The Welsh Conservatives – apocalypse now... in a minute

Wales is known as a country of myth and legend. But one myth that has been around for decades, and yet has no basis in reality, is that Welsh people don’t vote Conservative.

What is true, is that historically Wales has not elected many Conservatives. But that does not mean Welsh people don’t vote for them. The Conservatives typically pick up around 1 in 4 Welsh votes to regularly finish in second place in Westminster and Welsh Parliament elections.

It is also true that for others in Wales, the very idea of voting Conservative is anathema. The mantra that “we’ve got to vote Labour to keep the Tories out” is a tactical way of life for a chunk of Welsh voters, which helps sustain Labour’s hegemony.

But things are currently changing quickly for the Conservatives in Wales, and not in a good way. Recent polling is projecting nothing short of devastation at the next Senedd election in 2026.

Momentum

Just a few years ago the Tories were making real progress in Wales. Defying its Celtic cousins in Scotland and Northern Ireland, Wales voted for Brexit in 2016. 

Three years later at the 2019 Westminster election, under the leadership of Boris Johnson, the Tories had a standout result, taking six seats from Labour and finishing just 5% away from winning the popular vote. 

They even managed to break out of their traditional, rural seats in counties like Monmouthshire and Pembrokeshire. Unlikely seats were now in Conservative hands, including Welsh-speaking Anglesey and industrial towns like Wrexham and Bridgend.

The Tories followed up this result at the 2021 Senedd (Welsh Parliament) election, where they won an additional five seats to become the second largest group and official opposition.

But 2021 now seems likely to be their highpoint in Wales. 

Welsh populism

The Conservatives in Wales were benefitting from a London-devised strategy that was working. And that strategy was populism.

Many of the recognised conditions for populism to thrive are present in Wales and the Tories learnt to exploit them; issues such as economic insecurity, a feeling of being left behind and a previously high-status group losing its status. In Wales this was the proud Welsh working class of coal miners, steel workers, quarry men and car makers, now struggling to succeed in the services economy.

High-profile instances of asylum seekers being housed in Wales were also drawing local concern. This included Penally Barracks, a former army camp in rural Pembrokeshire, as well as plans to house asylum seekers at Stradey Park Hotel in Llanelli. Both locations drew protests and gave populist groups and politicians the opportunity to promote their nativist ideals, which is a core component of right-wing populism.

But another essential ingredient for populism to thrive is there being a charismatic and strong leader, who promotes themselves as being uniquely able to represent the will of the people and to solve their problems.

For the Conservatives, that leader was Boris Johnson and his rise and fall directly correlates with the rise and fall of the Welsh Conservatives.

Quite simply, the Welsh Conservatives’ success was largely built on the success of their populist leader in Westminster. And as happens to many populist parties, when the charismatic strongman is no longer there, there is a vacuum that causes the whole enterprise to implode. This will be true for the Republicans in the US when Donald Trump retires, just as it is true for the Welsh Conservatives without Boris Johnson.

But that is not to say the Welsh Conservatives did not try to fill that vacuum with a home-grown populist leader.

The Leadership crisis

Despite a successful election in the 2021 Senedd elections, the then leader of the Welsh Tories, Andrew RT Davies, was later forced out by a Conservative Group increasingly uneasy with his populist antics.

But how did they get to that point?

Andrew RT Davies was first elected to represent the South Wales Central region in 2007 and has served as leader of the Welsh Conservatives group for much of the time since.

He began his parliamentary career as a run-of-the-mill Tory. Rural, folksy, small ‘c’ conservative and a man who prided himself on being a “farmer first”. He was the typical kind of politician the Conservatives have been producing for centuries.

But his politics changed considerably after the Brexit referendum and the coming of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. He now threw himself into the culture wars, railing against the Labour Welsh Government’s alleged “woke” policies. Losing his populist leader in London did not stop Mr Davies, who doubled down on the anti-woke rhetoric.

He couldn’t credibly campaign against the asylum housing controversies in Pembrokeshire and Llanelli, since it was a Conservative government in London implementing those plans on Wales.

But another nativist “opportunity” came his way when he caused significant controversy in a GB News article, claiming children in South Wales schools were being forced to eat halal lunches. The relevant local authority insisted the claim was untrue. 

Mr Davies’ allegations were then promoted by the criminal, English Defence League founder “Tommy Robinson”. 

