Second prospective Tory candidate wants to scrap Senedd – putting him at odds with MS mother

A second prospective Conservative candidate has declared that he is for scrapping the Welsh Parliament – disagreeing on the issue with his mother, a sitting Senedd Member.

Yesterday Nation.Cymru revealed that a senior advisor to Welsh Conservative frontbencher Andrew RT Davies, Chris Thorne, was standing on a platform of handing powers back to Westminster.

Now another candidate for the South Wales Central list, Calum Davies, has put himself forward on a platform of doing away with the institution.

He is the son of South Wales West regional Senedd Member and Bridgend candidate, Suzy Davies, who has declared that she is pro-devolution.

However, her son was just as unequivocal in his support for doing away with the Senedd, telling members in a candidate CV that “the simple truth is devolution is failing and must be abolished”. He added that “now is the time to strike to ensure an end to the devolution experiment”.

“An Assembly, now a ‘Welsh Parliament’, was sold to us as a way to improve our lives, but over the course of a generation, standards have lowered so far that Wales has become the poor relation across the UK,” he says.

“Devolution keeps Labour in power and made nationalists the kingmakers. In order to work in this space, Conservatives in Wales have felt forced to pursue consensus politics too often, only for parties of the Left to lock us out of policymaking in Cardiff Bay.

“All the while, fringe parties hoover up our natural voters. Devolution is purgatory for the Conservatives and oxygen to nationalists and socialists — it has not only proven a danger to our public services, but the Union itself. Making the case for Britain is something I will never compromise on.”

‘Dismantling’

Calum Davies went on to say that he wanted to hand powers down to councils and return them to Westminster.

“The Senedd is not a sacred institution and is, sadly, exploited effectively every day by nationalists and socialists,” he said.

“I will strain every sinew to defeat both: no internal borders, no federalism, no further powers.

“The Left are very fond of saying devolution is a process rather than an event, so why don’t we make that process our own? After all, our party spent years saying the answer is ‘not more Europe, but less,’ so maybe we should be saying the same about devolution.

“I truly believe that resolving to end devolution is the best course of action, not only for the Conservative Party, but for the survival of our United Kingdom.

“Britain is a nation and Wales is part of it. They cannot be separated. I am proudly Welsh and proudly British — they both enhance the other.

“I will do everything in my power to stop nationalists in both Labour and Plaid from dismantling the country we love. I believe ending devolution must be an option to preserve the UK.”