General election 2015: Stephen Crabb - bearded, Welsh, working class... an unusual Tory

A Conservative rising star on the stump in Aberavon

Wales Secretary of State Stephen Crabb on his visit to Baglan Community Centre (Getty)

In a leisure centre coffee shop an interview is taking place that will probably be the most watched piece of television in this election campaign. The only trouble is the 300 million people who will see it all live in China.

But that’s not putting off Stephen Crabb, the Welsh Secretary, who is enthusiastically extolling the virtues of the Conservative candidate for Aberavon for Chinese State Television – appropriately enough called CCTV.

“I think Edward is a first class candidate for us in the Conservative Party,” he tells his slightly bemused interviewer.

“He's great example of someone who represents the ambition that we need in Wales.”

The candidate in question is Edward Yi He who is being followed around by CCTV (average news audience three per cent of China’s 1.3bn population) as one of the very few Chinese candidates standing for any political party at this election.

Wales Secretary of State Stephen Crabb with Conservative candidate Edward Yi He on his visit to Baglan Community Centre (Glenn Edwards)

Sadly he doesn’t stand a chance of winning: Despite having learnt Welsh and worked in the steel works in nearby Port Talbot he is up against Neil Kinnock’s son Stephen in a seat where they weigh rather than count the Labour vote.

“It's an audience that David Cameron would be jealous for,” Crabb jokes afterwards. “It’s just a shame they can't vote.”

It is a measure of the more relaxed nature of the Conservative campaign in Wales that Mr Crabb has found the time to come to Aberavon to support Mr Yi He and advance the cause of Conservatism to a country that cannot vote in this election – or in fact at all.

While the Tories have made huge strides in Wales since the party’s nadir in 1997 when it didn’t have a single MP this election is unlikely to see a seismic shift – either for or against it.

The Conservatives currently have eight Welsh MPs – and will probably pick up one seat from the Lib Dems this time round and maybe lose one to Labour.

But if the Welsh campaign itself does not really light up the imagination what is interesting is the Welsh Secretary himself.

Crabb may only have entered the Cabinet a few months ago in one the more junior posts (and his main claim to fame at the moment is being the first Tory Secretary of State with a beard in a very long time) but he is a name to watch.

Not only is he a rising star in the party – regardless of whether the Conservatives win or lose the election - but he represents a type of Tory who is far removed from the posh boy stereotype that the party leadership currently suffers from.

He was brought up in a council house by single mother who raised him and his two brothers alone after she left their violent, often unemployed, father. Crabb was eight years old at the time.

To get by the family relied on welfare payments as his mother slowly managed to find work.

Crabb himself also had to combine school with work – getting a job in a local shop three nights a week from the age of 12. He has admitted to playing truant to go potato-picking to raise money to buy trainers.

You can’t hear Ed Milband or anyone else on the Labour front bench accusing Crabb of not understanding how the other half lives.

Given this background though it seems odd that Crabb is a Tory at all. So why is he a Conservative?

“I grew up in a street of council houses and (Thatcher’s) right to buy was huge in that community,” he says now.

“I remember my mum going to meetings with neighbours to talk about what deal so-and-so was getting and there was a mood of excitement that people had the opportunity to own their own home.

“That frism of excitement rubbed off on me. If you are a poor kid from a council house in West Wales that's the party that most represents your aspiration about getting on in life.”

The Independent joined Crabb on a tour of Welsh seats that included not just Aberavon but also Gower – a Labour seat that the Conservatives believe is vulnerable to a strong local candidate.

Unfortunately we only meet two voters – and one of them is very much a signed up member of the ‘I’m not going to vote for anyone’ party.

“You’re all liars,” she tells Crabb. “And you’re all thiefs.” He manages to remain curious and rather unexpectedly gets a leaflet into her hands.

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It is then back in the car again for an hour’s drive to the Welsh Conservatives’ number one target: Brecon & Radnor which is currently Lib Dem but is expected to turn blue in early hours of Friday morning.

The constituency is over eighty miles from top to bottom and as you drive through you can see the proxy battle to get farmers to display orange or blue posters in the fields along the main road.

We stop off in Llanwrtyd Wells – whose principle claim to fame is being the smallest town in Britain (approximate population 600) and the home to the UK’s annual Alternative Games – which boasts snail racing and bog snorkelling among its competitions.

Crabb is shown around an old hotel which used to be a secret drinking haunt of Prince Charles when he was a student at Aberystwyth and is now a small scale industrial unit making electrical components for fighter aircraft.

Crabb has an easy manner with the staff and the people he meets – talking about their concerns about a new mega Welsh language school that is about to be built nearby - but it is still a mystery is to why someone with his background feels comfortable supporting a party planning £12 bn of unfunded benefit cuts – when he himself we the recipient of welfare himself.

Tellingly he does not directly answer the question. But he defends the thrust of welfare reform.

“I don’t think any party should be afraid of going into this election and saying we want welfare spending to come down because we are aspiring to have a society where there are less people on welfare and more people going into work,” he says,

“It frustrates me that you have this binary division of the Tories who are in favour of lower welfare spending and everyone else is in favour of more. We should all aspire to that (lower welfare spending) especially in Wales that has been beset with welfare dependency.”

Harking back to his own experience he says: “For me this is very personal. My mother helped bring us up partly on benefits.

“I am not shy about telling people when they challenge me on our values and our record on welfare I explain I saw for myself my mother going from being wholly dependent on welfare – somebody in crisis raising three boys on her own in council housing making that journey – first working four or five hours a week and that was her stepping stone back into a life of full economic independence. She is a home-owner now. For me, that provides the model for what we’re trying to achieve.”

But it is clear that Crabb is not entirely comfortable with the Conservative campaign messages that have focused relentlessly on the issue of economic competence – perhaps at the expense of talking more about aspiration and social mobility.

“In Wales you can go back centuries and there is a tradition of social justice and fighting for fairness,” he says.

“That’s not something we should not shy away from as Conservatives. We should embrace that. We should be talking the language of fairness.

“When we talk about rebalancing the economy - which is a horrible phrase – what we’re saying is that we have a vision of a united kingdom where wealth is being generated much more evenly, much more fairly across the country. “So talking about the language of fairness and equity and social justice should be part and parcel of Welsh conservatism.”

What is interesting about Crabb is that when he says things like this you believe him – not just because of his upbringing but because of his vehemence.

And then you realise the real reason he wanted to go to Aberavon. It’s not about CCTV or showing token support for the Conservative candidate – it’s much more personal than that.

When you ask Crabb specifically about Stephen Kinnock he visibly tenses.

“He (Kinnock) has not built a political career here. He has not contributed to the community here or the political debate in Wales.

“Why is it that the Welsh Labour party cannot find kids from housing estates who have got an interest in politics and train them up as candidates?

“I find it offensive in terms of my aspiration for social mobility in Wales that they parachute people in like that.”

Those sentiments many not sound very Conservative – but they may become much so of Crabb’s star continues to rise.