Cheers for Boris Johnson in Wales shows party support for him remains strong

After all his very public problems, the three cheers Boris Johnson received at the end of his speech to Welsh Conservatives shows there’s still strong support for him among party members.

In truth he’s remained popular with many Welsh Tories, most of whom have not called for his resignation even if some have spoken critically about his leadership, particularly after last week’s losses in the local elections. 

Conservative members and leaders here at their Welsh conference in Newtown are in no doubt that the “partygate” controversies and the 126 fines issued for breaches of covid rules in Downing Street did play a part in their losses. 

But most that I’ve spoken to stop short of blaming the Prime Minister for that, instead pointing the finger at a combination of other parties and the media.

All of which meant that Boris Johnson was unlikely to be heckled in the way that Theresa May was when she spoke at a Welsh Tory conference a few years ago. 

In his speech, he did not refer to the fines and, in fact, risked attacking the First Minister’s covid rules, asking delegates: “Didn’t Mark Drakeford actually criminalise going in to the office?”

He was referring to a rule introduced in Wales during 2021 whereby someone could be fined if they travelled to work if they could perform their role remotely. 

At the time Mark Drakeford said the rule was "designed to protect workers, not to penalise them.”

Boris Johnson extended his criticism of the Labour First Minister to the Labour front bench in Westminster which he called “a bunch of semi-repentant Corbynista loons” who he said would be a security threat to the UK.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know...

“Do you think at this juncture when Putin is muttering recklessly about using his nuclear arsenal, do we really want our defence policy handed over to a bunch of semi-repentant Corbynista loons, to put it mildly?

“Eight of the shadow front bench including the shadow foreign secretary voted to scrap this country’s independent nuclear deterrent.”

Also in his speech, Boris Johnson played up what he said were UK Government successes on the covid vaccine roll-out and more recently the UK military help to Ukraine.  

And he said he would take the same approach to the cost of living crisis. 

“Just as we got the most difficult challenges of Covid right, we got the big calls right, we will get this country through the big challenges now of the post-Covid aftershocks, the pressures caused in particular by the rise in the cost of living.

“Everyone can see what’s happening, the cost of fuel pumps, the price of food, the cost of energy, we all know how tough it is and how tough it can be.”

“Of course we’re going to get through this and the markets will eventually adjust and new supply will come on and prices will come down again.

“And in the months ahead, we are going to have to do what we did before, we’re going to use our fiscal firepower that we built up to help.

“We are going to put our arms around the British people again as we did during Covid.”