Reform have their eyes set on securing a swathe of seats in the new-look Welsh Parliament when it expands from 60 to 96 members in next year’s Senedd election – but might it have its first MS rather sooner?
A senior Welsh Conservative source tells Rats in a Sack that “it’s a matter of when, not if” recently ousted leader Andrew RT Davies defects to Nigel Farage’s party, with the loquacious farmer thought to be actively seeking an “off-ramp” to justify his move.
Davies quit as Welsh Tory leader last month after only narrowly winning a vote of confidence thanks to his own vote. Colleagues had become exasperated by his increasingly populist drift, replacing him with Darren Millar.
“RT will be gone in months, if not weeks, he’s just looking for an excuse,” the source says. “He’s basically waiting for Darren to say or do something which RT can claim as liberal or woke or something, then he can jump ship and say ‘I haven’t left the Conservatives, the Conservatives have left me’. He will want to make it look principled, not like he’s throwing his toys out of the pram.”
When Davies was in effect forced out in December he gave a series of interviews employing the tortured analogy that he was offering “a full Welsh fry-up with black pudding” while his Conservative Senedd colleagues preferred “muesli with croissants on the side”. Since then he’s been busy publicly, and embarrassingly, imploring Elon Musk via X to intervene in Welsh politics the same way he has at a UK level.
A defection would make him Reform’s de facto Welsh leader ahead of a bunch of new arrivals next year. The party says it will not choose a Welsh leader until after next year’s election – putting it in the odd position of going into a poll it claims it can win without telling the public its candidate for first minister.
