Zohran Mamdani’s condemnation of Susan Abulhawa is a capitulation to the Epstein class, Abulhawa said in a searing but graceful response to the New York City mayor.

Abulhawa views on Israel and Zionism were condemned by Mamdani in a recent press conferece.

Abulhawa has a new book called “Every Moment is a life.” It is an anthology she compiled featuring the writings of young Palestinians experiencing the UK/US/Israeli genocide of Gaza. Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, illustrated a piece within the collection called “A Trail of Soap.”

Susan Abulhawa’s warning

Susan Abulhawa warned Mamdani in a post on X:

You succumbed to forces that seek to pick away at you, at your talented, beautiful wife, and at your work, they will claw harder with each apology or concession you make. If you are not careful, they will siphon your soul before you even realize it.

As the Zionist press in the USA got wind of Duwaji’s contribution — Mamdani felt compelled to publicly condemn Abulhawa. He said Duwaji never met Abulhawa and was commissied through a third party, Abulhawa confirmed this.

Mayor Mamdani says his wife, Rama Duwaji, was not aware of anti-Israel posts (like calling some Israeli citizens “parasites”) from an author she illustrated an essay for.

Mamdani calls that rhetoric “reprehensible” and says his wife booked the gig thru a 3rd party pic.twitter.com/HQqJvRYC53

— Josie Stratman (@JosieStratman) March 13, 2026

The fact that Mamdani publicly condemned a Palestinian American author whose work is crucial amid the silencing of voices witnessing the Gaza genocide has disappointed many of his supporters.

The poignancy of the story that Duwaji illustrated, a young Gazan called Deema’s first encounter with the indignity of a public toilet after her home was destroyed, was lost entirely in Mamdani’s condemnation. In his rush to distance himself from a Palestinian voice, he buried the very humanity his wife’s art sought to illuminate.

In her response to Mamdani, Abulhawa reserved her deepest sorrow not for herself but for the young writers she mentored in Gaza —children who risked their lives walking through bombed streets just to reach writing workshops she held in Gaza in 2024, in the middle of the violent, bloody genocide.

During two trips to Gaza in 2024, Abulhawa conducted eight writing workshops for young Palestinians. The workshops took place amid Israel’s relentless bombing campaigns. She said in her video reply to Mamdani:

No words can adequately capture the evil I have witnessed or experienced at their hands. I do not have sufficient language to describe what they have done to us, what Gaza smells like, feels or looks like up close now. But it is the kind of knowledge that alters one’s life.

She said it was extraordinarily difficult for the young writers to attend the workshops. They traveled for hours on foot, by bicycle, or on donkey carts just to reach the meeting places. Sometimes the journey itself put their lives at risk.

Palestinian-Americans condemn Mamdani

Other Palestinian Americans also condemned Mamdani’s capitulation.

Anas Saleh’s take down on Mamdani’s zionist position during his mayoral campaign was reshared by him.

After I heckled Mamdani, I got flooded with hate from the left for attacking “my allies.”@NerdeenKiswani reached out and told me that in a few months or a year that Zohran will expose himself to the people and they’ll realize you were right. Well… here we are. Nerdeen was right. https://t.co/ULqGUTe3ts

— Anas Saleh انس صالح (@AnasSaleh_NYC) March 14, 2026

Nerdeen Kiswani said that Palestine movement was expendable to Mamdani. She said:

He knows he’ll anger us. He just believes that when the time comes, we’ll vote for him anyway.

Zohran Mamdani throwing his own wife under the bus for not “vetting” who she made artwork for was never going to appease Zionists. They were always going to attack him anyway.

So why do it?

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Because in his political calculus, Zionists are a constituency to appease. The Palestine…

— Nerdeen Kiswani (@NerdeenKiswani) March 14, 2026

Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian writer recalled a conversation with Mamdani in which the mayor once warned him that criticism of politicians ‘gives people permission to go after his wife.’

