New MP accuses Tories of 'astronomical political failure'

Richard Youle, local democracy reporter

While knocking on doors in the run-up to July’s general election Swansea West candidate Torsten Bell said people would often ask why things felt harder than they used to.

Now the constituency’s MP, Mr Bell said he believed the “social contract” between the electorate and those in charge had been broken. “The reasons why countries held together is because things were improving,” he said. It meant a decent home, a decent job in which you were respected, a decent standard of living, good public services and support from the state when needed. “That in the end is what politics is about,” said the Labour MP.

In Mr Bell’s view, there has been “astronomical political failure” since 2010 when the Conservative Party won the first of four consecutive general elections, although early on it was in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

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Lack of investment

Mr Bell said Britain has been hampered by a lack of investment, poor productivity and stagnant wages since the 2000s, although pay has risen since inflation – driven in part by external shocks like the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine – climbed rapidly in the last two to three years. From a peak of just over 11% inflation is now 2.2%.

As former chief executive of The Resolution Foundation – a think-tank focused on improving living standards for those on low to middle incomes – Mr Bell has written a lot about inequality. “I am a pragmatist,” he said. “No-one is claiming there is some totally equal nirvana out there. Britain has two problems – we’re too unequal and too poor since the 1980s. Put these two together and poorer households in Swansea are much poorer than those in France, Australia, Canada.

Their living standards are too low. Eleven per cent of teenagers in Britain say they skip at least one meal a week – it’s 2.6% in Portugal, and Portugal is a poorer country. I’d highlight more generally that a healthy democracy is hard in a very unequal country – we’ve seen those on lower incomes or with fewer qualifications shift towards not voting in recent decades.”

Mr Bell and his Labour constituency colleagues’ canvassing has continued since the election to keep hearing people’s views. He is putting together a mainly Swansea-based office team and is looking for somewhere to live in the city.

Swansea University

Mr Bell said his father’s first “proper job” was when he came to Swansea University to teach geography although this pre-dated the arrival of the future Swansea West MP and his twin brother in 1982. The 41-year-old said he has been a Labour Party member for “25 years-ish” but had never sought a role in public life before applying to stand for Swansea West.

He was selected following an interview by a panel comprising Welsh Labour executive committee members and Swansea West constituency party members. Unease was expressed in some quarters that a candidate with strong local connections, like Swansea Council leader Rob Stewart, had not been selected. Mr Bell said he wasn’t told who the other candidates were, and that local party members have been “massively supportive”.

He said he spoke to Cllr Stewart “all the time” and described him as a “brilliant” leader of a council which had made great progress particularly on the local economy. He said he wanted to ensure it, and Swansea, got more attention. “We think the city can play a bigger part of the national story of Wales and Britain as a whole,” he said. “Like lots of places, it’s had challenges since de-industrialisation but in lots of ways it’s bouncing back. It has a clear sense of identity, and the city centre is being developed.”

Mr Bell secured 41.4% of the votes in the election but this share was 10% fewer than his predecessor Geraint Davies in 2019, notwithstanding the constituency’s boundaries had changed. Turnout was 11% lower than in 2019 and Reform UK performed well, as in many other constituencies, coming second.

Asked about this, Mr Bell stressed that Labour won the election with “a huge majority”, performing better in Wales than some had predicted, that turnout fell in other areas, and that the UK Independence Party had won a similar share of the votes in 2015 as Reform UK nine years later.

Challenges

He also referred to an election backdrop with “some trouble in governance in Cardiff” which had since been resolved. He said he wasn’t referring specifically to challenges faced by now former First Minister Vaughan Gething, rather the effect of a party’s internal debates and changing of leaders.

Improving the NHS and outcomes for patients was a voter priority, and in Wales health is devolved. Mr Bell said: “Do people think the NHS needs to do better? Yes. Does everyone in the NHS want things to be better, of course they do.” He added: “Quite a lot of people were fed up about why they couldn’t have a Welsh Government and UK Government working together. That’s one of the good things about having a (UK) Labour Government.”

