In the grand, sweeping theater of global collapse, there are few stages more claustrophobically pathetic than the Senedd. It is a place where small men argue over small things in a small building, all while pretending their localized squabbles carry the weight of empires. The latest act in this tragedy of the mundane features one James Evans, a man whose name was, until approximately forty-eight hours ago, known only to his immediate family and perhaps a few particularly bored sheep in Brecon and Radnorshire. Evans has been summarily defenestrated from his role as Shadow Health Secretary and kicked out of the Welsh Conservative party, a move that carries all the political impact of a toddler being banned from a sandbox he was already planning to leave. The catalyst? Rumors. The mere whisper that Evans might be entertaining a dalliance with Reform UK—the political equivalent of leaving a failing marriage to join a cult run by a man who smells exclusively of stale cigarettes and grievance.

Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives and a man whose leadership style can best be described as ‘agitated confusion,’ wielded the axe with the grace of a blind woodsman. The speed of the sacking suggests a party in the throes of a terminal panic attack. The Conservatives, both in Westminster and their various regional outposts, have entered the ‘Paranoid Purge’ phase of their decline. When a political organization begins cannibalizing its own members based on rumors of infidelity, it isn’t demonstrating strength; it is screaming into the void that it no longer knows what it stands for, other than not being the other guys. Evans was sacked not for a failure of policy—because let’s be honest, ‘Shadow Health Secretary’ in a devolved assembly is a decorative title involving no actual power and a lot of performative frowning at waiting lists—but for the perceived sin of looking at the exit sign.

Let’s analyze the ‘Reform’ of it all. Reform UK is not a political party; it is a lifeboat made of lead. It attracts the disenfranchised, the angry, and the intellectually lazy who believe that all of society’s complexities can be solved by a man in a Barbour jacket shouting about ‘common sense.’ For a Tory MS to even be linked to such a movement is a searing indictment of the Conservative brand’s current state of rot. It suggests that the mother ship is so waterlogged, so devoid of purpose, that the prospect of joining a populist vanity project seems like a career upgrade. Evans’ denial of these rumors was apparently insufficient for Davies, who decided that in the current climate, any scent of Nigel Farage’s cologne on a member’s jacket is grounds for immediate excommunication. It is a spectacular display of insecurity from a party that has spent the last decade perfecting the art of the self-inflicted wound.

The absurdity of this situation is compounded by the sheer pointlessness of the stakes. We are talking about the Welsh Shadow Health portfolio. In the hierarchy of human achievement, this ranks somewhere between ‘Manager of a failing Blockbuster’ and ‘Judge of a regional vegetable competition.’ Yet, the internal machinery of the party treats this like a high-stakes espionage thriller. The drama of Evans being ‘kicked out’ assumes there was something worth staying for. The Welsh Conservatives have become a circular firing squad where the bullets are made of press releases and the targets are their own dwindling relevance. It is a masterclass in parochial narcissism. They are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but the Titanic is actually a damp pedal-boat in a Cardiff park lake.

From a distance, the spectacle is almost impressive in its stupidity. The Right is currently a fractured mess of grifters and cowards, while the Left watches with a performative smugness that masks their own total lack of vision. Evans is a symptom of a larger, more systemic failure: the collapse of the ‘Big Tent’ into a series of increasingly small, increasingly angry pup tents. If you aren't sufficiently loyal to a leader who is leading you into a brick wall, you are a traitor. If you question the direction of a party that has no direction, you are a heretic. The result is a political landscape populated by sycophants and ghosts, where the only thing that matters is avoiding the suspicion of the man in charge.

Ultimately, James Evans will likely fade into the background of political history, a footnote in a chapter no one will bother to read. Whether he eventually defects to Reform or retreats into the private sector to consult on how to be sacked effectively, the outcome is the same. The machinery of governance continues to grind nothing into smaller pieces of nothing. The public, meanwhile, is left to watch this clown car pile-up, fully aware that regardless of which suit holds the ‘Shadow’ title, the actual reality of their lives remains unchanged. It is a game played by people who have forgotten that the board is on fire, and the only winning move is to stop watching. But we won't stop watching, because humans have an innate, morbid fascination with watching things fall apart, especially when those things are as pompous and useless as a regional political party in a death spiral.