Wales@Westminster weblog

It's Wales@Westminster weblog, BBC Wales' Parliamentary correspondent David Cornock's diary on political life. It's a two-way process though, so add your comments too.

Wednesday, 12 November

Party United?
posted by David | 1515 GMT |

Extraordinary events in the Welsh Conservative Party. Assembly leader Nick Bourne sent out a press release today insisting that party policy has not changed.

(This is ostensibly somewhere below "dog bites man" in the news stakes but alerted reporters to rows within the Tory Assembly group).

Then the party's chief whip, William Graham, sent us a press release with the headline "Chief Whip confirms Conservative group united". Both were talking about party policy on devolution.

There's no statement more likely to interest journalists in party divisions we may not have known existed - it's a bit like a football club chairman giving a beleaguered manager a vote of confidence.

All this activity reminded me of Nick Bourne's speech at a conference fringe meeting last year in which he said the last thing the one thing the Tories must not do is ditch Iain Duncan Smith.

It's strange that at the time the Tories at Westminster are showing signs of getting their act together, the AMs appear to have started to imitate MPs' past in-fighting.

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