Mr Bell returned to the importance of “core” challenges – housing, the economy, public services, cost of living – and said in his view Reform UK didn’t have a lot to offer in terms of problem-solving. “We’ve got to deliver the change we (Labour) have promised,” he said. “People are only going to be persuaded when they see their lives get better.”

He said he was dealing with a range of constituency casework, and also spoke about a conversation he’d had with a supermarket worker in Morriston who, he said, had had her hours cut by three-quarters. He said she was on a “short hours”, or casual, contract. “That should not be legal,” he said. “She was distraught. We talked about what her options were. She wanted to hear that we can make a difference.”

One of Labour’s big priorities is building more homes – 1.5 million of them over five years – with mandatory targets for councils to set. Asked what would happen if housebuilders couldn’t recruit enough workers to build them, Mr Bell said he believed a clear policy, plus investment in skills, would encourage people to “see there is a great career” in the sector. “Lots of countries, like France, have managed to build more houses (than the UK) every single year,” he said.

Labour’s planning reforms also aim to speed up decisions on big infrastructure projects, and what has been described as a “de facto” ban on onshore windfarms has been lifted. The UK needs to expand its low-carbon electricity production to help meet climate change targets and to provide the power for more electrified transport and home heating systems.

The upfront cost of electric vehicles and heat pumps, despite the previous Conservative Government raising a heat pump grant to £7,500, has fuelled concerns about the fairness of a green energy transition. Mr Bell said he believed electric vehicle take-up was good but that, in terms of home heating, Labour needed to focus on a “carefully-planned transition” which protected lower-income households.

Climate change

He said he was anxious about climate change’s worst-case scenarios but surprised, in a good way, about how far public attitudes had moved in the UK on the subject. The UK Climate Change Committee, an advisory body, said last month that the country was off track to meet its 2030 emission targets despite some notable progress. Heat pump installations, it said, need to multiply tenfold in six years and electric vehicle take-up hit 100%, up from 16.5% currently. “We know a lot of what we need to do,” said Mr Bell. “It’s time to make climate policy like normal economic policy.”

Labour’s first major event to handle in Government has been the riots and disorder in the wake of the awful stabbing tragedy in Southport on July 29. “What happened in Southport was terrible,” said Mr Bell. “There is no relationship between the poor victims and the riots that followed. No-one thinks that’s justified. Keir Starmer has been very clear that those involved will have the law firmly applied to them. He has been very tough.”

Asked about long-standing concerns over high levels of immigration – setting aside the recent disorder and criminality – and how they should be addressed, Mr Bell stressed that immigration and the recent lawlessness were separate issues. On immigration, he felt public trust had been eroded by reduction targets consistently not being met and an expensive Conservative policy to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda . He said Labour wanted to bring overall levels down. “I think they will come down naturally and because of policy changes,” he said. “We want to end the trade in people-smuggling and go after the gangs.”

Campaigning

Swansea councillor and deputy council leader Andrea Lewis, speaking on behalf of the Swansea West Labour constituency group, said Mr Bell wanted to listen to people and that he was still, effectively, out campaigning. “He has really been a breath of fresh air,” she said.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service contacted the UK Conservative Party but it didn’t respond at the time of going to press. Cllr Lyndon Jones, leader of Swansea Conservatives, said there was “no money left” when the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition took over from Labour in 2010 and that his party had spent billions of pounds dealing with a pandemic and subsidising energy bills. “And we are now finding out that the UK economy is actually very strong,” he said.

Cllr Jones also pointed to a recent announcement by Chancellor Rachel Reeves that winter fuel payments for pensioners would only apply to those on pension credit or other means-tested benefits. He claimed Mr Starmer had said prior to the election that Labour wouldn’t cut these payments. “A lot of pensioners have been in touch with me and they’re not happy,” said Cllr Jones.