Andrew RT Davies hits back at Tory ‘scum’ comments
The leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Senedd Andrew RT Davies MS has condemned the Labour party for using unpleasant and dehumanising language.
Writing in The Sunday Times today he said: “Labour need to drop the nastiness, spend less time talking about the constitution, and work with others to deliver on the people’s priorities: jobs, NHS and education.”
Referring to comments made by Angela Rayner at the Labour party conference, he went on: “Over the past seven days we’ve seen a nasty side to Labour and one which isn’t fit for office let alone the challenge ahead. Rather than contributing to political debates in a sensible manner, they resort to vile insults.
“Calling people who vote for a party you disagree with ‘scum’ is not regional slang, as Angela Rayner, Labour’s Deputy Leader since tried to claim.
“People in politics must be able to see their opponents as human. If you dehumanise people, you justify all kinds of unpleasantness. You only need to scratch the surface of history to see how that can manifest itself.
“Just because you feel passionately about something does not make people you disagree with bad. If you see so many people in this country as ‘scum’ purely based on their political beliefs, you probably aren’t the right sort of person or party to be leading our country.”
Claiming that First Minister Mark Drakeford was calling for better intergovernmental relations on the one hand but being unwilling to play his part on the other, Mr Davies went on to say:
“He makes statements calling on the UK Government to cooperate and work with him on his priorities, yet at the same time labels the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as ‘awful’. It has echoes of Rayner’s grim sentiments, and the public deserves better.
Grievance agenda
“And let’s not forget that over half a million people in Wales voted for Boris Johnson at the last general election.
“In fact, more people voted for the Prime Minister in Wales in 2019 than voted for Mark Drakeford in this year’s Senedd election, so labelling Conservatives’ ‘scum’ risks alienating a lot of the people Labour in Wales supposedly represent.
“In politics, you don’t just represent the people who vote for you, you must represent everyone. The approach now characteristic of Labour, whereby you call your opponents ‘scum’, divides people when we need to be working together.
“Ministers in Cardiff Bay shouldn’t have time to fight a grievance agenda on political powers and the intricacies of devolution, they need to be fighting tooth and nail for our people’s priorities.
“Rebuilding Wales after the challenges of the past eighteen months is a monumental task and one which needs us all to roll up our sleeves and work together.”
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I thought it was vermin?
“The tories are lower than vermin’” A Bevin
I don’t like that kind of mud slinging either, it’s unworthy of politicians in a modern democracy.
Will Andrew RT Davies also condemn those, including Michael Gove, who condescendingly referred to many of us as ‘remoaners’ while we were challenging his party about all their lies and broken promises after the Brexit referendum?
…. and also will he condemn those from the Vote Leave campaign who spread lies that Turkish people (our friends and allies in NATO, actually) were joining the EU and we’re posing a threat to us? Will he condemn that racism?
Very popular, too, as that got Brexit delivered, anti muslim feeling running high at the time, and you know very well why. Still is, only strict laws keep people quiet.
Also at time of my post three Labour MP’s are considering joining the Conservatives, so no chance of RT condemning anything as he feels fine.
Only thing to put the wind up his shirt tails is Independent Welsh Labour Party.
Forgot to add, that “our friends and allies” have just negotiated a massive arms deal with Russia. Not that it’s any business of mine, but still……..
…. will he also condemn Boris Johnson’s description of gay men as ‘tank-topped b*mboys’ and Muslim ladies wearing a niqab as ‘letterboxes’?
No of course he won’t!
Yes, didn’t think so.
…. or Boris Johnson’s racist descriptions of African people as ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’
or all of Boris Johnson’s many sexist remarks towards and about women?
While I wouldn’t resort to using Rayner’s limited vocab to describe the tories, having just read the Guardian’s transcribed Q&A’s between Andrew Marr and Johnston, the Welsh First minister’s description of the prime minister is clearly too mild and understated.
I don’t think Ms Rayner’s vocabulary is limited,rather it is forensically accurate.
But the tories have spent their entire existence dehumanising groups of people, it’s their MO. I think Davies should wind his neck in.
He hasn’t got much of a neck, and not a lot in the top 2″ of his head either.
Half a million voted for the haystack ?
I didn’t realise he stood in a Welsh constituency.
Actions speak louder than words and the tory scums actions show me they are scum.
Will this signal the end of his name calling on his Twitter account?
Scum is an unpleasant term, but i think what’s realy bugging ARTD is that it is normaly reserved for those at the bottom of the economic / educational pile.
I see no reason it should not be applied to the outwardly successful, the selfsatisfied, the selfish and the heartless who represent a sort of humanitarian scum.
