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Nigel Farage claims that he has learned from UKIP’s mistakes a decade ago when it comes to ensuring Reform UK’s success in Wales is not a short-lived phenomenon.
At a press conference on Thursday, Farage unveiled former Conservative councillor Dan Thomas as Reform’s new leader in Wales, making him the latest Tory to make the switch.
Fellow defectors Laura Anne Jones and James Evans were in the audience in Newport’s International Convention Centre. The recent flow of defections, which includes former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and ex-shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, is seen by Reform figures as helping maintain the party’s momentum heading into the May elections.
Reform is expected to make significant gains at the Senedd elections, with recent polling putting the party far ahead of Labour, which has dominated politics in Wales since its devolved institutions were established at the turn of the century, as well as the Tories. The contest to lead Wales is seen as a two-horse race between Reform and Plaid Cymru.
Thomas, a former council leader in north London, said he had “fond memories” of growing up in south Wales, where his grandfather and great-grandfather were miners.
It is not the first time that Farage has been on the cusp of an electoral breakthrough in Wales, though.
In 2016, his former party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), won 13 per cent of the popular vote to return seven Senedd seats. By the end of that parliament in 2021, however, after a period of splits and infighting, just one of those seven sought re-election.
Last year, UKIP’s former leader in Wales, who went on to lead Reform in Cardiff, Nathan Gill, was sentenced to prison for taking pro-Russia bribes.
Asked by PoliticsHome how his current party would avoid the mistakes of UKIP in Wales, Farage said that candidate vetting would be “absolutely key”. The party, which continues to lead UK-wide opinion polls, though there are some signs that its support has dipped in recent weeks, is asking candidates to go through media training led by TV personality Jeremy Kyle and ex-LBC presenter Colin Brazier in Reform HQ.
“The choice of candidates in some cases that were picked to stand for UKIP at that moment in time were completely against my [vision] as leader of the party,” Farage told PoliticsHome.
Farage added: “Two or three of them were wholly unsuitable in every way. But leaders don’t always get their way… and quite shortly thereafter, after [a] quarter of a century, I left [UKIP] believing it was going in the wrong direction.”
Llyr Powell, who was the Reform candidate at last year’s Caerphilly by-election and who worked in the UKIP press team during the 2016 Senedd election, suggested that his former party was destined to fall away in Wales, having achieved its aim of successfully campaigning for Brexit.
“Nigel’s goal in UKIP was always to win an in-out referendum,” he said.
“We’re all united behind the fact we want to see Nigel Farage in Number 10 now.”
While Farage said he wants tighter control of candidate selection, he also conceded that Thomas and any newly elected Reform Senedd members must be given space by Reform’s Westminster operation to make their own decisions.
“When it comes to devolved matters, it’s up to Reform UK in Wales to make those decisions,” he told PoliticsHome.
He added: “I wouldn’t even pretend that I knew what needs to happen within the failing NHS in Wales.”
