General Election 2015: David Cameron heads to Wales to shore up Tory support

Tory leader makes a quixotic bid to breathe life into the faltering Welsh Conservative campaign

David Cameron works on a speech as the Conservative election campaign bus heads to Wales (Getty)

David Cameron notoriously claimed last year that Offa’s Dyke had become “the line between life and death” as he lambasted the quality of health care in Labour-run Wales compared with England.

The Prime Minister struck a more diplomatic note yesterday as he headed in a westerly direction with the mission of reviving the health of the Conservative Party in this “great nation”, where the Tories face a daunting task to retain their eight seats in the face of a confident Labour challenge.

His party could lose half of them on 7 May, including its only foothold in Cardiff, making Mr Cameron’s route back to Downing Street that little bit more difficult. His lightning visit to Wales on his blue-liveried battle bus marked the half-way point of a campaign which has already taken him to Scotland twice, Northern Ireland, Yorkshire and Cornwall – and a slew of marginal constituencies in between.

For his Welsh stop, that meant urging around 200 predominantly elderly activists – gathered in a banqueting room at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells –to defy the odds by taking the fight to Ed Miliband’s troops.

Mr Cameron in Wales (PA)

Launching the party’s Welsh manifesto, the Prime Minister urged them: “Where is it written that Wales votes Labour? Where is it written that the people who stand for hard work, family and honesty vote for the most spendthrift, profligate, unrepentant party there is?

“I’ll tell you what – it’s not. So, together with the voters of Wales, let’s say this: the dragon on our flag may be red, but our country will always be better off blue.”

Putting a Welsh spin on his standard campaign speech, he listed recent economic advances and warned that the return of Labour rule would jeopardise the steady recovery of the recent years.

To underline the point he donned the obligatory yellow hi-vis vest and orange hard hat as he inspected a giant pyramid of sawdust at a 167-year-old family firm in the Brecon countryside, BSW Timber, which is now among Europe’s biggest sawmillers.

He also had some powerful new ammunition, with figures showing that unemployment had fallen by another 76,000 – and the endorsement of the Government’s strategy by Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund.

Mr Cameron’s first stop in his latest 12-hour campaign day was timed to coincide precisely with the publication of the jobs statistics.

He told staff at the booming IT company Fujitsu in the West Midlands – itself about to recruit another 750 apprentices – that Britain was living through a “jobs miracle brought to you by a Conservative government”. The only reference to his Coalition partners was to mock the Liberal Democrats for facing electoral “wipe-out” across the country.

And he insisted: “We are on the cusp of something special in our country – full employment, a job for everyone.” He was on safe ground here because the company’s boss had previously backed Tory economic policy.

Staff listened in respectful silence, including the apprentices in red polo shirts strategically placed in the front row, laughing politely as he wished Birmingham-based Aston Villa (also the Prime Minister’s team) luck in tomorrow’s FA Cup semi-final.

Mr Cameron had no chance to admire the sunlit countryside of Herefordshire and Mid-Wales as his bus wound its way between his two main campaign stops. In his closed-off section at the back of the vehicle he ploughed through government papers, discussed campaign tactics and conducted interviews with the travelling press pack.

Now more than halfway through his gruelling campaign schedule, the worry for the Prime Minister and his team is that they are not achieving the lift-off they need. In some places, such as Wales, they are even at risk of going backwards. Time is running out.

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