Samuel Kurtz has been a Senedd Member for the last five years. He may not get another chance
“It’s the best bit of the job,” Samuel Kurtz shouts as he bounds up the steps of the Senedd. No, he hasn’t just scored a sucker punch against a political opponent during First Minister’s Questions, but answered the questions from kids from Pembroke Dock community school while they’re 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,” he says. “Very politely, the Welsh electorate, the British electorate said, ‘go and sit on the subs bench’ and we did.
“Here, we had to front up and we accepted it and kept fighting the fight, but now? We’ve got a council by-election in Pembrokeshire, people are opening the doors to us and wanting to hear what the Conservatives have to say about some of the challenges facing Wales”.
But not just dealing with its internal battles, the party has another front to fight on – the one against Nigel Farage’s turquoise army.
In July, Laura Anne Jones, one of his Senedd colleagues defected. She’s not the first Tory to do so, or the last, but doing it at a press conference, at the Royal Welsh Show, without telling a soul in her group or their leader, caused real hurt.
His abiding feeling when he heard? “Really disappointed”.
It was the manner it happened in, he says. “There’d been a lot of behind the scenes support for Laura and the fact that she didn’t reach out to Darren as leader, I thought, that’s just a no-no. You can have your disagreements, you can have everything else”.
He did not think she would defect. “Maybe I thought too much of her,” he says.
He thought the group had unity behind Darren Millar, and they were scoring points in FMQs. “We were obviously going through the selection process, and the Sir Fynwy Torfaen seat was up at that time, so I don’t know if that played a material impact,” he says.
The context being that Peter Fox, the Monmouth MS and Ms Jones, a regional MS, would have been fighting for top spot for the Conservative Party there.
There were a few weeks of recess for the dust to settle, and by September the pain of the defection had lessened.
“By September it was like, we’ve got a job to do, and that’s what’s been my focus is. Reform can talk about this or that. Pretty much every press release Reform put out is we’re still top of the polls.
“Okay, fine. If that’s what you want to hold on to, great. They’ve got no leader in Wales at this moment, they might well do by the end of the week.
“They’ve no candidates lined up. They’ve got no policies.
“They are the politics of being pissed off and I get people have been pissed off over the last few years with everything that’s happened, not that grievance politics isn’t going to fix things.
“Genuinely, you can come in here and want to burn the whole place down or completely redo it or whatever you want to do, but you have to work within the system.
“Everything they’re proposing just seems like they haven’t put any thought as to how politics actually works,” he says.
When people tell him they’re looking to Nigel Farage, he tells them “he’s not on the ballot paper”.
He does not avoid those conversations, and thinks they need to happen in the open. If members are thinking of defecting, the conversations need to be had.
“If people want to talk to me about why Reform need to win, I say, well firstly in the new electoral system no one party can win majority on their own so by all means if you say on a Facebook post ‘I really like you Sam but Reform is the way forward’, well, if you don’t vote for me you’re not going to get me,” he says.
His Senedd colleague James Evans has recently been thrown out of the party.
On Darren Millar’s account, when Mr Evans was asked if he was speaking to Reform he admitted they had approached him.
On Mr Evans’ account he had been honest about the approach but then refused to toe the party line about whether Britan is “broken”.
“I thought it was the inability to stop communicating with Reform that was James’ downfall,” he says.
The pair “got on really well” and had similar interests – sports and farming to name two. “[We] pushed each other in the chamber to be better, seeing each other do things and thinking ‘we can do that, we can this’, and that’s how I think good teammates bring the best out of each other,” he says.
He was, he says, saddened, by his expulsion.
“Maybe James was thinking I can leverage this to try and get the party in a position that I want it to be, I don’t know,” he says.
He has checked in with him to see he’s ok, but hasn’t broached what happened or how.
At the time Sam Kurtz spoke to WalesOnline, James Evans’ defection to Reform had not yet been announced and the Pembrokeshire MS said he still hoped it would not happen.
“I really hope he doesn’t, because I think James could be in a really strong position now to say, look, I’m not standing for the Senedd, I like what Darren and Paul are doing in Cardiff, disagree with the trajectory of the party in London, but my support is with the guys in Cardiff, but I’m not joining any other political party.
“If he did that, a lot of people would go ‘fair play to him”. That is a very grown-up, very mature and a very good way of ending his good five-year contribution in Cardiff.
“Do I think that Reform will have been putting a lot of pressure on him to join, most probably? Not for any other reason than to say that can have another seat in the chamber.
“As we’ve seen with the defection in London, the press release comes one day and then it’s back to Farage being front and centre of it.
“I don’t think some people are realising how much of a fraud this is.
“I’d really like James to come back to us, I really would. I think he’s got so a good future in the party, I think he’s very good in the chamber, he’s got a good dynamic and perspective on some policy issues from his upbringing and his role in council, but that’s for Darren and Paul, it’s never say never, maybe.” For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here
Does he found himself sat looking round the group wondering ‘who next?’
“I don’t think so lowely of my colleague,” he says.
A farmer’s son, there was no overt politics in the 34-year-olds family. He remembers Blair winning in 1997, and the Senedd being set up. He also remembers clocking how Wales and its newly devolved parliament was an “afterthought” on the TV.
He describes his younger self as “one of those annoying kids in school who just put his hand up and wanted to do things, from stage shows to orchestra to sports to Eisteddfods,” he says.
He wanted to be a journalist, and studied politics at UWE, juggling his study with his other love – rugby.
After graduating he was offered a job with the Pembrokeshire Herald, then the Western Telegraph, and went on to run Stephen Crabb’s office, “which I never thought was possible”.
