The woman who was called DJ Love Spoon and now has one of Wales' toughest tasks
The woman who was called DJ Love Spoon and now has one of Wales' toughest tasks
Mims Davies is a former DJ at a renowned nightclub. Now her job is to rebuild the Conservative Party in Wales
Mims Davies MP, shadow secretary of state for Wales, pictured in the Senedd
(Image: Mims Davies )
She's the Conservative Party's Welsh representative in Westminster but Suffolk-born Mims Davies' constituency is some 200 miles from Wales' capital city. Yet Byron Davies, the party's chairman, called her an "honorary Welsh girl".
Far from the micro-managed answers politicians are accustomed to giving it was in the St David's Day debate in the Commons a few months ago she staked her claim to Wales. She dished out titbits about her nights out in Wind Street in Swansea, how she only left Wales because of her ex-husband's job ("they do say they are exes for a reason"), how a visit to Newport for her passport ended with a tattoo (a butterfly on her foot, one of two she has), and that she had a nickname of DJ Love Spoon.
But Mims Davies has a huge and overriding task – to restore faith in a party the electorate in Wales has shown quite clearly it has lost faith in. As the party gets set for its Welsh conference this weekend in Llangollen there is plenty to do.
In the 2024 general election all its MPs lost their seats. Some of its senior figures are preparing for a court case about allegedly betting on the date of that election and, to add insult to injury, polls are projecting that their role as the official opposition in the Senedd could be under serious threat. The latest ITV Cymru Wales/Barn/YouGov poll projected that in the new-look 96-seat Senedd they will get just nine seats, placing them fourth in the rankings . You can see that here.
She is refreshingly honest as she speaks about her party's prospects, admitting they have lost trust and are at a low base facing multiple threats. She admits that if she does her job well she will have talked herself out of a job because Wales will once again have Welsh Conservative MPs and the pool of people able to be shadow Welsh secretary will vastly increase. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here.
Mims Davies' self-confessed love affair with Wales started when she attended the then University of Swansea. Escaping a tough time as a teenager in Sussex she planned to study in Norwich but arriving in Swansea for her interview she was wooed. She met, and later married, a Welshman and describes her children as half-Welsh.
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Mims Davies has been an MP since 2015
(Image: Mims Davies )
While studying here she worked at events at Brangwyn Hall, did work experience at Morriston Hospital's radio station (followed by a job at The Wave), and made money as a DJ at Barons where she got the DJ Love Spoon nickname.
Despite being in Wales in the early 1990s she wasn't involved in the devolution campaign – either way – and her journey into politics was when, as a first-time mum, she was angered by the state of the local playground and she went to "nag her local council and then got co-opted onto a parish council". "Coming out as a Tory in Swansea? God no – I wanted friends," she laughed.
"I was due to go to Norwich and I ended up at Swansea. I drove up the M4 for the first time – it was the old bridge then but it was the start of a really exciting life for me. It was the city by the sea, the beautiful Mumbles and all of what Gower has to offer, and an amazing nightlife. You would have two buses a week, if you could get anywhere, where I was from and it was so exciting.
"There was so much opportunity in and around the city as well as the beautiful landscape in the city and the sea – it was a whole world that opened up. Where I've got in life wouldn't have happened without the opportunities that opened up for me in Swansea," she said.
Now her challenge is being Wales' voice in the shadow cabinet. "People know me as someone with a love of Wales and an understanding of it over the last 30 years but there isn't masses of people to choose from and guess what? It was me. If I was doing health I would be travelling around the country getting to know different hospitals or what's going on. I'm doing exactly the same in Wales – whether it is knocking on doors and learning from my colleagues or going to a Conservative Club.
"You get to know your subject and I know a lot about this subject," she said.
"My main job is to speak up for Wales in Westminster, for my party in the official opposition, and hold [Welsh secretary] Jo Stevens and the Welsh Office to account. In terms of voices in Westminster I don't feel it's me that's not found my voice. I'm waiting to see, frankly, where the Labour government is. I think they're struggling to be heard.
"I hope that people see that there is a credibility. I don't try and pretend to be Welsh but I understand Wales and I'm standing up for Wales and if I do a good job I'm out of a job, I'm very happy with that. I have to balance my own constituency as well but much of these are one and the same issues. Whether sky-high business rates or the tourism tax or the impacts on farming, what the government is doing is affecting Wales, it's affecting my constituency," she said.
Mims Davies MP at the despatch box in the Commons
Asked about the mood of the party, months after an election wipeout, she said: "I would say in some ways we're a tighter team than ever because, you rightly say, we've got a really big mountain to climb to come back but equally Labour are making such a mess of things, whether it's in Cardiff Bay or imploding and getting things so badly wrong here in Westminster, that actually it's drawing us closer. And we've got a big fight to get heard because of course there's still anger and trust issues with our party.
"Let's be honest – we had a massive whack on the nose hence we've got no MPs left [in Wales] but for us to get together and have a plan to fix Wales to really stand out for an inherently Conservative offer, a vision for Wales, we're all really aligned on this," she said.
The latest poll Wales put the Conservatives in the Senedd in fourth.
"Labour have imploded so badly, so quickly, it's a plague on all of our houses and those other people look like fresh and new. Plaid, who have been propping up Labour for the last 25 years, are apparently the new kids on the block.
"Voting Reform may be a great way of getting back at us but that will prop up Labour where people once again are really unhappy and they have no credible plan for Wales. We do. In Darren [Millar] and our team in the Senedd we are unashamedly focussed on holding Labour to account and making sure that where those opportunities to deliver for people actually happen. There has been a tendency to devolve and forget.
"You can already say that the First Minister is trying to draw a bridge away from Labour in Westminster because things are going so badly wrong. We have to make sure that we are seen as a credible and the real alternative while people are angry."
Mims Davies MP in her DJ Love Spoon era
(Image: Mims Davies )
There is just shy of a year to go until the Senedd election. "I think we need to remind people who are looking to Plaid or others – they are the separatists, they're hiding the fact they want another referendum, and they're looking to pull us away. And they're anti-nuclear and many jobs rely on the nuclear sector and the defence sector. So they they need scrutiny as much as we need scrutiny.
"We are in uncharted territory with what's happening with the Senedd with the additional politicians," she said, a change her party opposes. "We actually care about Wales. We need to make sure that people understand that we are pro-choice, pro-business, pro-family, pro-Welsh culture and that the way to fix Wales and get rid of that frustration is to vote Conservative.
"We've got a year to go. We've got to build trust and we've got to highlight that the NHS has been run in Wales badly.
"They've been running the NHS in Wales since Tony Blair was in power and many people have thought it's the Conservatives and are only now waking up to the fact that it's not us.
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"We've got an opportunity here. Yes, it's an incredibly low base and people are cross, but whether it's us standing up for those who've been affected by the grooming gangs or standing up for farmers or the people who have the winter fuel allowance ripped away from them we need to remind people that we are the credible alternative and that we should be given a chance," she said.
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