Once in a meeting w Mr Mayor he told me that when I criticize him I “give people permission to go after his wife.” Very funny remark in retrospect.

— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) March 14, 2026

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Yet in condemning Abulhawa, Mamdani himself had now handed his wife’s critics that very permission — sacrificing on the altar of political ambition the very principle he had once invoked to protect his family.

Zionist journalists circling Mamdani

The pressure on Mamdani has been relentless.

Since Duwaji’s illustration was discovered, Zionist journalists have targeted both him and his wife.

For instance, New York Post published a column attacking Duwaji. It accused her of holding “abhorrent, disgusting opinions” and celebrating “mass murder” based on her social media activity. The piece questioned whether Jewish New Yorkers could trust a mayor “who sleeps next to a woman” with such views!

The journalist who asked the question about Duwaji’s links to Abulhawa at the press conference mentioned above — is called Jon Levine of the Washington Free Beacon.

He is a Gaza Holocaust denier.

Israel’s response in Gaza was in fact far too lenient https://t.co/VBhh4BgpOb

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) February 12, 2026

Why Mamdani would condemn Abulhawa to a genocide denier shows the limitations of liberal politics.

Featured image via WikimediaCommons

How can bees live underwater?

Wait – but what about that “respiration”?

Xander West is an independent writer and author of the Grumbling Times substack. 

An essential part of any political party’s recovery from major defeat is reform of its internal machinery or institutions.

The Conservative Party, unfortunately, seems not to have taken this endeavour as seriously or comprehensively as is necessary to restore its status as the centre-right’s party of government, in other words to publicly show it has changed for the better over repeating such ad nauseam.

Perhaps this contributed to Danny Kruger, Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell’s decisions that conservatism may be better realised in another party. Nevertheless, the Conservatives’ history provides plentiful inspiration for reorganisation following severe defeats which, whilst not a panacea, could strive to fulfil several present challenges. In particular, the Conservative Political Centre (CPC) embodies the kind of party institution which should be urgently revived.

The chairmanships of Ralph Assheton and Frederick Marquis, 1st Baron Woolton, with a strong supporting role by R. A. Butler as head of the Conservative Research Department, were the most transformative of the postwar era. To quote Philip Norton’s The Conservative Party (1996), they “not only resuscitated the party but effectively galvanised it” following the landslide defeat of 1945; the creation of the CPC the same year was no exception.

Butler in particular, who influenced its formation, considered breaking the intellectual monopoly of socialism a crucial aspect in radically renewing the party. As its political education body and wholly independent until 1964, the CPC sought to produce well-informed and intellectually self-confident Conservatives at all levels without subjecting them to propagandising diktats or soundbite sloganeering.

Through its extensive publications, lectures, conferences, schools and study groups, it stimulated political thinking and the discussion of new ideas without formally committing the party to certain policies or forcing its members to conform to official opinions. Indeed, the body prioritised the two-way movement of ideas between the Conservative leadership and membership by circulating responses from local branches on specific topics, to which the relevant minister or senior party figure would be obliged to reply and consider in their decision-making. CPC pamphlets were also intended to reach a wider public who might be sympathetic to conservative ideas or arguments.

However, after nearly half a century of prominence in Conservative politics, the CPC appeared to atrophy in its final decade or so, with the idea of education becoming more top-down than grassroots. Perhaps its consolidation into a directorate with the Research Department in 1988 crippled whatever independence and authority it still enjoyed, forcing a greater orientation towards merely reviewing official policy directions. Its closest successor, the Conservative Policy Forum, inherited only a fraction of the role once performed by the CPC in ensuring party members are represented in policymaking, with scant reference to ideas beyond policy and no notion of political education.

Most importantly, the CPC in its prime was dedicated to explaining problems and suggesting solutions in accordance with conservative principles, its arguments thus setting it apart from conventional think tanks.

