According to Andrew RT Davies, who manages
to be the previous
ex-leader, current leader, and future ex-leader of the Conservative and
Unionist Party in the Senedd, he and his party will be bold
enough to break from the policy pursued by the UK party on issues where they
think that the Welsh perspective is different. He seems to have struggled to
find meaningful examples, though. It is, perhaps, convenient that, on the two
issues he did manage to mention (a public holiday on St David’s Day and Barnett
consequentials for HS2), the Senedd has no power to act, even in the unlikely
event of a Tory Senedd victory. And both have already been dismissed out of
hand by his Westminster masters. He won’t be called on to do anything more than
get angry, shout a bit, and sloganize. At least he’ll be playing to his
strengths, then.
He doesn’t seem to be asking for the
transfer of more powers, for instance so that the Senedd could itself declare a
Bank Holiday. On all the things where the Senedd actually can change policy, he
remains fully aligned to doing whatever his masters in London tell him. It’s a
bonus, for him, that he is only the leader of the Senedd group, not of the
whole party in Wales. It means that no policy his group of ‘Welsh’
Conservatives in the Senedd adopts will apply to the people in his party who
might possibly have some influence in London, namely Welsh Tory MPs. It’s easy
to see how the UK party can tolerate this sort of low-level verbal difference
of opinion without losing any sleep. It’s less easy to see why Davies would
believe that anyone in Wales would be taken in by it.
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