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Welsh Secretary an ‘unreliable chameleon’ and Alun Cairns a ‘selfish careerist’ say Tory colleagues after Truss u-turn

17 Aug 2022 3 minute read
Alun Cairns. Picture by Richard Townshend (CC BY 3.0). Right, New Welsh Secretary Robert Buckland. Photo Jonathan Brady PA Images

Both the Welsh Secretary Robert Buckland and Vale of Glamorgan MP Alun Cairns have been criticised by their own colleagues after jumping ship from supporting Rishi Sunak to his rival Liz Truss.

With Liz Truss now heavily favoured to win, South Swindon MP Robert Buckland announced on Friday that he had withdrawn support from Rishi Sunak in the Conservative leadership campaign. He was followed on Monday by one of his predecessors in the role, Alun Cairns.

A serving Conservative councillor from Robert Buckland’s shire of Wiltshire criticised him over the move, saying that he was an “unreliable chameleon”.

Councillor Jonathan Seed said: “I know from personal experience that Robert puts his personal ambition before principles.

“Can he not see that commitment, even to a loser, is better than crawling mid-campaign to a winner? Why would a PM give a job to such an unreliable chameleon?”

Alun Cairns was also slammed over his late defection, with a a senior Welsh Conservative source telling the Guido Fawkes website that he was a “selfish careerist”.

“It’s clear to everybody what’s happened here,” they said. “Alun has seen which way the wind is blowing and flip-flopped.

“The guff about the Union is just a poorly constructed smoke screen for what is ultimately a selfish, careerist leap for the bandwagon.”

‘Risks’

Alun Cairns said on Monday that he believes the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is the best candidate to secure the Union of the four UK nations.

He argued that the Union would be more likely to break up under Mr Sunak, a former chancellor, compared to his opponent and her “positive ambition for our country”.

Ms Truss has adopted a more abrasive approach to the first ministers of the devolved administrations during the campaign to succeed Boris Johnson in No 10.

She has described Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon as an “attention seeker” who is “best ignored” and called Wales’s Mark Drakeford a “low energy version of Jeremy Corbyn”.

Writing in The Mail+, Mr Cairns said: “At the outset of the campaign, I met Rishi Sunak to discuss the future of the Union and was content with his responses. I chose to support him.

“However, as the campaign has developed, the risks to our Union have become more apparent. There is a need to break out of the current orthodoxy. The future of our Union depends on it.

“For this reason, I have concluded that with the positive ambition for our country and imagination she has shown, alongside her strong track record as a reformer, Liz Truss is best placed to secure our Union.”

Robert Buckland, who was appointed Welsh Secretary when Simon Hart resigned last month, became the first cabinet member to switch from endorsing one of the final two candidates to the other on Friday.

Writing in the Telegraph, he said: “Liz understands the need to make supply-side reforms, unlocking the private sector that powers our economic growth through investment and providing high-skilled jobs, such as the ones I saw at Airbus in North Wales on my visit with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on Thursday.”

He also hinted that it may be time for Rishi Sunak to concede so that they did not allow “what has been an overall positive contest for our party slide into more blue-on-blue as the weeks roll on”.

“It is time for positive politics, time to come together, and time for Liz to lead.”


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Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
1 year ago

Such a dishonourable company of men. How do they have the nerve to walk among their fellow countrymen. They should be shunned by all who know them. To give them your vote brings shame upon your head and makes you even less than they are…

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
1 year ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

A Saudi woman is given 34 years in jail for using twitter, how will the ‘Android in search of AI’ Truss square this I wonder…given her penchant for the platform…

Last edited 1 year ago by Mab Meirion
John
John
1 year ago

Tories telling the truth – be suspicious!

Fi yn unig
Fi yn unig
1 year ago

I’m content that neither of these two turncoats are Welsh. They’ve proved that by their party affiliation and their words so we don’t need to be ashamed here. However, they do come from our country with accents demonstrating that so I hope it does not lead to the use of that awful term ‘Welshing’ on their loyalty to Sunak in this case. It’s an open goal for a critical anti Welsh Tory to use which will cast these two as having brought shame on our country wether we like it or not and the two culprits won’t care a jot.

arthur owen
1 year ago
Reply to  Fi yn unig

This is a silly notion,Welsh people are as capable of being wrong headed,silly,wrong or indeed traitorous as any one else.If Welsh people are not capable of treason why are so many traitors in our midst.

One of the two witnesses
One of the two witnesses
1 year ago
Reply to  arthur owen

Indeed. Many Welsh people voted for Brexit. We have plenty of wrong headed goons. Not as many as Flatland, but we grow them here as well

Fi yn unig
Fi yn unig
1 year ago

I’m in agreement with both of you on the ‘wrong head’ thing. I’m just attempting to disown them as it makes me feel better although I realise they were grown here and we’re stuck with them until we can breed out their attitude by instilling pride in our nation through future generations.

One of the two witnesses
One of the two witnesses
1 year ago
Reply to  Fi yn unig

Oh understood. It would be nice to pack them off to their masters, to put them out of our misery. I’d rather a smaller population with NO Stockholm Syndrome towards our occupiers, than have to share a nationality with serfs. Not practical, ethically dubious (although used often – in a far more brutal and murderous form – by the British Empire Crime Syndicate) and would give the wrong headed goons something new to shriek about. But what goes on in a man’s imagination is his own business.

Wrexhamian
Wrexhamian
1 year ago

That’s a weird mini-thread there. They’re just Dic Sion Dafydd’s, and they can’t be stripped of their nationality on the grounds of having political opinions that belong in the 19th Century and which are completely against the best interests of Wales and its people. Fortunately the views of Cairns and Buckland are shared by only a tiny minority in Cymru. The real problem is that these two are in positions of power, and that’s down to the people who voted for them.

Last edited 1 year ago by Wrexhamian
Fi yn unig
Fi yn unig
1 year ago
Reply to  arthur owen

Whether

I Humphrys
I Humphrys
1 year ago

Looking forward to three things: 1. Election to oust all Tories. 2. Independence.

3.The day of judgement!

Last edited 1 year ago by I Humphrys
Andrew Thomas
Andrew Thomas
1 year ago

Both are dishonest and selfish individuals who have shown their true colours

Quornby
Quornby
1 year ago

Well…. er… yes….. Quite so and we didn’t need a Tory to tell us.

Y Cymro
Y Cymro
1 year ago

Alun Cairns & Robert Buckland typify what it is to be a Welsh Conservative. Dic Sion Dafydd.

Last edited 1 year ago by Y Cymro
Glen
Glen
1 year ago

We’ve seen this behaviour previously. weasel Cairns started the Brexit campaign as a remainer but swapped sides to become a hard-line Brexiter immediately after the count.

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