Although conservatism has frequently been the most pragmatic body of modern political thought, such considerations must be anchored in some underlying convictions to avoid being attracted into all manner of expediencies and undermining one’s own stated positions. Sometimes trusting the strength of Conservative politicians’ instinctive or dispositional conservatism has proved enough, yet other times this has failed or the right spirit towards conservation has been all but absent, whereupon dire straits ensue.

This demonstrates why the CPC was such a vital asset in policy formation and election campaigns alike, for its educational mission essentially advanced conservatism and strong, articulate conservatives within the Conservative Party. To disregard this role, it implied, would impair the party’s chances of election and the quality of government thereafter. It should be self-evident that disseminating bullet-point lists of ‘values’ via email or press releases will never suffice for thought, nor what the party forgot about itself in recent years in forsaking its distinct and rich political tradition.

Of course, there are obvious benefits in hosting a vibrant environment for ideas within the party today, or in producing competent and knowledgeable activists, both of which the CPC facilitated through its activities. Whilst some may argue the need to teach Conservatives about conservatism shows the party was never conservative in the first place, this is an inaccurate assumption.

Political education done right entails informing, articulating and deepening conservative expressions of common sense or disposition, indeed of substantiating values and the motivations behind policy proposals. The need for articulated principles and applying the conservative tradition are simply inextricable from the party’s form and function, its identity and purpose.

Reviving an institution like the CPC could begin to satisfy the immense unrealised demand for a party which represents something solid and understands itself, whilst guarding against possible future drift from leaderships seeking more convenient choices. Perhaps the window in which the Conservatives could have monopolised this potential support, however, has already closed.

It is a damning indictment against the Conservative Party of recent years that a plurality of the electorate now supports, for lack of other perceived options, a party which offers fireworks with assertive rhetoric in lieu of solidity, nuance and true depth of thought or feeling. Both options carry ample persuasive power, but only one may engender permanence, although the prominent defections to Reform could quickly upend this assessment in its favour.

Furthermore, whilst the formation of a concrete policy suite at the 2025 party conference was a positive development, recreating the CPC would give them the substance and verifiably conservative credentials they desperately need.

Again, ‘authentic’ conservatism is more than albeit important counters to Labour policies the Conservative leadership tends to promote and deeper than attempts to find merely popular taglines or policy solutions. Moreover, the realisation that contemporary conservatism ought to defend what is good in society does not make it ‘muscular’, for such an idea is so skeletal to the entire philosophy that it barely should need restating.

Nevertheless, where the party has clear ideas, a reimagined CPC could readily support, campaign for and build upon them. It could also show conservatives, rather than nostalgic centrists, remain the preponderant faction. Yet, the overriding consideration might become that of legacy, not of the past twenty years but two centuries of Conservative achievements which risk being forgotten amidst the political tumult.

In 1945, as now, the repository of wisdom in the conservative tradition demands rediscovery and readapting to present circumstances. The Conservative Party’s survival is much less assured than in 1945 or 1997, but the reinvigoration of a party cannot occur through its leadership alone.

Energy, ideas and self-confidence must be shared by the whole party; the question of sustaining them is where a party institution focussing on political education would come into its own. Given those preconditions, there is little but individual egos preventing Reform from forming an organisation along similar lines and further assimilating the core Conservative vote.

If given a fair chance, re-establishing a body like the CPC could facilitate much in a Conservative recovery, but if current trends persist might equally find itself passing the torch for the conservative political tradition.

The Met Police has issued a statement praising itself for its decision to ban today’s London march against the Iran war. The force allied with the Israel lobby to ban the annual Al Quds Day march and limit it to a ‘static rally’. Then it boasted how great its decision had been because its repression of British citizens’ right to march in peaceful protest had caused some not to attend. It ended by thanking police officers for coming from all over the place to prevent an anti-war protest and “keeping protestors and Londoners safe”:

News – 15 March 2026 17:05

Public order update

Today’s policing operation at the Al Quds day protest and counter-protest concluded this afternoon.

Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan, Public Order lead said:

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“Our policing plan worked, with both groups kept apart and we saw no attempts from either side to breach conditions by marching. Both sets dispersed as planned from 15:00hrs.

“We saw significantly fewer people attend than we had anticipated. The restrictions and conditions meant many people chose to stay away and not to attend the protest or counter-protest.

“This shows our decision to apply for the ban was the right one. A static protest meant it was easier for officers to keep the two groups apart and prevent serious public disorder.

“We made 12 arrests including for showing support for a proscribed organisation, affray and for threatening or abusive behaviour. We are also investigating chants made by a speaker at the Al Quds protest.

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“As I said from the outset, the decision to ban the protest march does not set a precedent and we will continue to consider each protest on a case-by-case basis.

“I want to extend my thanks to the officers, including those from across the country who supported us. Their professionalism and commitment helped us to keep protestors and Londoners safe.”

Yeah, well done lads and lasses. You protected us all from the big bad mob that doesn’t want the UK to assist two genocidal regimes from killing people. Bravo 👍.

Met Police, happy to repress

The Met doesn’t say so in its statement, but the “chants made by a speaker” were rapper Bob Vylan repeating his Glastonbury 2025 “Death death to the IDF” chant. As well he might, since police and the CPS already looked at the exact same chant then and decided just four months ago, in December 2025, that the chant merited no further action. Ok then, ok now — unless of course the point is to smear the protest rather than to prosecute.

But the dishonesty ran even deeper. Both the anti-war protest and the several phone-booths worth of pro-war, pro-Israel counter-protesters were treated as if equal in size and significance — when in fact, tens of thousands still turned up to demand peace, despite police and state repression:

Contrast this with the open racism and tiny numbers of the pro-Israel hate-gathering:

Today, at the Al-Quds Day counter-protest in London, the Mossad-linked hate group “Stop the Hate UK” played a tune gloating about the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

They’re such incredibly sick and hateful people. pic.twitter.com/JhTeWwugBO

— Wokerati Marty (@WokeratiMarty) March 15, 2026

Contrary to its claims of keeping both ‘sides’ apart, sources at the scene said the Met also allowed far-right pro-Israel ‘auditors’ in among the peaceful anti-war protest.

In reality, the Met Police and its bosses in Whitehall and Downing Street are repressing the will of the British public. More than twice as many UK people oppose the US-Israel war of aggression on Iran. Almost as many oppose the Starmer regime allowing the US to use British airbases to attack Iran. Even more certainly would, if they understood that this enabling consists of directly refuelling and re-arming the carpet-bombing B-52 high-altitude bombers Trump is using to slaughter Iranian civilians:

Keir Starmer has turned Britain into a police state over the heads, and against the will, of the people of this country. He is a war criminal just as surely and just as guiltily as Trump, Netanyahu and their racist enablers.

Featured image via Middle East Eye

(Alamy)

4 min read14 min

At a Downing Street press conference on Monday morning, Starmer said there would be “immediate support” worth £53m for households reliant on heating oil that are “most exposed” to rising prices.

Referring to reports that oil companies had been cancelling orders and hiking prices, the Prime Minister said legal action would be taken if they had been found to have broken the law.

UK households will be protected by the Ofgem cap until July. However, energy bills could rise that month if global prices remain high.

Drivers are already seeing the impact of the war in Iran, with diesel and petrol prices rising sharply in recent weeks. 

On Sunday night, US President Donald Trump called for European allies to join him in the Middle East, telling the Financial Times that NATO faces a “very bad” future if allies like the UK do not help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The threat of attack by Iran for traffic passing through the Strait, which is one of the most important trade routes in the world, has led to a spike in oil and gas prices. 

Starmer said he was working with allies on a “viable collective plan” to restore freedom of navigation for ships seeking to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

“We’ve already acted alongside other countries to release emergency oil stocks at a level that is completely unprecedented. But, ultimately, we have to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ensure stability in the market.”

