Wales and the Tories…No Longer Divorced.

So Wales turns blue. Well, its actually overwhelmingly red when discussing seats proportionally but the exaggerated point remains. Geographically Wales now has large patches of blue across its political landscape after the Conservative and Unionist Party began Friday morning post-election with 8 seats.

2005                                                                                                       2010

Carmarthen West and Pembrokeshire South; Montgomeryshire; Vale of Glamorgan; Preseli Pembrokeshire; Clwyd West; Cardiff North; Monmouthshire and Aberconwy. Rural areas of the nation that are now firmly blue. The previously Labour, Liberal Democrat or Plaid areas have now shifted their focus and hope towards a Tory party that is currently riding a wave of anti-government sentiment, although not quite the tsunami of hate to carry them into a majority position.

But where has this sudden influx of MP’s come from? Whilst Wales has always had a decent patronage of the Tory party it has rarely transgressed itself into election victories. The 1997 and 2001 elections famously resulted in not one blue-rossetted candidate winning a seat and the three seats it secured in 2005 was treated like a successful inroad to an hostile electorate.

As a nation Wales has enjoyed an earned reputation as a liberal, left-leaning region of the UK with a strong socialist pulse in its urban heartlands, no doubt cultivated from its industrial history and the unions that helped the workers as well as great politicans such as Nye Bevan and David Lloyd-George.

So I’m sure you can appreciate how disappointed and almost enraged I am this creeping invasion of upper class Bullingdon Boys into this proud nation. I find it difficult for any patriotic Welshman aware of his local history to be supportive of the Tory party even though polling results suggest otherwise. Although I have no ethnic breakdown of where the votes came from one would have to assume that English immigration into rural Welsh area’s has had some effect on voting patterns as well as the over-hyped hysteric cries of crisis that sections of the media that has resulted in the shameful villifying of Gordon Brown.

But were the Tories the right party for Wales to wash away a generation of oppression just to post a protest vote? I can’t accept this given the party’s roll of shame during the Thatcher years. This is the party that was responsible for the disaster that was Poll Tax, a policy that hurt thousands of struggling families financially and helped poverty in the valley’s prosper.

This is also the party that fought the creation of Welsh Language TV channel S4C up until the day of launch in an attempt to block the speakers of the language having an entertainment medium in their own language. The flooding of Tryweryn and Capel Celyn, the Miner’s Strike that crumpled Wales and caused endless heartache for generations of families, the closure of numerous Hospitals as part of NHS cuts, privatisation of important local transport services that people relied on and the record unemployment that soared throughout this land of ours, the list of misdeeds done to Wales is endless.

Some relationships can be rehabilitated given time. Wales and the Tories should not be one of them. Never forgiven, Never forget.