With Farage due to name a Scottish leader for Reform UK, will a Welsh leader be named soon?

Martin Shipton

News that Reform UK will announce its leader in Scotland next week has led to renewed speculation about when the party will select a leader for Wales.

Nigel Farage has confirmed he will visit Edinburgh on Thursday next week to reveal the first leader of his party north of the border.

Although Farage did not confirm his identity, Lord Offord of Garvel, the Tory peer who defected to Reform last month, is understood to have been chosen to take on the role.

The Times reported: “Farage’s party has beefed up its backroom operation north of the border, recently hiring four new staff, including a spin doctor to focus exclusively on Scotland. The appointments follow a mailshot survey to 1.2 million Scottish homes.

“Reform recently announced that it would launch a £5m spending blitz across the UK in the run-up to national and local elections in May. Senior party sources said at least £1m of this had been earmarked for the Scottish campaign, which would be led by Offord alongside Martyn Greene, Reform’s Scottish director.”

Farage told a press conference in London: “I will be doing a press conference in Edinburgh next Thursday, where I will announce the leader of Reform UK Scotland. And we look again, quite possibly, to those elections being a straight two-horse race between us and the SNP.”

Polls show that the SNP has a comfortable lead with four months to go until the Holyrood election.

Some suggest that Reform has overtaken Labour in a race for second place, while the Tories, currently the main opposition party with 28 MSPs, are vying with the Greens and Liberal Democrats for fourth place.

Scottish Labour has insisted it can still oust the SNP from power, even though the unpopularity of Sir Keir Starmer and his UK government has severely dented Anas Sarwar’s chances of power.

Meanwhile it is understood that Reform’s would-be Senedd candidates will undergo their final screening by party officials on Sunday January 11. They will be subjected to aggressive questioning as if they were facing hostile scrutiny from media outlets - ironically, something they have done their best to avoid by turning down interview requests from news organisations they perceive as hostile.

It is thought that a small team of party officials will score the would-be candidates for their performance, with the final decision on who gets the top slots rubber-stamped by Nigel Farage himself.

Contenders

A Reform insider said: “There are a number of leadership contenders in Wales, but none of them have anywhere near the same charisma as Nigel Farage.

“Jason O’Connell, a councillor from Torfaen, has been used by the party quite a bit for media appearances, and is seen as quite a competent performer. Francesca O’Brien, a Swansea councillor who defected from the Tories, is also rated highly.

“Mark Reckless, although he’s been an MP and an MS, is not seen as having popular appeal, while Laura-Anne Jones, who defected from the Tories, has too much baggage stemming from the complaint to the Standards Commissioner that was upheld.

“Llyr Powell, the defeated by-election candidate in Caerphilly, is quite fragile and isn’t thought to have leadership potential.

“David Thomas, another Torfaen councillor and the party’s director in Wales, has ruled himself out as a Senedd candidate, possibly after being told that he would not be considered for a top slot on Reform’s closed list for the constituency covering his area.”

The insider added: “It’s taken for granted that plenty of money will be available to fight the election campaign.”

Spokesperson

In late November Cai Parry-Jones, Reform UK spokesperson in Wales and Vice Chair of the party’s Anglesey, Bangor & Aberconwy branch, appeared on the Senedd Sources podcast and discussed the selection of a Reform leader for Wales.

He said: “There’s a lot of organisation that is required in a political party and it can’t be done overnight. I do know that we are in the late stages of deciding a leader. I don’t know when that’s going to be publicly announced, but we are taking that decision very seriously, We have tested a number of people over a very long period of time.”