Questioned by the media about what shape this plan would take, Starmer said he was “looking at options” and wanted to involve “as many partners as possible”. 

The Prime Minister said that while the UK would take “the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies”, it would “not be drawn into the wider war”.

Starmer has so far committed the UK to “defensive” action, allowing the US to use British bases to carry out strikes in Iran.

However, he refused to join the initial US and Israeli attacks on Iran, arguing that there was no viable, long-term plan or clear legal basis for the action.

In his press conference, Starmer said the question of “whether to commit British troops to military action is the most serious responsibility for any Prime Minister”.

“I have been attacked by some for my decision not to join the offensive against Iran. 

“But at every stage, I’ve stood by my principles, principles which I held just as strongly when it came to debate about the Iraq war in 2003, principles which I believe are shared by the British people, that our decision should be based on a calm, level-headed assessment of the British national interest. 

“And that if we are to send our service men and women into harm’s way, the very least they deserve is to know that they do so on a legal basis and with a properly thought-through plan,” he said.

Referring to the Conservatives and Reform UK’s initial stance on the war, when both parties called on the UK to join the first US and Israeli strikes, Starmer said some would have “rushed the UK headlong into this war without the full picture of what they’re sending our forces into, and without a plan to get us out”, adding that approach was “not leading”, but “following”.

“My leadership is about standing firm for the British interest, no matter the pressure. And I believe time will show that we have the right approach, right on the economy and the cost of living, right on defence and energy, and right on this war in the best interests of the British people.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned companies in which Americans hold shares to evacuate from West Asia “so they are not harmed”.

An accompanying graphic circulated by the IRGC lists various industrial, tech, energy, and financial firms operating in Jordan and the UAE, including specific office locations.

The list includes: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Microsoft, Oracle, ExxonMobil, Citigroup, Amazon Web Services
and KKR.

pic.twitter.com/1DWLibrAms

— PSYOPOLY (@PSYOPOLYreport) March 14, 2026

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Iran is hitting the US where it hurts — financially.

Iran mastered the art of asymmetric warfare. It recognized the US empire’s weak points, and is hitting them hard.

First Iran struck US bases.

Then it closed the Strait of Hormuz and damaged oil fields, causing oil prices to skyrocket.

Now it is targeting major US corporations. https://t.co/MSpjLxKu0k

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— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 15, 2026

Iran is taking the moral high ground — which honestly isn’t hard when you’re fighting genocidal maniacs.

The US and Israel did not warn the Iranian school full of little girls that they were about to bomb it.

All things considered, Iran is extremely restrained compared to certain “civilised” forces targeting schoolgirls without warning. https://t.co/wjwGFTpVFm

— A wild viscacha (@isoboy) March 15, 2026

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Who are the real terrorists?

Notice how Iran warns the innocent civilians ahead of time to evacuate. To avoid killing civilians and only damage US property. The US and Israel give no such warnings. They bomb haphazardly with no regard for innocent life.

Which one sounds more like terrorists? https://t.co/W2yloh3631

— 🔻𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖔🔻 (@vCyberSpero) March 15, 2026

And in comparison, the companies Iran might now target are all propping up Israel’s illegal war.

Very good of Iran to warn them to evacuate even though they ARE Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Microsoft , ExxonMobil, Citigroup, Amazon, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain — arguably combatant companies that run imperial wars. https://t.co/GE83yfvePZ

— clay vessel (@ShabanaMir1) March 15, 2026

Iran is singlehandedly decolonising West Asia. But unlike Israel and the US, it is concerned about civilian casualties.

