain, in which extremism and division are cast aside the better to prioritise improving living standards and public services. We should embrace it.
Andrew RT Davies is Leader of the Welsh Conservatives and an MS for South Wales Central.
This weekend, the Welsh Conservatives will be in Llandudno for our annual conference. We are in a unique position: we live, work in, and represent the only part of the UK where Labour is in government.
It’s fair to say Labour’s record in Wales is lamentable. The Welsh public don’t get the public services they deserve, with Labour ministers constantly distracted by an extreme ideology and their expensive vanity projects. The message of our conference will therefore be clear: Labour has the wrong priorities and is holding Wales back.
After 25 years of devolution, Wales has fallen behind the rest of the UK. This didn’t just take place under Mark Drakeford’s leadership, but the trend has continued throughout his tenure.
In our Welsh NHS, 25,000 people are currently waiting two years or more for treatment. In Conservative England, that figure is virtually zero. Labour Wales gets £1.20 for every £1 spent on the NHS in England, but Labour shamefully refuses to spend that full uplift on health. Furthermore, Labour twice cut the Welsh health budget – the only occasions on which an NHS budget has been cut in Britain.
On education, Wales is bottom of the British league table in the international PISA rankings and well below the OECD average. Labour rejected the successful reforms implemented by Conservative colleagues in England, leaving Welsh pupils to experience a steep decline in educational outcomes.
These political decisions have put Welsh people at an unfair disadvantage. Unforgivably, they’ve been taken to make time and resources available for Labour’s ideological vanity projects.
For example, when they should have been working to slash NHS waiting lists, Labour’s priority has been changing the speed limit on Welsh roads to 20mph as part of their culture war on the combustion engine (alongside banning all new major road building projects).
Then there’s spending £120m on 36 more politicians; paying illegal immigrants £1,600 a month through its Universal Basic Income pilot; and bringing Nicola Sturgeon’s dangerous Gender Recognition Bill to Wales.
Not to mention hammering Welsh farmers through ideologically-motivated environmental policies, such as blanket tree planting targets which amount to green blackmail.
Sadly, things will not improve under Drakeford’s successor. Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles, the candidates to replace him, have both pledged to retain his core policies if elected. The problems of priorities and the decline of our public services are a Labour problem, not just a Drakeford problem.
This not just relevant to those of us in Wales, who have to live with the consequences on a daily basis, but also to all Britons: it shows them what to expect from a Labour government. Let’s not forget, Sir Keir Starmer described Drakeford’s Wales as his “blueprint” for the UK.
But while it is our duty to call out Labour’s failures, criticism alone is not enough. We must present our own positive vision and plan to the people of Wales.
As Welsh Conservatives, our vision is one of fair play. We won’t tolerate people gaming our asylum system. We want to look after our most vulnerable. We believe that crime should be punished so our streets can be safe. We want everyone to be able to access to first class health services.
We know we can’t favour multinationals over small businesses. We will stop an extreme minority imposing a dangerous ideology on our society and our institutions. If industries and jobs are at risk, we will take a pragmatic approach and do all we can to help. It’s a vision of a real One Nation conservatism.
In recent years, the term “one nation” has been mischaracterised, lazily used by the media to refer to the out of date concept of “wets” and “dries” within our Party. It is also mistakenly used to describe Conservative Party members of a liberal disposition.
This ignores completely the Disraelian roots of the one nation philosophy, which emphasised the natural obligations we have towards one another and a society built upon respect.
Real One Nation conservatism takes the one-nation tradition back to its core. Through a pragmatic rather than an ideological approach to our economy, and defeating the extremism that has become too prevalent in our institutions, we’ll deliver a fairer, more unified country.
Division is not inevitable, but a consequence of a loud yet powerful minority imposing an out of touch worldview on society. The majority of Welsh people want a government focused on improving living standards, not one that prioritises environmental extremism, gender ideology, and critical race theory.
As in the rest of Britain, Labour abandoned its traditional Welsh working-class supporters long ago. For young people being raised in the Valleys, this is not the Labour Party their grandad voted for. They desperately deserve an alternative and that’s what genuine One Nation conservatism offers.
The Welsh Conservatives’ vision naturally focuses on Wales. But our approach will benefit our whole United Kingdom. Our Union is so special because Wales, Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland play a unique yet crucial role in our common country. It doesn’t matter which part you are in: for the vast majority of us, our values are the same.
I’m in no doubt that adopting real One Nation conservatism would deliver unprecedented electoral success for our Party. But it would also secure something far more important: a united Britain, in which extremism and division are cast aside the better to prioritise improving living standards and public services. We should embrace it.