Rob Roberts scandal made it difficult to find Conservative candidates in Flintshire, party website suggests
The scandals around MP Rob Roberts made it difficult for the Welsh Conservatives to find sufficient candidates for council elections in the Flintshire, a leading Conservative website has suggested.
Conservative Home noted that the Tories were only fighting 20% of seats in Flintshire and suggested that this is because of the scandal surrounding the disgraced Delyn MP.
Rob Roberts lost the Conservative party whip in 2021 after an independent panel found that he had acted inappropriately after he sought to engage in a relationship with a male member of his staff. However, he has refused to resign as an MP, sitting instead as an independent.
Writing on Conservative Home, the deputy editor Henry Hill noted that the number of Conservative candidates in the competitive ‘red wall’ area was not as high as expected.
“Local sources say that it is often simply difficult to find sufficient candidates when every seat is being contested at once,” he said.
“But there are also more obvious challenges. In Flintshire, where the Tories are fighting only 20 per cent of available seats, they think it would have been very different without the scandals surrounding Rob Roberts, the MP for Delyn, and the hairs-breadth miss of Alyn and Deeside in 2019.”
Flintshire Council aligns with the boundaries of two sets, Delyn and Alyn and Deeside. The latter retained a Labour MP at the 2019 election by just over 200 votes.
However, the council is Labour-dominated and controlled, with 34 Labour members to just six Conservatives whose group is the same size as the Lib Dems’.
Rob Roberts has shown no intention of giving up his fight to regain the Conservative whip, launching a full-throated support to the Prime Minister over the partygate affair.
He said: “Delivery is key. The Prime Minister delivers. He delivered on Brexit. He delivered with furlough and with the self-employment income support scheme, which ensured that businesses were able to survive.”
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It is not only because of the actions of an individual.
If you really believe that Wales needs private enterprise system/open market system then a new party will have to be formed, one which is affiliated to the EPP for the open market.market European Free Trade Association membership.
ONE WHICH IS WALES BASED and does not have outside bosses.
Protectionism as practised the the UK Tories has failed and the economy is suffering by being outside the European Single market.
The Tories are a toxic brand, especially seeing deviant Rob Roberts was unrepentant after he made sexual advances towards his female & male staff receiving little or no punishment. Anyone else would have been up in court, fined, and walked away with a criminal record. One rule for them another for everyone else.
Agreed. While Roberts and others like him detract even further from the Tories’ “brand” their major detractions derive from their selfish and cack handed approach to policy in general. Hard to find redeeming features.
Doesn’t help that today we discover that the Chancellor and his wife held US green cards pledging allegiance to their main residence in the US while occupying the taxpayer funded Downing Street flat and being paid by you and me.
They just can’t help themselves. the corruption is built in.
It’s a sign of things to come.Nationwide the Tories have been in power too long and are full of sleaze and corruption. As a result, people are becoming more and more reluctant to represent them, especially in Cymru.
He certainly looks like a seedy specimen.
It’s time for a new wales kick all English party’s out of wales vote Plaid Cymru start fighting for your children and grandchildren future in wales 🏴 young people in wales can’t get on the housing market because of incomers no more second homes in wales 🏴 vote for a new wales vote Plaid Cymru 🏴
They will masquerade as “independents” take care when voting.
I wouldn’t put it down entirely to the fear of being ‘tainted by association’ with sex pest Roberts. Perhaps an awareness of the likelihood of a thorough trouncing in the elections in Sir y Fflint is a more significant factor?