Iran’s retaliation

The UAE has repeatedly allowed the US and Israel to launch strikes on Iran from its territory. Therefore, its fair game.

translation: “the UAE just fucked up big time by allowing the USA to launch continuous attacks on us from there.” https://t.co/YfJAgOwGk7

— Static Breeze (@pipN_ainT_EZ) March 15, 2026

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As Epstein would say, ‘whoops’.

the most important lesson from the history of all empires:

don’t fight a war where you have a ton of fixed capital locked up https://t.co/6SFnJZAM15

— Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎 (@South_Gradient) March 15, 2026

Israel only colonised Palestine in 1948, whereas Iran is attempting to defend its millennia-old history.

Iran 🇮🇷 is merely fighting to defend its 6000 year history and has every right to respond however it wants. https://t.co/7CDPbQEfyO

— Godide🌟 (@Ntuli_Theko) March 15, 2026

Company values

The Canary has extensively covered several companies on IRCG’s target list.

Lockheed Martin is the manufacturer of Israel’s F-35 warplanes, which have been linked to specific war crimes in Gaza.

The Times of Israel previously reported:

The ministry said a delegation to the US signed a letter of agreement for the $3 billion deal that included 25 advanced stealth fighters built by Lockheed Martin.

Similarly, Boeing provides Israel with F-15 jets, Apache helicopters, satellites, military hardware and missiles.

Back in 2022, Israel used Boeing attack helicopters and fighter jets to attack Gaza. It murdered 44 Palestinians, including 15 children and 4 women, and wounded 360.

Microsoft also has deep ties with the Israeli state and provides services to the government, the Ministry of Defence, the military, and security bodies. All of Israel’s military apps run on Microsoft’s cloud service.

Leaked documents also show that Microsoft has significantly increased its operations with Israel’s military since 2023.

It is clear that since October 7, Israel has had the might of the world’s technology giants supporting its illegal siege of Gaza and Palestine. However, if profits start to suffer, maybe companies will rethink their ties to a genocidal terrorist state.

Iran is giving the US and Israel a taste of their own medicine and hitting them where it hurts, whilst also trying to clear the BDS list. Maybe Trump will get a reality check and rein in his ego — or maybe US companies will suffer just like Palestine, Iran and Lebanon.

Feature image via Hult International Business School/YouTube

Lewis Norton is a PhD Researcher at the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.

 Those familiar with recent events in Welsh politics will understand when I say that managing the Welsh Conservatives has become a particularly complex arrangement.

With the elections to the Senedd approaching in mere months, the party has had to address defections to Reform at both its public-facing level as well as its backroom staff, and polling is continuously showing the party to be stuck at around 12 per cent, which is a potentially dangerous level to be polling at given the intricacies of Wales’ new electoral system.

Chiefly among the issues the Welsh party has faced is the ongoing internal tensions around the party’s stance on devolution.

Darren Millar, the leader of the Conservatives’ Senedd Group, has been explicit in saying that abolishing the Senedd is off the table, and in seeking to ensure that the party’s candidates share this position, has come under frequent scrutiny from those within (or formerly within) the party who accuse the party leadership of a “war on the grassroots”

With a matter of weeks left until voting day, the potential cracks of this approach are beginning to reveal themselves. Despite Darren Millar’s insistence that anti-devolution candidates would not be able to stand, in the case of Calum Davies, there is a candidate topping the party list who has been vocal in his opposition to devolution, and candidates further down the lists have also made suggestions of a devo-sceptic position. Naturally, affirming this position also goes against the grain of the majority of the Welsh Conservative grassroots and voter base at large, of whom two-thirds desire the Senedd’s abolition.

Beyond the party’s grassroots, there is also an untapped and underappreciated market for devo-sceptic views amongst the wider Welsh electorate. In YouGov polling, support for abolition of the Senedd and a Senedd with reduced powers stood at 31 per cent and 23 per cent respectively (compared with 24 per cent supporting Welsh independence). While this is below the level of support for the status quo or more devolution, no option enjoys majority support amongst the Welsh electorate, and polls like this one show that clearly there is an undercurrent of devo-scepticism within the Welsh electorate.

