Conservatives Deputy Leader Targets Energy Costs to Regain Support in South-west Wales

Reducing energy costs and putting forward serious plans to fix the UK’s problems would help the Conservatives regain votes in parts of south-west Wales where it was once strong, its new deputy leader said.
Alex Burghart MP was visiting Swansea – the city where an ancestor on his mother’s side was born in the workhouse – and meeting business representatives at an event in Norton House Hotel, Mumbles.
In 2015 Byron Davies – now Lord Davies of Gower – won the Gower seat for the Tories in a neck-and-neck general election contest with Labour.
The Conservatives’ share of the vote in the 2024 general election fell by 21% in the Gower constituency. In nearby Swansea West and Caerfyrddin it dropped by nearly 19% and 20% respectively. In this year’s Senedd election the Welsh Conservatives came fourth in the newly-created Gwyr Abertawe constituency and didn’t win any of the six seats up for grabs.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) Mr Burghart said he thought voters have been experimenting during a recent period of multi-party politics.
He felt over time they would 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”.
He said: “And then I think that’s where parties that are united and consistent and under strong leadership and a good team will do well.”
Mr Burghart said he thought Reform UK have had “a pretty awful month in most regards” and questioned leader Nigel Farage’s judgement while being filmed undercover talking about what appeared to be 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 said the party denies any wrongdoing and will fully cooperate with a Metropolitan Police investigation into the matter that is being incorporated into an inquiry already under way into other donations to the party.
Mr Burghart said he believed people who’d started voting for Reform UK were starting to question whether it was serious about being a party for government.
Asked what the Conservatives would do to help people in Swansea and Gower with cost-of-living pressures Mr Burghart said reducing the cost of energy and electricity would come first. Allowing more extraction of domestic oil and gas would, he said, be used to bring household and business bills down.
Those opposing more extraction do so on environmental grounds and also argue that gas pushes up electricity costs because wholesale gas – buffeted by global events – sets the price of electricity most of the time. The solution, they say, is getting more low-carbon sources of power like wind, solar, and nuclear on stream.
Mr Burghart said climate change was real and that the Conservatives wanted an energy transition. But he said it needed to be affordable and that renewable power sources requiring “a very heavy subsidy” resulted in additional costs for the public and businesses.
The Conservatives want to prune £23bn from the UK’s welfare bill and Mr Burghart said payments for people with low-level mental health problems had undergone an unintended “explosion” and were now out of control.
He said party leader Kemi Badenoch has offered to work with Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham to bring down the cost of welfare and that “in each instance the Labour Party has refused to work with us”.
Asked if a simple cost-saving solution would be to alter what’s known as the pension triple lock – a mechanism that guarantees a certain state pension increase each year which some say is unsustainable – Mr Burghart replied: “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 also felt there was a duty to provide for people who’d worked hard all their lives and said if you could generate growth in the economy things like the triple lock were 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.”
The former teacher also felt Mr Burnham had “already run out of ideas” and wasn’t prepared to make commitments needed on defence spending or welfare reform.
Mr Burnham has said the government’s commitment to defence was absolute and he would set a target date to reach spending of 3% of GDP on it, rising to 3.5% in 2035.
Asked if he knew the Swansea area Mr Burghart – MP for Brentwood and Ongar, Essex – said he was “a bit Welsh” and had visited the city previously.
“My mum’s dad’s grandfather, or maybe great-grandfather, was born in the workhouse in Swansea,” he said.
The LDRS asked Reform UK and Labour if they wished to comment but neither responded at the time of going to press. ‌​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​

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By BBC LDRS ‌​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​