WELSH LABOUR MS ALUN DAVIES WAS RECENTLY CAUGHT BREAKING COVID RULES FOR DRINKING WITH THREE CONSERVATIVE POLITICIANS IN THE SENEDD
THE EX-TOBACCO LOBBYIST HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN A BARRAGE OF SCANDALS SINCE BEING ELECTED AS A WELSH REPRESENTATIVE IN 2007
ONE OF HIS DRINKING COMPANIONS WAS DARREN MILLAR, WHO DAVIES WENT ON A TRIP TO ISRAEL WITH IN 2019.
Last week news broke of a pre-Christmas drinking session between three senior Conservative MS’s and Alun Davies, the Labour representative for Blaenau Gwent, in The Senedd bar.
The event became an immediate scandal primarily because it broke Covid rules which Davies and his three Tory drinking companions – Nick Ramsay, the then Welsh Tory leader Paul Davies and Darran Millar – had recently put through into legislation.
The episode brought back memories of Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip to Durham, which drew a furious backlash because it highlighted how Boris Johnson’s most senior advisor could do what he liked as ordinary people couldn’t even see their closest loved ones before they died in hospital.
Getting Friendly with the Tories
Davies has his own case to answer when it comes to hypocrisy.
Shortly after the early December drinking session with Conservative MSs – but before it was known to the public – he had written in the South Wales Argus about how the regulations he broke were safeguarding the public and vulnerable frontline workers.
“If we take the responsible steps during this last push,” he wrote, “we can help keep our relatives and neighbours safe, protect our NHS and our communities and help bring this crisis to an end much sooner.”
Davies also attacked the Scottish chief medical officer when she was found to be breaking Covid guidelines whilst visiting her second home in April 2020.
The MS tweeted: “One of the lessons that I’ve learnt in public office is that you cannot ask others to do something that you’re not prepared to do yourself.”
But the incident was also notable because Alun Davies, a Labour MS, was socialising with three Tories. This kind of friendliness between supposedly political enemies is not uncommon but is often kept out of public view.
After all, Alun Davies’ drinking companions are signed up to a political party & tradition that closed the coal mines and implemented a decade of extreme spending cuts, both era-defining acts which destroyed the livelihoods of the working class communities he is elected to represent.
For lots of people, these are not issues that can be easily brushed aside, but many politicians do not have a problem with it, because they see their role primarily as serving the interests of the state and big business – and of course themselves – above the interests of their constituents.
For Labour politicians – who tell voters that they will stand up for working people – this is particularly egregious but also fairly common. Since the onset of Thatcherism and its successor, Blairism, Labour MPs are far more likely to come from this political tradition and Alun Davies’ career would indicate that he is no different.
The drinking scandal is only the latest to involve the member of the Senedd for Blaenau Gwent and adds to an already controversial political CV. And this isn’t the first time he has been close with Tories.
In February 2019, Davies and Tory MS Darran Millar went on a paid ‘fact finding’ trip to Israel despite the country’s ongoing human rights violations against Palestinians.
Joining the Gangsters
Davies started his career in politics as a Cardiff Bay lobbyist with a now-defunct company called Bute Communications.
He earned his living working to clean up the image of the tobacco industry in the capital with one of his most noteworthy clients being the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association.
Davies was enlisted as an integral part of the lobbying effort to “advise on contacting AMs and MPs” in an effort to avoid a ban on public-place smoking that might impinge on the profits of tobacco firms.
As the Welsh Labour MS sought to pivot into the political field, Davies struggled to find a party that fit his views and aspirations to achieve a job in the Senedd.
On the road to Cardiff Bay, Davies ran as a Plaid candidate in 1997 as well as running on behalf of a Plaid-Green alliance in 1992, until finally settling with Welsh Labour to win his Senedd seat in 2007.
The MS also had harsher words to say about Welsh Labour before he got to power with the party.
Davies said in a speech in support of Plaid whilst he was still a senior member: “The people I see in Wales in the Welsh Labour Party are still the same gangsters as they were 20 years ago.”