The party’s platform on devolution is somewhat ambiguous, which is a common theme throughout the post-devolution era. While officially supportive of its existence, the party has dedicated a lot of its campaigning energy thus far against the expansion of the Senedd’s membership from 60 to 96. This may be somewhat ingrained in a level of devo-scepticism, but it has largely been argued on a cost and practicality basis as opposed to an ideological disagreement and has perhaps become a proxy to avoid addressing the “elephant in the room” of real devo-scepticism which has become such a divisive topic.

It would not be fair, however, to suggest that the party’s direction on this matter is without reason. In fact, it is heavily grounded in logical elite decision-making which those looking at party management would expect to observe.

Firstly, the Conservative Party, perhaps more than any party in the democratic world, sees itself as a natural party of government. This office-seeking logic of the Conservatives is deeply established, and the party has a long and sustained record of adaptation to political and societal change to achieve high office. This logic, seemingly, holds even in Welsh politics despite a long and deep-rooted history of Conservative support in Wales lagging far behind its support in England. As a result, since the birth of the (then) Welsh Assembly in 1999, the Welsh Conservatives have usually attempted to put forward a serious platform for the use of devolved powers in Welsh elections as opposed to dipping their toes into the constitutional questions of the existence of the devolved legislature.

Secondly, in a similar vein to the first reason, the Welsh Conservative aversion to committing to a devo-sceptic platform has become enshrined in a vote-winning logic. While, as mentioned earlier, there is clearly a market for these views amongst a minority of the electorate, targeting this group comes with risks which the party management likely deem unacceptable. The primary risk is that by focusing on the wishes of the grassroots and the devo-sceptic portion of the electorate, the party may alienate the majority of the Welsh electorate who find themselves on the outside of this cluster. Furthermore, those not aligned with the existence of the Senedd are less likely to turn out to vote in its elections. This has been observed throughout devolution, as many Conservative voters in Westminster elections simply don’t turn out at all in Senedd elections. From a vote-seeking perspective, why appeal to a section of the electorate who don’t vote?

If devo-sceptics want to increase their influence on the agenda-setting of the Senedd, then they need to turn out like they haven’t previously. This is somewhat of a double-edged sword, with the lack of a major outwardly devo-sceptic party likely contributing to the lesser turnout, but even where parties campaigning on an abolition platform have been present (namely the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party – who in 2021 were expected to achieve representation) they haven’t been able to mobilise this voter base to achieve anything substantial. Such cases likely reinforce the current Welsh Conservative antipathy toward adopting such a position.

The question here is whether this approach is tenable in the long term. Increasingly, there is a sense that the party needs to make a decision on this constitutional question which has been an ever-present issue for nearly three decades. Ultimately, the sustainability of this approach will depend largely on the result the party achieves in May. In particular, what the make-up of the potentially reduced in size Conservative Senedd group is, and its impact on the dominant faction of the group which currently accommodates devolution. If a smaller Conservative group is proportionately more populated with candidates who support an abolitionist position, we may quickly see a change in tact post-election.

Such a change may be further incentivised depending on how Reform’s Senedd cohort addresses devolution. Thus far, in the face of a similar dilemma as the Conservatives, Reform have also sought to accommodate devolution, and are insistent that they will be a constructive presence to “make devolution work”, going so far as to express excitement at the Senedd expansion which the Conservatives have been in steadfast opposition towards, although this excitement was likely more strategically based on the opportunities it provides for the party rather than an ideological delight towards an expanded Senedd.

Similarly to the Conservatives, whether this position holds for Reform will depend on the composition of its Senedd cohort. If the last time a Farage-led party achieved representation in the Senedd on the basis of working constructively within the institution is to be informative (in the case of UKIP in 2016), then Reform may bring with them an influx of very devo-sceptic Senedd members. But if they don’t, and a potentially small Conservative group coming out of the other side of the huge external shock of a poor election result observes the low-hanging fruit of differentiation through scepticism, then a change in tact may become much harder to resist, and potentially even necessary.

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