A lecturer had marked him as a Conservative during his time in Bristol. “He basically sat me down and said, ‘well, you’re a Conservative son, what are you going to do with it?’ and it was the first time someone actively said I was a Conservative so that stuck with me,” he says.
He stood for Pembrokeshire council in 2017 and got elected, but describes that time in Mr Crabb’s office as ” the best apprenticeship I could ever have” because he says he was working with an MP “who is at the top of his game doing amazing stuff”.
When Angela Burns, a fellow Conservative, said she wouldn’t seek re-election, he thought “I’d quite like to give that a go”.
He’d never actually been to the Senedd before being elected. “I remember, sort of weirdly, telling myself that it’s the kind of place I want to go if I’m elected to it. I suppose it’s a kind of this weird motivator but everybody uses different things to motivate them and that was one of my motivations to get through the election, saying ‘I’m not going to Cardiff unless I’m elected to go there’.
He is alive to the issues of the Senedd. He thinks the building is geographically the wrong place, doesn’t think MSs should be allowed to contribute from home, and agrees with the colleague he won’t name who describes it as, on occasion, turning into “Carry On Cynlliad”
But, this five years has taught him plenty too. He says he could have a coffee with any of his Senedd 59 colleagues – and says he’s found friends across the political spectrum, naming Plaid Cymru’s Luke Fletcher as someone whose politics he doesn’t share, but who has become a friend.
But it’s not all plain sailing. “I’m very conscious of imposter syndrome,” he says.
“I remember sitting in the main chamber for the Royal opening, and just thinking ‘Am I meant to be here? Is this something that Sam Kurtz should be doing?’.”
When Labour cabinet minister Ken Skates gave an interview saying had similar feelings, he messaged him, grateful to hear it wasn’t just him. “I thought if someone who’s been at the top of the game still sometimes goes, do you know what, I’m not quite sure I’m meant to be here, then I’m okay to feel like that.”
Becoming a politician has, he says, taken its toll.
Schedules change at the drop of a hat. When the party leader recently announced a visit, his diary had to be rearranged.
When he was selected as a candidate, his relationship ended, because his then-girlfriend didn’t feel comfortable in being in the “public sphere” as he words it, “which is fine, and these things are relevant to the job. I don’t think people fully appreciate some of those aspects of it”.
“If you want to get ahead, and I don’t mean get ahead individually, but advocate for your party, you’ve got to do the hard yards in opposition.
“You’ve got be out there owning the debate, putting over the argument, putting in the hard yards and I think that has been the biggest misconception. Actually you can be a very busy MS if you wanted to be,” he says.
And few periods are busier than an election. When we meet there are fewer than 100 days until polling day in Wales. He’s number two for the party on the Ceredigion Penfro list, behind Paul Davies.
The most recent poll that has come out shows that means he won’t get re-elected. Which begs the question, what is it like being a Conservative at the moment?
“Look, there’s no point beating around the bush. The electoral forecast for the next Senedd election is tough for my party. The new electoral system and the changes mean that there’s probably some good local members who will miss out, and I might even bracket myself in that.
“In very simplistic terms, I need 20% of the vote, one in five, to vote for the Conservatives for me to get re-elected,” he says.
The constituency changes mean that he’s not just campaigning in his native Pembrokeshire. In fact, his constituency is only a third of Pembrokeshire and the rest is Ceredigion, somewhere with no real historical links to his party.
“It’s interesting because I think it’s more of an impact on the long-standing members who have owned a constituency for a number of years. I think for them that’s going to be the biggest change,” he says.
But, he doesn’t think any poll should be taken as gospel.
“From a Conservative perspective, it’s not that the polls are different, it is that the electoral system is different, there’s so many unknowns being thrown up with that and I don’t think any of the pollsters have got it anywhere near right,” he says.
It can’t, for example, take account of any strength of feeling for a serving politician.
“In the Gwynedd Maldwyn constituency, we’re down for being without a Conservative representative because of what happened in the general election. I’m not sure that’s quite accurate,” he says.
But he is, seemingly genuinely pragmatic about his personal position. He could well lose his seat, and that’s ok, he says.
A more “tribal” Senedd awaits those who are elected. But he has a challenge for those who are considering voting Reform UK.
“Reform is, at the moment, projecting whatever they want to be in different areas of Wales.
“So they’re projecting this sort of industrialist [character] in south Wales, pro-Labour values, and then they’re being very pro-SME in some of the other areas, very pro-agriculture in some other areas, when Farage is on the record talking about chlorinated chicken and homo-fed beef and bringing that in.
“They are projecting anything that they want to be to anybody that they want to speak to and people are lapping it up.
“That’s why councils in England that are Reform are falling by the wayside, it’s because you can’t please the whole electorate.
“That is a very fragile base that you have and you can satisfy that base with your policies if you’re economically left and right wing at the same time, culturally left and the right wing, at the same time. It doesn’t work, and that’s where fragmentation will come in politics,” he says,
With three months to go until the Senedd election, looking back is natural.
“I genuinely have adored the last five years, the ups, the downs, everything, I’ve absolutely loved it. I’ve learnt a lot about myself, I’ve learned so much about how things work, and I don’t just mean like governance, but how things actually come together, projects, press releases, everything that people may think are the minutiae in running an office.
“We’re working damn hard locally to try and make sure I get over the line, but at the same time, the world’s not going to end on May the 8th if I don’t get re-elected.
“There’ll be some disappointed people and I’ll be one of them at the front of the queue, my parents as well, they’ll be quite disappointed. But I think there’ll be people in Pembrokeshire who’ll be quite disappointed I’m not re-elected as well.”
