Paul Davies, "Pricking the Bubble" or "Prick in the Bubble

Rather like a builder who you know is dodgy saying  "You've  had the Cowboys in here". Paul Davies the Leader (or one of them) of the Welsh Conservatives attacking the "Cardiff Bay Bubble" runs rather hollow.

Writing in Nation Cymru he says.

Last weekend at our Welsh Conservative conference in Llangollen, I told some hard truths to the members of the Cardiff Bay Bubble.
The Bubble is a fragile and delicate entity, and is fiercely protected by the elite within it – and by those who wish to be in it.
Its devotees took to social media to pillory the Welsh Conservative heretic – who dared throw scorn upon their holy idol – with cries of “Hypocrite!”
It is always the case that when politicians don’t hear what they want to: they go on the defensive by getting a bit personal.
And what is this hard truth that warranted such a response from all sections of the Welsh political elite?
Simple: after 20 years of devolution, for some people, their lives had not been improved by devolution, and that politics in Wales is bloated, and to borrow a line – which they won’t like – for a very select few, and certainly not for the many.
Remember, it is two decades of Labour that has failed Wales – not devolution – but I fully understand why Welsh Labour would get upset about this inconvenient truth.
It has spent the last few years in power trying to hide its awful management of our Welsh NHS from the people of Wales.
It is scared that as more and more people realise that Labour has been running the NHS for the last 20 years, they might start blaming it for the scandalous A&E waiting times across Wales or that Betsi Cadwaladr UHB has been in special measures for five years come June.
It’s this truth that has caused so much consternation.



Echo chamber
As I said last week, people feel that the Assembly is just like the European Union. People here feel remote, ignored, and disenfranchised. This is not what people voted for all those years ago.
In 1997, those in favour of devolution argued that a Welsh Assembly would improve how our local services were run compared to being run by an out-of-touch Westminster Government that ignored Wales.
All these years later, those in the “Yes” campaign must be horrified that the perceived injustices and everything else they battled against have now come true – but with their own side in charge.
It’s not just that services aren’t what was promised, but that politics itself is too expensive and bloated.
How is it possible, for example, that while some politicians were asking people to cut their cloth in the national interest, the Assembly itself was having an annual £1 million pay rise?
If we really are the Parliament of Wales, then we should be acting in the best interests of the people of Wales and not ourselves.
We need to listen to the ignored, not just our own Twitter feeds and echo chambers.
And to quote that well-used phrase we need to make sure that our priorities are the people’s priorities and finally we shouldn’t be afraid to discuss the big issues – and to burst that Bubble.

I am going to save myself  time  by reposting John Davies over at Borthlas who points out what Mr Davies is up to.

It’s very unfair and completely irrelevant for unkind people to point out that the Tories seem to be the principal beneficiaries of the Senedd ‘gravy train’ which they’ve pledged to abolish in the unlikely event of them ever being elected. It also misses the point – the ‘gravy train’ that they want to abolish isn’t the actual one from which they benefit but the perceived one from which all the other parties benefit and which they know all voters hate. Mere facts are irrelevant in this approach to politics - and pointing out their hypocrisy serves only to reinforce the preconceptions to which they are playing.

Senior Politicians , who argued for Remain  were often labeled by Brexiter some of them Public School Oxbridge educated as being the elite, to some effect.

In the US Donald Trump does the same, amassing an army so opposed to the "Washington Swamp", that they support a Inarticulate, lying, serial adulterer and bankrupt  President partly because he had no record in politics.

Indeed Competence and Intelligence is often viewed with suspicion.

But Paul Davies  is following a well trodden path of claiming to speak for the ignored , which Boris Johnson despite the Tories being in power for 10 years exploited in the last election particularly among  Traditional Labour Voters

Rather than "Pricking the Bubble" Paul Davies is a "Prick in the Bubble ", but it is a tactic that has worked time and time again for politicians and will continue to do so.