Plaid Cymru MP slams Andrew RT Davies as ‘biddable puppet for string-puller Boris’ before ITV debate

A Plaid Cymru MP has said that Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies would be an unsuitable choice for the First Minister of Wales, calling him a “biddable puppet for string-puller Boris”.

Liz Saville-Roberts said that the Conservatives would operate the Welsh Government as a “branch office” of the UK Government and that their approach to Covid-19 had been “reckless”.

She was writing in advance of tonight’s ITV debate between the three candidates for First Minister, Labour’s Mark Drakeford, Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price and the Conservatives’ Andrew RT Davies at 7pm.

“To be respected in office, you must first prove that you respect that office,” Liz Saville-Roberts wrote in the Sunday Times.

“Every utterance from the Leader of the Welsh Conservatives throughout this campaign to date has suggested that he is incapable of doing just that.

“Andrew RT Davies’ recent cavalier call to end all social distancing in Wales by June with no scientific evidence to boot, is an unsettling reminder of the reckless approach he is so willing to adopt in pursuit of political gain.

“Picture it – a First Minister unwilling to put Wales first. A politician who wants power for himself, not the powers required to change things for the better. A biddable puppet for string-puller Boris.

“The Conservative party may be willing to operate as the branch office of a London headquarters, but we cannot – we must not – allow our parliament to face the same fate in their hands.”

‘Too timid’

Liz Saville-Roberts added that when current First Minister Mark Drakeford has chosen to act independently of the UK Government during the pandemic, Wales had “invariably” fared better.

“From the community-led contact tracing system in Ceredigion to the swift rollout of the vaccine nation-wide, Plaid Cymru has commended the Welsh Government when credit was due,” she said.

“What we have also done is to scrutinise forensically but fairly, calling out the Labour Welsh Government for moving too slow into lockdown and too fast out of the firebreak.

“A conservative Labour First Minister may seem like an oxymoron, but in Wales’s case that is precisely what we have. Too timid in challenging Westminster, too reluctant to tread too far from the UK Government’s line.”