'We're working hard for the win, but the world's not going to end on May 8 if I don't get re-elected' - bruised-but-bullish Tory Kurtz on fight for Senedd seat

'I'T'S the best bit of the job," Samuel Kurtz shouts as he bounds up the steps of the Senedd.

- RUTH MOSALSKI Political editor [e-mail]

No, he hasn't just scored a sucker punch against a political opponent during First Minister's Questions, but answered questions from children from Pembroke Dock community school on a visit from his patch to Cardiff Bay.

"How many glass windows are there?", "why does the roof look like a cowboy hat?", "has anyone ever tried to rob here?" are all asked, right through to "why is there a Ukrainian flag outside?" and the one he says comes up in every Senedd visit: "How much do you get paid?"

Samuel Kurtz was first elected as a Conservative Senedd member, mid-pandemic to a socially distanced Welsh Parliament.

He, like every first-time politician, remembers how, having done the hard yards of selection and election, he was handed a brown envelope and within hours reported to a parliamentary building.

Fast forward to the end of his first elected term, he isn't quite as downbeat as you'd expect a man whose party, the polls show, could end up in fifth place after May's election, and who personally is projected to lose his job.

There's no getting away from it, the Conservatives as a political group and a Senedd group has had a reckoning in recent months. The party was wiped out in the general election in 2024 in Wales. The electorate wanted to give the Tories a kicking, and they did.

There was an ensuing leadership contest, and Kemi Badenoch has needed time to find her footing, but she is, he says, "definitely an asset" and he describes "green shoots" emerging.

In a practical sense, he says that means people are no longer automatically closing doors in their faces when they go out to campaign.

"They want to hear us now," he says. "After the general election, it was fingers in ears and people didn't want to hear from us. Very politely, the Welsh electorate, the British electorate said, 'go and sit on the subs bench' and we did.