The worst political leader in the UK

How do we solve a problem like the Welsh Conservatives?

Hello

I want to focus this week on the leader of the opposition here in Wales - Andrew RT Davies. 

The leader of the Welsh Tories in the Senedd has turned his relentless quest for attention at any price up to 11 in recent weeks (I realise the irony of this statement given that this is literally called the Will Hayward Newsletter). 

We are going to break this down into three parts:

1. A brief overview of the current controversies Mr Davies finds himself in.

2. Explain why I believe that Mr Davies is the worst leader of a political party in the UK.

3. Discuss how the Welsh Conservatives can be transformed from the joke they currently are to a party that has at least a shot of being in government.

Racism rows and abolishing the Senedd

Right, let’s make this bit quick because most of it is already in the public domain. There are a few key issues that are impacting Mr Davies at the moment:

A poll at a country show

Last week Mr Davies posted on his social media a picture of the Conservative stand at an agricultural show. In it they were asking people to vote on whether the Senedd should be abolished. 

This sparked outrage among his own party because abolishing the Senedd has never been Welsh Conservative policy. Many of his own MSs posted their support for devolution on their own social media. 

One example was former Welsh Tory leader Paul Davies wrote: “The Conservative Party is clear - it is not party policy to abolish the Senedd so not sure why this question is even being asked.”

I spoke to several Welsh Tories who were really furious that their leader posted this. I was struck by how angry some (not all) were. Normally Mr Davies’ populist antics get a bit of a shrug and an eye roll, but this time around the reaction was much stronger. 

Even the former Welsh Tory leader Nick Bourne, who led the party in Wales from 1999-2011 and is now a Lord, weighed in. He was roused from his semi-retirement in Andover to post: “It has NEVER been the policy of the Welsh Conservative Party to abolish the Assembly/Senedd. Why pose this question?”

Now I should point out that the chances of any imminent move against Andrew RT Davies is minimal. One MS told me there was little prospect of anyone trying to replace him.   

Racism rows

There are two strands to this. The first is Conservative MS Laura Anne Jones, who used a racist slur to describe Chinese people in a WhatsApp chat. You can see it here:

Mr Davies was criticised for not suspending Ms Jones from the party (she has already been removed from the cabinet pending a police investigation into her expenses). 

This row has been compounded by the fact Mr Davies himself has been accused of "Islamophobic race-baiting" by the Muslim Council of Wales following an article he penned for GB News. 

He wrote that children "should not be forced to eat halal school lunches", following allegations from a constituent that non-halal meat was not available at her daughter's school in Cowbridge. The school has since said that the claim “all meat options are ‘halal only’ is incorrect”.

Mr Davies has since said that allegations of race-baiting were "completely untrue". 

This isn’t the only time that Mr Davies' comments on that “news” channel have landed him in hot water. He was investigated by the Standards Commissioner after incorrect claims he made about child migrants. 

Now we have the context for the current criticism of the Welsh Conservative leader, let’s look at the other issues. 

Why Andrew RT Davies is the worst political leader in the UK

Before I explain this, we need to deal with a far more basic question - is Andrew RT Davies actually the Welsh Conservative leader?

This might seem a bizarre thing to ask but it is actually quite pertinent. Because technically Mr Davies isn’t the leader of the Welsh Conservatives because there isn’t actually a distinct organisation called the “Welsh Conservatives”. They are simply part of the wider UK party. 

This was recently pointed out on Twitter by Tory MS Joel James. Continuing the statesmen like tone set by his “leader” he called a news site “bordering on” deranged and pointed out that Mr Davies is in fact the leader of the Conservative group in the Senedd, not the leader of the Welsh Tories.

To be fair this is an easy mistake to make because Andrew RT Davies himself literally describes himself in his own bio as “Welsh Conservative Leader”. Does this make him also “bordering on derangement”? Who knows…

Let us accept that Mr Davies is, at the very least, the highest ranking Welsh Conservative. I believe there is a strong argument to be made that he is the worst political leader in the UK. 

To explain why we need to understand what the aims of a good Welsh Conservative leader should be:

1. Become the largest party inside the Senedd. 

2. Offer a viable alternative to Welsh Labour, with a costed, ambitious and thought-through vision for Wales.

3. Hold Welsh Labour to account on a day to day basis but also for the performance over the last 25 years.

4. To differentiate themselves from the toxic and chaotic brand of the UK Tory Party given this has been fully rejected by voters across the UK.

5. Conduct yourself in a way that unites and inspires the country. Call me idealistic but this should surely be the aim of all political leaders. 

6. Not to deceive the public.

I think you can make a strong argument that Mr Davies has consistently failed in all of these endeavours and they are all interwoven. 

Under his leadership the Welsh Conservatives are a million miles from becoming the largest party in the Senedd. The latest polling suggests they could be fourth in 2026!

