Hold the obituaries: the Welsh Conservatives aren’t buried just yet 

Ioan Phillips

The Associate Editor of this esteemed organ wrote a great book (Poor Man’s Parliament, for anyone wanting a birthday gift for the Welsh political anorak in their life), covering the first decade of devolution.

The recurring theme is debates about process: think Objective One funding rows, semantics regarding the applicability of Legislative Consent Orders, and the will-they-won’t-they engagement in forming the One Wales coalition.

Delve beneath this and another theme emerges – that of the slow, but gradual, re-growth of the Tory oak in Wales from the nadir of its 1997 general election wipeout.

As the Welsh Conservatives gathered in Llangollen for their Spring Conference this weekend, some elements within the party echo political opponents in declaring the Tory oak well and truly felled, Sycamore Gap-style.

Complex

Like the felling of the real-life oak by Hadrian’s Wall, such claims generate eye-catching headlines. The reality of the Welsh Conservatives’ situation is a little more complex, however.

Proponents of the Welsh Conservative Death Spiral narrative typically emphasise that the party in Wales is riven by conflict between its leadership and grassroots, intellectually moribund, and, as a result, is being subsumed by Reform as the main right-wing force in Welsh politics.

Certainly, there’s much contemporary evidence lending support to the proposition of Conservative wipeout.

The anti-devolutionist faction in the grassroots party is increasingly vocal in challenging what it sees as the leadership’s unwillingness to challenge Welsh political orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, polling shows that Reform is significantly ahead of the Welsh Conservatives.

On this basis, the climate doesn’t look too fortuitous for the Conservative oak.

But it’s worth remembering that it suits Tory grassroots leadership critics and political opponents alike to advance the Conservative Death Spiral narrative.

Warning

For Tory members hostile to the party’s Senedd leadership, Conservative travails conveniently serve as a warning and internal campaign platform (the nub of which being ditch support for devolution, or we’re dead).

From the perspectives of the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru, promoting the idea of terminal Tory decline frames the debate in terms of coalescing around one or the other as the only viable bulwark against Reform (a billing that Reform’s UK leader, Nigel Farage, is more than happy to lean into, given its implicit acknowledgement of the electoral threat posed by his outfit).

There are, however, three fundamentals that should give the Welsh Conservatives some hope of avoiding electoral implosion.

Firstly, there’s the Conservative advantage in having established institutional capacity.

Admittedly, Reform’s coffers aren’t exactly empty after poaching several former Tory donors. At the same time, however, the Welsh Conservatives have a full constellation of constituency and regional associations, plus existing national campaign structures, to draw upon.

Reform’s structures are getting up and running – but, as its ongoing lack of a Welsh leader shows, this is a work in progress.

Then, you have candidate selection, which, for newer parties like Reform and UKIP before it, runs the risk of approving unsavoury individuals whose views could distract from national campaigning.

Failing that, there’s always the potential for pronouncements from Reform’s Westminster leadership to overshadow matters over Offa’s Dyke.

The party’s then-lead spokesperson in Wales, Oliver Lewis, spent much of the final two weeks of the 2024 general campaign trying to explain why his Westminster boss wasn’t pro-Putin.

The second fundamental that Tory Death Spiral theorists often overlook is voter behaviour.

Relying on the premise that those voters currently declaring in favour of Reform (who are very Unionist and, for the most part, anti-devolution) will be sufficiently motivated to turn out and vote Reform is a bit shaky.

Looking back at previous Senedd elections, you can see a clear gap between voting intention and voter behaviour where Reform (and its political predecessors) have been on the ballot.

This segues into the third, and final, fundamental: residual Conservative support.

Kingmaker

If the polls are to be believed, the Welsh Conservatives are, as things stand, picking up between 13 and 19% of the vote.

This could give them anywhere between 10 and 20 seats in an enlarged Senedd and, with it, a real possibility of acting as kingmaker in a non-Labour government (although many of the Tory rank-and-file are vehemently opposed to co-operating with Plaid Cymru in any form).

All the above isn’t to say that Tory wipeout won’t happen next May. Rather, it’s to say that those confidently predicting the demise of the Conservatives in Wales – including one Mr N. Farage – might want to hold off on going down the bookies.

Recent history and contemporary trends suggest that the old oak might not be ready for the log chipper just yet.