The woman who was called DJ Love Spoon and now has one of Wales' toughest tasks

SHE'S the Conservative Party's Welsh representative in Westminster but Suffolk-born Mims Davies' constituency is some 200 miles from Wales' capital city.

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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 that 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 its 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.

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.