Tories can win back voters who deserted party in Wales, says deputy leader

Richard Youle, Local Democracy Reporter

Voters who deserted the Conservatives in parts of Wales can be won back if the party shows it has serious answers to problems including soaring energy costs, its new deputy leader has said.

Alex Burghart made the claim during a visit to Swansea, where the Conservatives have suffered a dramatic decline in support over the past decade.

The party won the former Gower constituency from Labour in 2015, but its share of the vote there fell by 21 percentage points at the 2024 general election.

It also dropped by almost 19 points in Swansea West and 20 points in Caerfyrddin.

The decline continued at this year’s Senedd election, when the Conservatives finished fourth in the new Gŵyr Abertawe constituency and failed to win any of its six seats.

Mr Burghart, who was meeting business representatives at an event at Norton House Hotel in Mumbles, said he believed some voters had been “experimenting” during a period of increasingly fragmented multi-party politics.

He said voters could take a different view “when new parties turn up and they behave badly, either because they let local voters down, or because they do the wrong thing, they step outside of the rules, or because they start to reveal that they don’t actually have a plan or agenda and don’t believe in anything”.

Mr Burghart added: “And then I think that’s where parties that are united and consistent and under strong leadership and a good team will do well.”

The Conservative deputy leader also criticised Reform UK, saying the party had experienced “a pretty awful month in most regards”.

He questioned Nigel Farage’s judgement after the Reform UK leader was secretly filmed during a discussion which appeared to concern proposed donations to the party.

Mr Farage subsequently told the BBC he “frankly wasn’t listening” to the discussion about the potential donation.

Reform UK has denied wrongdoing and said it will cooperate fully with a Metropolitan Police investigation into the matter.

Mr Burghart said he believed people who had started voting for Reform were beginning to question whether it was serious about becoming a party of government.

Asked what the Conservatives would do to address cost-of-living pressures in Swansea and Gower, Mr Burghart said reducing energy and electricity costs would be a priority.

He said allowing more domestic oil and gas extraction could help bring down household and business bills.

Opponents of increased extraction argue that it would damage efforts to tackle climate change and that UK gas prices are largely determined by international markets. They argue that increasing supplies of renewable and nuclear power offers a better route to reducing the country’s exposure to volatile gas prices.

Mr Burghart said climate change was real and that the Conservatives supported a transition to cleaner energy, but argued that it had to remain affordable.

He said renewable energy which required “a very heavy subsidy” resulted in additional costs for households and businesses.

Welfare

The Conservatives also want to reduce the UK’s welfare bill, with Mr Burghart arguing that the number of payments to people with what he described as low-level mental health problems had undergone an unintended “explosion”.

He said Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch had offered to work with Prime Minister Andy Burnham on reducing welfare spending, but claimed Labour had refused to work with the Conservatives.

The two parties have clashed over how welfare spending should be reduced and how increases in defence spending should be funded. Mr Burnham has rejected Conservative proposals to make substantial cuts to housing benefit, arguing they could lead to increased homelessness, while insisting the Government is committed to reforming welfare.

Asked whether savings could instead be made by changing the state pension triple lock, Mr Burghart said: “So the reason why we focused on working-age welfare is because people who have retired have no choice.

“They’re not working any more – they can’t seek more hours, they can’t try and look at ways of increasing their income.”

He said there was also a duty to provide for people who had worked throughout their lives and argued that economic growth would make policies such as the triple lock affordable.

“I think one of the things that neither Labour nor Reform appreciate is that it’s business that generates growth, not government,” he said.

“The changes that Labour has brought in mean that it’s very expensive to hire people. It’s very expensive, particularly expensive to hire young people.

“We want to have an opportunity society, we want to have an entrepreneurial society where if you’re a business and you want to hire people you shouldn’t hesitate.”

‘Run out of ideas’

Mr Burghart, a former teacher and MP for Brentwood and Ongar in Essex, also criticised Mr Burnham, saying he had “already run out of ideas” and was not prepared to make the commitments the Conservatives wanted on defence and welfare.

The Prime Minister has said the Government is committed to spending 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035, while rejecting the argument that national security should come at the expense of social security.

Asked about his own connections to the area, Mr Burghart said he was “a bit Welsh” and had previously visited Swansea.

“My mum’s dad’s grandfather, or maybe great-grandfather, was born in the workhouse in Swansea,” he said.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked Labour and Reform UK for comment but neither had responded at the time of publication.

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