Andrew RT Davies reported to Standards Commissioner for using Nazi terminology to describe Plaid activists

Martin Shipton

Former Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Andrew RT Davies has been reported to the Standards Commissioner after using Nazi-inspired terminology to describe Plaid Cymru activists.

During an interview on ITV Wales’ Sharp End programme, Mr Davies was asked whether he would rule out a coalition deal after next year’s Senedd election between his party and Plaid Cymru.

He responded: "Separation and the poison that is in the veins of Plaid Cymru activists against the union of the United Kingdom is not something that will achieve success for Wales."

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'Hate speech'

Cllr Elwyn Vaughan, who leads the Plaid Cymru group on Powys County Council, told Nation.Cymru: “This hate speech agenda is corrosive to our democracy and has to stop.

“It is utterly disgraceful for the former Tory leader at the Senedd to use language that has its origins in Nazi Germany and has more recently been used by Trump to demonise minorities.

“By expressing himself in such an irresponsible way, Andrew RT Davies is pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable and seeking to normalise the extreme.

“It is shocking that someone in such a prominent public position should behave in such a way and I am reporting him to the Standards Commissioner. In my view he is bringing the Senedd into disrepute.

“The fact that he is making such statements also calls into question who the real leader of the Conservative group is. He’s still behaving as if he was the leader, and in doing so is overshadowing the leader who was elected to replace him. Is the party happy for him to be making statements of this kind? By failing to take action against him they are condoning what he says.”

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'Mein Kampf'

In an email to the Senedd’s Commissioner for Standards Douglas Bain, Cllr Vaughan later wrote: “I wish to make an official complaint about the conduct of Senedd Member Andrew RT Davies ,

“In an interview with ITV Wales he used language which was demeaning, and the rhetoric of white supremacists when he said ‘Separation and the poison that is in the veins of Plaid Cymru activists against the union of the United Kingdom is not something that will achieve success for Wales’.

“The remarks ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ are straight out of Hitler's 1925 autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf — his blueprint for a ‘pure Aryan’ Germany and the removal of Jews.”

Cllr Vaughan went on to quote from a number of further passages from Mein Kampf:

* “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,"

* “He poisons the blood of others but preserves his own blood unadulterated”, Hitler wrote of Jewish males allowing Jewish females to marry white Christians.

* “Whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race, the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture.”

'Hate'

Cllr Vaughan added: “His intolerance and hate as an official of the Senedd conjures hatred in our communities, division and is a dangerous path of intolerance, His use of such language normalises it and makes it acceptable and the norm when in reality he should be leading society and setting a much higher standard.”

Such language has also been used by Donald Trump. The US president has repeatedly said undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country”

The phrase has a deep racist and antisemitic history, and chimes with the once fringe “great replacement theory” formulated by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples - especially from Muslim-majority countries - through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Later the theory was adopted by white supremacists in the United States.

Trump has referred to migrants as "poisoning the blood" of the nation on multiple occasions.

Mr Davies and the Welsh Conservative group were invited to comment, but neither did so.