Calum Davies: I’m standing for a seat in the Senedd to ensure it does not get any bigger | Conservative Home

Calum Davies is a Conservative councillor in Cardiff and is a candidate for the Senedd next year.

Last week, I was given the honour of being selected by members of my local Conservative association as their lead candidate for a seat in the Senedd in next May’s election.

I am delighted to be entrusted with this role and am very much aware of the challenge ahead for our party given we’re not exactly as popular as we used to be, but this will not stop me from making a rigorous case for our party, and against the malignancy of the left-wing parties in the Senedd and the false promise of Reform.

I will make no secret of our desire to reduce the size of the Senedd.

The Conservatives have consistently been the lone voice in opposing its expansion from 60 to 96 members and have pledged to reverse this. Even Reform, claiming to be the insurgent, are supportive of the expansion as part of Project Nest Feathering and are happy to empower the nationalist project.

We will also drive home the message that Labour – in concert with their even more extreme partners in Plaid Cymru – have driven public services into the ground while splashing taxpayer cash on encouraging illegal immigration through the Nation of Sanctuary policy, pursuing an anti-racist action plan that brands the Welsh people as bigots, and pet projects like roadbuilding bans, votes for prisoners, smacking bans, tree-planting in Uganda, and the hated national 20mph default speed limit.

In this election for an expanded Senedd, Labour decided to adopt a system where 16 constituencies will elect six MSs via a proportional representation formula. For context, Wales send 32 MPs to Westminster. So, the expansion is accompanied by a difficult-to-explain electoral system where the British political tradition of voting for individuals is scrapped and voters cast their ballot for a party’s slate, presented in rankings.

In this effort to expand their own powers and importance, the left-wing parties of the Senedd have also found themselves content to butcher the much-valued local link further with these mega-constituencies: the Llyn Peninsula in the northwest extremity of Wales is in the same patch as villages that border the English border in Montgomeryshire, while rural Radnorshire – which also borders England – extends all the way to within touching distance of Swansea station in the centre of the city.

Never mind that these artificial constituency names are forced as it is, the powers-that-be have deigned that they will have official Welsh-only names. This is probably the most galling part of this whole charade of expanding democracy, as it actually serves to undermine it. In my mind, and that of others too, this is a voter suppression tactic.

Nationalist-leaning voters have a track record of being more motivated to vote in Senedd polls. This is evident in Plaid outperforming themselves in devolved elections compared to those for the House of Commons. They’re also more likely to be Welsh-speakers. The devolved elite have again leveraged their position with these confected Welsh-only names and mega-constituencies to discourage and confuse non-Welsh speakers from voting by diminishing the relationship between elector and locality.

My own patch – a combination of the parliamentary seats of Cardiff West and Cardiff South & Penarth – has been branded “Caerdydd Penarth” which accurately translates to “Cardiff Penarth”. That’s specific.

So, despite only around 20 per cent of the Welsh population able to speak Welsh – following a decade-on-decade decrease during the devolution period – these monoglot names have been imposed on the Welsh public without a mandate. Commitments to only do so where culturally significant – such as in Welsh-speaking stronghold Gwynedd, which has no English equivalent name – were renaged on. I commend Andrew RT Davies for being on the forefront of calling out this betrayal.

It also marks a particular hypocrisy among the devolved elite who have long criticised isolated instances where properties with Welsh names were replaced with English ones, but are now happy to engage in institutionalised, state-sanctioned erasure of English place names. I have no issue highlighting this abuse of power – as a lifelong Welsh speaker, it is my duty to do so.

In the campaign for my seat, I won’t be adopting the nationalist nomenclature – but it seems Reform have already been captured.

I am not the only one to have picked up the use of “Cymru” as a substitute for “Wales” in English language posts by Reform. This is something the lefty separatists have started doing in the post-Covid years. They’ve already managed to get ministers as well as an increasing number of organisations to do the same. Maybe they should be congratulated – but not commended – for pulling Reform into their orbit.

Faragists must be labouring under the impression that they are co-opting the Welsh language, but it is the devolved elite that are actually capturing them.

I am not sure why Reform even wants to do this. Being a proudly British party has not done them any harm in the polls so far. They should recognise that and not let themselves fall pray to the poisoned advice of the devolved elite who wish them anything but success.

The Conservatives could use another pro-Britain party in the Senedd – since Labour has chosen to abandon its unionism in its futile quest to neutralise the insatiable separatist movement – so Reform should not surrender their love of the British nation as if it was somehow incompatible with a belonging to Wales.

As difficult as it may be, the Conservatives will need to communicate this in the Senedd election campaign. Labour and Plaid are determined to press on with their social engineering project where the role of Britain must be diminished to make way for a more assertive separatist movement and cultural leftism in Wales – with all the consequences that entails – and Reform are neither strong enough nor smart enough to resist it.

But Conservatives like me are, and without us Wales will be overrun by an unrepentant and unrestricted political elite who will continue to perpetuate the lie that devolution has worked for Wales.