Hywel Williams

Welsh Tory Revival

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It wil be a while before Welsh Tories officially rename themselves  'Ceidwadwyr Cymru' . But their renaissance on the political map shows them coming home with last night's results representing the party's best result since the general election of 1983 when they got 13 seats. Preseli Pembrokeshire and Carmarthen west with Pembrokeshire south are both part of the old undivided seat of Pembroke-a famously maverick constituency which went independent Labour in the 60's and then Conservative in the 70's. Tories now have a good chance of winning these two Westminster seats at the next general election. The same goes for Clwyd West in north-east Wales which also went Tory last night: this is Owain Glyndwr country-the area where the local squire started Wales's last independence movement in 1400 so perhaps some independence of mind has survived in the hills of Clwyd. It some times feels in Wales as if Labour has been around as the governing class since at least 1400. In fact its dominance is a 1945 affair-with that election sealing the 1920's-30's demise of Welsh Liberalism. The post-war settlement is still deep-rooted here but it's consolidated nowadays at the level of middle-class professionals.  Labour could therefore hang on in places such as the Vale of Glamorgan-a Welsh Hampshire populated by the management class who've done well out of Gordon Brown's extension of the public sector salariate. Plaid Cymru scored a major victory in Llanelli-a seat which was once the heartland of Welsh Labour and as a mostly industrial area it helps the party escape the charge that it's just the party of the cultural heartlands in the north and west. Lib Dems-as in England-stalled. Trish Law's re-election in Blaenau Gwent as an independent showed that constituency's deep-rooted hostility to Labour-Cardiff centralism.If there is a socialist heaven --and if he's in it-then Aneurin Bevan, who represented the seat when it was Ebbw Vale, may well be enjoying the sight of some Welsh radicalism in action. HYWEL WILLIAMS