Don’t forget that scum float to the top.
I was about to say that scum, like cream floats to the top. In theory Boris Johnson is the cream of society. However, his recent comments about cancer survival rates and life expectancy would suggest he isn’t the cream at all. So perhaps, in Boris’s case, Rayner has a point. I wouldn’t generalise her opinion to all Conservatives, mind. I do know some ‘tidy’ ones!
I think non-scum Tories are like the Thylacien, there might be one out there but no-one has been able to confirm it.
Maybe the reason Drakeford got less votes in the Senedd elections is because we have a better democracy and more than only 2 parties for us to vote for. Westminster elections are a joke, they have fptp, an unelected house of lords and an unelected head of state while the government of the day controls the bbc and is in bed with the far right press. Plus we get the government we vote for in the Senedd elections unlike in Westminster where its just Englands choice.
Big words coming from the party that wants to criminalise the RNLI saving people and trying to actively suppress voters…
FIRST when Tories are called ‘scum’ and ‘vermin’ (traditional language about them) it means those at the top like RT davies, Johnson & Co. It doesn’t mean ordinary Tory voters who can be decent folk. So RT Davies is trying to drum up indignation, falsely. /// ….. SECOND those who deliberately starve children, and leave people to die unnecessarily of cold, ginger, despair and disease – such people are scum. No they are not ‘dehumanised’ they’re simply called out for what they are./// …… THIRD Johnson is a lying, lazy, greedy fraud. There’s a(long list of evidence not hard to… Read more »
cold, hunger, despair and disease EDIT
“who deliberately starve children, and leave people to die unnecessarily of cold, ginger, despair and disease”
I take it you didn’t see the Senedd voting records of those members who voted against extending free school meals and their political persuasion?
This “free school meals” – business is a pain my bum. Every child in school should get a decent lunch, free! Toddlers in pre school should also have breakfast, say porridge or choc pudding, as their Mom’s have to work.
Aids the learning process. This is the way in Sweden, Finland and others.
I am not a Lefty btw. I want us to be a nation of entrepreneurs, and that begins age five!
Well Davies, your party does not do itself any favours does it. If you want people to stop constantly deriding your party get it to finally start looking after the poorest in our society instead of the richest.
I am disgusted by many of the policies of the current Westminster government. However, Angela Rayner’s comments were idiotic and totally counter-productive. Let’s win the arguments from the moral high ground based on reason and care for our communities. Not trading insults.
We in wales have got to stop being little Englanders and be proud to be welsh kick all English party’s out of wales that’s the Tories Labour and all Brexit party’s it’s time for a new wales 🏴 start fighting for your children and grandchildren future in wales 🏴
I agree with RT Davies that one should avoid dehumanising those they disagree with, and therefore should be careful about the language they use, but on multiple occasions the Tory government has previously dehumanised people with their actions and therefore their behaviour is scum-like.
Labour need to be smarter in how they attract voters especially as many doubt whether they can run a serious government.
The Tories are quite delicate blooms these days. I suggest Andrew RT Davies toughen up a bit or he’ll wilt like the weed he is. I can remember the days when the Tories used to refer to the unemployed in the very coal communities they put on the scrap heap in the 80s, as workshy shirkers who should work for their benefits by pulling up weeds on verges. You’d swear they were criminals rather than unemployed, although saying that, to be poor is a crime to most crooked second home flipping expenses fiddling naturally corrupt Conservative politicians #YesCymru 🏴;#Ymlaen 🏴… Read more »
Apparently we are not permitted to comment about
https://nation.cymru/news/company-which-employs-alun-cairns-handed-two-uk-gov-nhs-contracts-without-competition/
Presumably for fear of what we might say about apparent corruption and croneyism
Nation.Cymru quite rightly don’t want to find themselves on the business end of a lawsuit from Big Alun or his company. Hence their insistence that “There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by the MP or the company.” Well, no evidence of it,anyway…
Does he appear in the Panama papers? Only a matter of time
Comment was open when the article was published I commented and tweeted with my own title ‘Conservative crony corruption in open sight’
When I worked in a kitchen and boiled bones, it was obvious that scum floated to the top.
Politics is similar.
Tory voters are not scum.. they are victims like the rest of us. Tory politicians however really are scum.
Really? It’s Tory voters who enable Tory governments, and as they’re all adults over the age of 18 one presumes they know what they’re doing, and understand that they’re voting for the truly vile.
There is such a thing as taking responsibility.
Their voters are neither scum nor victims, surely?.
Is starving a kid to save a quid a scummy thing to do?
Don’t call us nasty names says Tory scum.