- David Chadwick selected as the Welsh Liberal Democrat candidate in the party’s top Welsh target seat of Brecon & Radnorshire.
- The Selection follows major gains made by the Welsh Liberal Democrats in the Conservative/Liberal Democrat battleground of Powys during this year’s local elections, where the Conservatives were left with just a single councillor in Brecon & Radnorshire
The Welsh Liberal Democrats have selected their first General Election candidate to stand in their top Welsh target seat.
David Chadwick was selected by local party members as the Prospective Parliamentary candidate for Brecon and Radnorshire. David currently works as a cyber security consultant and has family ties to Builth Wells. David became interested in politics when his grandfather took him to see the steelworks in Port Talbot to see what it was like to work in a blast furnace stating it gave him an early insight into how politics, industry and communities are intrinsically linked.
In recent months, the Welsh Liberal Democrats have made major gains in Powys, becoming the largest group on Powys County Council and in Brecon and Radnorshire they topped the polls with 15 councillors compared to the Conservatives who were left with just a single councillor.
The seat of Brecon and Radnorshire has long been considered a Conservative-Liberal Democrat battleground with the area’s MPs and Senedd Members coming from one of the two parties since 1979. The Liberal Democrats would need a swing of just 8% to take back the seat.
The local election results in Powys follow three large-scale by-election success for the Liberal Democrats across the country, including in the Conservative seats of Chesham and Amersham, Tiverton and Honiton and notably; the rural seat of North Shropshire just across the border from Powys.
Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, Jane Dodds MS, welcomed David Chadwick’s selection stating:
David will be a fantastic advocate for the people of Brecon and Radnorshire who will make sure their voices are heard loudly and clearly in Parliament.
The Conservatives have taken Brecon and Radnorshire for granted time and time again with an MP that consistently votes against the interests of her constituents. The Party is out of touch with Mid Wales and its people’s priorities and values.
That is why we have already begun to see the Conservatives’ hold on Mid Wales start to crumble. After this year’s local elections, the Conservatives will be looking over their shoulders to try and hold the seat in the next general election.
It is now up to the Liberal Democrats to win this constituency at the next election and give the area a representative who will stand up for local people’s interests and be a loud voice demanding change for the better.
David Chadwick, Welsh Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Brecon & Radnorshire, said:
Brecon and Radnorshire is one of the most beautiful areas of our country. Yet people in rural areas like this are angry at being taken for granted. They just can’t trust the Conservatives to do what is best for them, their families or their businesses. In contrast, people can see that their Liberal Democrat representatives are listening to them, and delivering to make Brecon and Radnorshire a better place to live.
Whether it’s the local MP’s support for the dumping of sewage in the national treasures of the River Wye and Usk; or Prime Minister Liz Truss signing trade deals that threaten the livelihoods of Welsh farmers – the Conservatives aren’t listening to local residents.
This was further reflected in this week’s ‘bankers budget’. Rather than help rural communities like Brecon and Radnorshire, Liz Truss is intent on rewarding mega rich bankers in London and the South East and those who earn over £155,000. The cost of which will be met by the middle and working classes and our children and grandchildren.
The only thing the Conservative Government even attempted for rural areas like Brecon and Radnorshire was a measly £100 in support for those reliant on heating oil, a downright insult to the 17,807 homes in Powys facing a minimum of £1,200 in increases to their bills.
I’m excited to kick off our campaign and act on people’s concerns. The Liberal Democrats want to win Brecon and Radnorshire back and be the shared voice of rural communities in Parliament.
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13 Comments
David would have a better grip on politics and communities if he was at Port Talbot steelworks doing a triple shift …
The progressive left seems to love state middle management types & EU luvvies – to represent us ..
Wheres the bricklayers , warehouse worker, shelf stacker etc …?
@Martin Gray
I’m not sure what the point of your comment was.
Are you suggesting that someone with experience of working shifts at the Port Talbot steelworks might automatically be better placed to represent in Parliament the residents of a huge sprawling rural constituency than someone with familiy connections to said huge sprawling rural constituency?
If you’re suggesting that the party should be doing more to attract support in industrial areas I have no problem with that.
I’m from this part of the world, and from a pretty apolitical family who can and will “vote Liberal” out of habit and affection for the individual candidate (even though they are not liberal and probably wouldn’t ever vote LibDem again if they ever read a LibDem manifesto). Basically people who make up the majority of Powys.