His new career proved itself to be lucrative. In 2008, just after gaining power, Davies found it reasonable to put the mortgage interest on his Cardiff home bought in 2002 on his expenses bill for the taxpayer to pay for it.
Paid Trip to Israel with Darran Millar
Davies was also, among other gestures of free hospitality, given a free trip Israel in 2019 which is billed in his register of interests form as a “heritage and fact finding visit” to the value of a not insignificant £2,431.71, given to him by the Evan Roberts Institute. Davies went on the trip with Darran Millar, the Tory MS he was breaching Covid regulations to drink with
The Evan Roberts Institute is publicly headed by two Conservative MSs, including Millar, and maintains ties to a virulently homophobic Pentecostal pastor.
Many Palestinian organisations have called for a boycott of Israel due to the institutionalised oppression faced by Palestinians there, the blockade and military attacks on Gaza and the building of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Most recently it has been revealed that Israel has excluded Palestinians from its Covid vaccine rollout. Just this month, the leading Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, for the first time in its history took the step of labelling Israel an “apartheid regime.”
Six months before Davies visited Israel, the Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar was killed by the Israeli military at a border protest as she held her arms in the air to show she wasn’t armed. In total 183 people were killed on the Gaza side of the border protests and over 6,000 were injured by Israeli military fire. This compares to 11 injuries on the Israeli side.
But Davies appears not to have considered this worthy of mention following his ‘fact-finding’ mission. Instead, in one of the only recorded statements to the Senedd following his trip, he describes meeting a former Israeli chief justice and describes the Israeli justice system as a “very good model” that Wales should follow.
This is in spite of a 2013 UNICEF report which said that Palestinian children as young as 12 are routinely taken from their homes at gunpoint in night-time raids by Israeli soldiers, blindfolded, interrogated without a lawyer, put into solitary confinement & forced to sign confessions in a language they do not understand.
The Failed ‘Circuit of Wales’ Fiasco
Davies has had many moments of bad PR for his actions during his career, but 2014 was a particularly notable year.
In May 2014 it emerged that he had an affair with his then-special advisor Anna McMorrin whilst he sat as the Natural Resources Minister, which would later result in her moving away from his office.
McMorrin became a Welsh Labour MP in 2017 but not before working in the interim as a lobbyist on behalf of private renewable energy firms, who seek contracts with the Welsh Government and its natural resources departments.
The controversial Circuit of Wales racetrack proposed to be built in Davies’ constituency, at one point backed by insurance company Aviva and to be supported with planned grants from the Welsh Government, also brought him trouble.
In June 2014 Davies was found to have broken lobbying rules by using his privilege as a member of the Senedd to lobby Natural Resources Wales to press on with the ailing project.
He was forced to apologise to his colleagues in Cardiff Bay and escaped being sacked.
Just a month later the MS was found seeking out private information about his political rivals for party political gain.
Davies was caught trying to find confidential information on whether the Plaid Cymru MS Llyr Gruffydd and the Conservative then-MS Antoinette Sandbach had been the recipients of government farm subsidy payments.
As it happens Sandbach was a vocal critic of Davies during the Circuit of Wales lobbying fiasco just a month prior and had called for a formal investigation into his actions.
Davies was then sacked from his position as Minister for Natural Resources and Food. Since then he has made himself a reputation among his colleagues for avoiding “straight answers” and being “evasive” as well as contributing to a culture of “demeaning” behaviour in the Senedd towards women.
Credit must be given to BBC News as the first to see his potential as a Teflon statesman when he received the “Newcomer of the Year” award after his election from the BBC Wales am.pm programme in 2007.
The fallout from his most recent scandal has seen those involved step down from their roles but they continue to serve as Members of the Senedd. Tory Paul Davies resigned from being leader of the party in Wales, whist Darran Millar stood down as the party’s chief whip and Ramsay resigned from the front bench.
The fate of Welsh Labour MS Alun Davies is now uncertain since his suspension from duties whilst under investigation.
What can be drawn from his overall political career, however, is that Davies has proved himself hard to remove from public life in Wales.
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