This is all the more ridiculous because the hand he has been dealt is actually quite favourable. He is up against an unpopular Labour Welsh Government, which has had three leaders this year, was mired in a donation scandal, is presiding over some of the worst public services in the UK and has no money. Yet Mr Davies’ party is floundering.

The reason they are struggling is due to the fact they have totally failed to achieve points two, three and four:

• They have absolutely no vision for Wales at all. When I asked them how they would fund the NHS in Wales they said they would cut projects that happened back in 2008! Seriously. You can read about it here. 

• While they may rant and rave on social media about Labour’s record, the leadership of the Welsh Conservatives has never really managed to hold them to account in a meaningful way. This is because, contrary to their seeming belief, holding people to account isn’t just having a pop in the Senedd chamber or online, it is providing a viable alternative. It is saying “you shouldn’t have done that, you should have done this”. 

• The key word here is “viable”. I have very rarely seen Mr Davies suggest something as an alternative that would stand up to proper scrutiny. I will never forget when Welsh Labour introduced some lockdowns in the autumn of 2020 he seriously suggested that we should be locking down individual streets instead. 

• The inability to differentiate the Welsh and UK Conservative parties has been another key failing of Mr Davies. I have been wracking my brains trying to think of a way in which the Welsh Tories are different to their UK counterparts and can only think of two. 

  The first is that they support Wales getting its fair share of HS2 funding. However, they had to be dragged to this position kicking and screaming because for a long time they opposed Wales getting more money - insane when you think about it (or should that be deranged?). The second is that they say they now support free prescriptions. Again, this is a position they grudgingly move to after having initially vehemently opposed the measure. 

Points five and six are intertwined. We have documented several times in this newsletter how Mr Davies has misled the public over both “blanket” 20mph limits and money being paid to child migrants. His comments on GB news over the basic income payments to children in care were a clear and obvious lie that he hasn’t corrected. 

Regarding conducting himself in a way that unites, Mr Davies’ social media output is far more troll than statesman. He deliberately tries to ride the Twitter algorithm that rewards anger and outrage. It’s frankly embarrassing and epitomises more than anything that Mr Davies has given up on any realistic prospect of ever getting into Government. 

To defeat Reform, you can not become Reform

If we were being kind to Mr Davies we could argue that he is deliberately trying to position himself to counter the threat of Reform. The logic being that if he shifts to the right and follows a populist line, he won’t lose core voters to Mr Farage. 

But this is to woefully misinterpret the way to respond to Reform. The Tories in Westminster have done everything they can to be like Reform and it failed spectacularly at the last election. The extremes of politics are never sated. If you move to the right, they will just go further to the right. 

Plus Reform is, in large part, a protest party against what is considered the establishment. There is no way a Welsh Conservative Party can ever win by pretending it is anti-establishment. 

The final flaw in this plan is that simply Wales is not that right wing. Yes there is a substantial amount of people who are on the right, but most of the votes aren’t there. If you want to win significant votes you can’t just appeal to a small population of the voters on the right when your polity has a left of centre identity. 

How to solve a problem like the Welsh Tories?

For a bit of fun, let’s plan how the Welsh Conservatives could make gains at the next election. If I was being paid as a politician strategist, this is what I would suggest they do:

• Ditch the leader. He is a busted flush. The only people who dislike him more than the public are many of his own MSs. He is too toxic and clearly not a serious politician.

• Create a defined Welsh identity separate from the UK party. There is a reason why former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson was popular in Scotland when the UK Tories were hated - she was different. She defended herself as a Conservative with a distinct Scottish identity. 

• To create this separate identity you need to create clear blue water between yourselves and London. Be hyper critical of how Wales has been short changed on issues like HS2. If you want to be really ambitious, apologies for how striking miners were treated in the 1980’s. Just do something that shows you are not simply the Conservative Party’s Welsh branch.

• Just be moderate. There is absolutely a space on the centre right of Welsh politics for a sensible party. People are desperate for change in Wales. Everyone can see we have real challenges, but many voters are turned off by the sort of populist crap the party has been pumping out. Simply being a moderate alternative will make you a natural home for reasonable people who are sick of Labour but are not convinced by Plaid. 

• The other massive benefit of detoxifying the party and being more moderate is that the Welsh Tories may now be in a position to form a coalition. At the moment, no party other than Reform would ever go into partnership with them. Given that it is almost impossible to win an outright majority in the Welsh Parliament, if you want power, you need to be palatable to other parties. Being less nutty could mean that you can be part of a future Welsh Government. 

• You have to take your membership with you. The reason why Andrew RT Davies feels really confident in suggesting abolishing the Senedd is that most of the Welsh members are supportive of that and pretty right wing. If it comes to a leadership election, he would probably win. Any prospective leader will need to convince the Welsh membership (which is tiny) that the path to unseating Labour is through moderation. This will take a person of immense persuasive skills, after all, this is the membership that gave us Liz Truss.
  

That is all for this week.

Thanks so much for reading. 

Will