David Chadwick is exactly the sort of candidate who will struggle to make inroads or develop the interest of the local electorate there. He has no real connection to the constituency and the rather abstract sounding “cyber-security consultant” will be an instant turn off in such a rural constituency where people’s work and lives operate around very practical and tangible things. Jane Dodds suffered the same problem of this sense of inauthenticity and being out of touch with the constituency (I know noone from my family and extended family who voted for her, in spite of them usually being quite prepared to “vote Liberal”), and her being Welsh speaking and them not having any exposure to local Conservative campaign messaging.
Powys is difficult to campaign and organise in. It has a very high proportion of people with strong values but no political affiliation, and a candidate they feel they have a connection with is very important for a much higher proportion of the electorate than is typical. Political parties have very very few members (the volume of council wards which have 1 or 0 candidates on the ballot paper at local elections is high)
Martin Grey – there is of course a problem for the poorer members of society to represent us. It is called poverty. When people are working long hours for minimum wage then they have little time or energy left for political activity. The answer is simple – eliminate poverty.
@nonconform….
They’d have a far better grasp then someone via – University educated , think tank intern , parliamentary office assistant, to parliamentary candidate …
That seems to be the norm these days …
If ever a group was underrepresented it’s the manual worker …Who seemed to spend much of lockdown servicing those working from home …!
The electorate would probably prefer a farmer but there are certainly more cyber security consultants living there than blue collar steel workers.
@James Pugh. Your argument would have been correct if it had been written fifty years ago. The Welsh Marches and Brecon and Radnorshire have changed. The Welsh Marches are stuffed with people who work in high tech or use high tech. Because if you don’t need to be in the office, why not live amongst the sheep and the hills, far from the madding crowd? And it is cheaper here. The Lib Dems have been growing in strength in mid-Wales for years. We should be championing our candidates, not undercutting them.
Martin’s remarks are correct, unless he’s suggesting that right-wing parties do better. They don’t.
MPs are overwhelmingly middle-class and affluent.
I personally think this is a problem.
As for the LDs there are a few working-class candidates in winnable seats. Do we need to encourage more to put their names forward, in the same way there have been efforts to encourage woman and ethnic minority candidates?
@James Pugh In rural Wales it probably would be desirable to have a candidate who was from long standing local farming stock and whose great ggggg uncle had been eaten by a dragon. However that sort of candidate is very rare.
As a farmer I can confirm that we all use computers and thanks to the Welsh Government’s farming Connect programme we are all more than familiar with cyber security.
As to Jane Dodds, she had stood unsuccessfully 3 times in Montgomery before moving to B&R just before the 2019 by-election. The Tories easily depicted this as carpet bagging and they emphasised that her family home was still in London.
If David Chadwick moves his family home to B&R, demonstrating that he is there for the long haul that is not going to be a problem for him.
I know nothing about Welsh politics but I do know David Chadwick. He is, as the Irish say, a good man. I worked for him during the last General Election when he stood in the unwinnable constituency of North Dorset and he made considerable inroads into the enormous Tory majority. I am no longer a LibDem member but wish him the very best of luck; he will need it!
I would agree with Martin Gray and Chris Moore. It can’t be right for this party or any party to be overwhelmingly denominated by middle/upper middle class candidates or MPs. Probably Councillor representation of working class backgrouns is a bit better. The party needs to reflect society and people of different backgrounds and social classes. More council tenants and people in social housing should be encouraged to join the party and put themselves forward but we don’t seem to be welcome. Perhaps it’s because money talks.
I am proud to know David Chadwick from the tough campaigning days of GE2015 when he came to help me in my constituency as a PPC. I returned the favour in Dorset North where he did a remarkable job building up the Lib Dem vote during GE2019. Brecon & Radnorshire, you could not have a more sincere, hardworking and dedicated candidate. Great choice!
Hello Jason,
In the past, we had considerable support from working class housing estates in the south-west in particular, but also in many towns and cities in the north with voters fed up with incompetent Labour fiefdoms.
Our refusal to accept the Referendum result did for much of the former category – as a lot of our working class support in the West Country went to the Tories or Brexit Party. Coalition did for much of the latter category.
We have a real opportunity to win back such lost voters – and members – if we can show serious concern with the very grave problems faced by the less well off, those with poor health and so on.
Howe