ARE WE seeing a new-style Tory party in the Assembly, writes Clive Betts from the Assembly press gallery ?
Nick Bourne has done much to rescue the party group in the Assembly from the right-wing days when everyone harked back to Thatcherism.
Comments, for instance, on the party’s central policy towards Europe consistently leaned towards the line that there was no need for a referendum once every country had accepted the Lisbon treaty … hardly a line which the party’s Euro-sceptics are very keen on.
The latest stage in the re-make came with the room where the party’s group of AMs held its weekly meeting.
On the outside it was broadly labelled “Equal Opportunities Committee”.
Now that was the committee from which a Tory AM was ejected because his publicised ideas were so much at variance with the committee’s aims.
David Davies, the former AM for Monmouth, was replaced by one of his more-acceptable colleagues.
But David is now confined to Westminster. And the party group is meeting in a room marked for the committee he was ejected from.
As they say, the Tory party is changing fast.
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