The Muslim Council of Wales described Mr Davies’ comments as “dog-whistle racism” and he was also criticised by a member of his own Senedd group, the first female ethnic minority Member of the Senedd, Natasha Ashgar.

Downfall

The new populist tilt from Andrew RT Davies created two significant problems that would ultimately lead to his downfall.

The first was that the Welsh Conservative Group in the Senedd always seemed uneasy with his populist rhetoric. Vitriol against “extreme woke ideology” and support from the founder of the EDL, is not the domain of more traditional Conservatives.

The second was that Mr Davies simply did not have the charisma to pull off this kind of populism and build a cult of personality around him. To be a winning right-wing populist, the difficult to measure, but crucial element, is extraordinary levels of charisma. Without it, far-right populism is too easily exposed as xenophobic, spiteful and cruel.

Davies’ lack of charisma explains how after 17 years in the Senedd, many of them as Welsh Tory leader, 40% of the Welsh public didn’t know him well enough to give an opinion on him.

It, therefore, seemed inevitable that he would be forced out as leader, which happened after a vote of no confidence by his Senedd group. Davies won the vote, but it left his position “untenable”. 

Extinction

Andrew RT Davies has now been replaced as leader of the Welsh Conservatives by a little-known evangelical Christian, Darren Millar. But the future for the Tories in Wales could be the entire party being replaced. They face an unprecedented and existential threat from a new right-wing party, in the shape of Reform UK.

It’s difficult to overstate how severe the Reform threat is to the Welsh Conservatives.

The Tories lost every single seat in Wales at the Westminster election in 2024. While Reform did not win any seats, they took enough votes from the Tories to prevent them winning anywhere.

And for the Senedd elections in 2026, the conditions that can be exploited by right-wing populists haven’t gone away; the Conservatives just don’t have a leader, in Cardiff or London, able to exploit them. But in Nigel Farage, Reform UK do.

Defection

Recent polling consistently projects the Conservatives slipping from second to fourth place in 2026, with some polls projecting their vote share as low as 11%. The Welsh political cognoscenti estimate a party needs to win around 12.5% of votes in Wales’ new proportional election system to be assured of seats, meaning the Conservatives are flirting with a repeat of their 2024 election wipeout, if the trend continues.

Polling on vote transfers clearly shows where the problem lies, with large swathes of former Conservative voters in Wales planning to switch to Reform.

And if there was any doubt whether the threat was real, based on polling alone, a string of recent council by-election wins for Reform prove the threat beyond doubt.

But the pain for Welsh Tories shows no sign of ending. A handful of Tory councillors and ex-MPs have already defected to Reform. Now the first sitting Member of the Senedd has done so. Nigel Farage travelled all the way to the Royal Welsh Show to triumphantly unveil Laura Anne Jones as Reform’s first defector in the Senedd.

The Tories may not see that defection as much of a loss. Ms Jones was a constant source of bad headlines; being exposed using racial slurs, wanting to “shoot chavs” and now being investigated for allegedly falsifying mileage claims.

But with a humbling election loss looking likely, the question is who will be next to jump ship.

The writing’s on the wall

With the Welsh electorate seemingly moving in the Conservatives’ ideological direction, an increase in Senedd seats from 60 to 96 and a new, fully proportional election system that should benefit them, the Welsh Conservatives ought to be licking their lips at the prospect of returning a large group of politicians at the 2026 Senedd election.

Instead, there is a palpable sense of fear and chaos emanating from the Welsh Tory Group.

Party-gate happened. Levelling up did not. Now the Tory party brand in Wales is so toxic that simple survival will be seen as a win.

The great replacement

There was one obstacle the Conservatives never could fully overcome in Wales. After ruthlessly ending much of Wales’s industry and coal mining under Margaret Thatcher, it was tribally burnt into many Welsh people’s DNA to never vote Conservative. Boris Johnson came closest to overcoming that significant election barrier but his premiership, and the dying years of UK Tory government that followed, ended in turmoil and resentment.

Given the centuries long heritage of the Conservatives, it is difficult to completely write them off in Wales. But on rare occasions, a previously large party can suffer a string of election defeats so devastating that they never recover. For an example of that, we only need to look to the once dominant Liberals.

In the same way as society changed at the beginning of the 20th Century, allowing Labour to replace the Liberals, Welsh society is changing in the 21st Century. Now it’s the Conservatives who are looking like yesterday’s party.

This is the second in our series of articles of the state of the parties in Wales. You can read the Labour article here. The Senedd election will take place on the 7th of May, 2026.