Will the election of a new leader end the turmoil that has engulfed the Reform group at the Senedd?

Martin Shipton

The chaos many predicted would afflict what in May became the Senedd’s second-biggest party has arrived perhaps sooner than expected, but follows a pattern seen elsewhere whenever Nigel Farage has been involved.

No one predicted that events would unfold the way they did. Rumours swirled from Monday afternoon that Reform Wales leader Dan Thomas had been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence. But it wasn’t until 24 hours later that Gwent Police issued a statement confirming that he had been arrested on suspicion of assault and engaging in controlling/coercive behaviour.

As reporters desperately tried to get confirmation of what had happened, one can only imagine the discussions taking place within Reform about how to handle a devastating blow to the party’s credibility. As things turned out, they also had to deal with the defection of one of their MSs to Plaid Cymru – an event that theoretically would appear wholly outlandish.

Dan Thomas is not a household name in Wales even now, but until he was announced by Farage as his party’s handpicked Welsh leader in February 2026, he was barely known in the country at all. His selection by Farage came out of the blue, and was a huge insult to all the members of Reform in Wales who were considered unworthy of the leadership role.

There was something immediately murky about Thomas’s selection. He had told colleagues on the London council that he used to lead that he was moving to Bath. The “West Country” was also mentioned. It was confirmed that he’d bought a house in Bath, but it was part of his “property portfolio”, rather than a home where he and his young family could live.

In due course he acquired an address in Caerphilly county borough that enabled him to stand for the Senedd. He was portrayed as someone who had left Wales out of necessity as a young man to get a job in the financial services sector, but was now returning to bring up his family in the south Wales Valleys that he saw as home.

A touching and romantic homecoming indeed – except that he refused to answer probing questions about the move, his interaction with Farage, and how he came to be appointed as the leader of Reform UK Wales.

The gaps in our knowledge about him are to a degree a consequence of the closed-list electoral system by which all 96 MSs were elected. No individual candidates have to project themselves to get support from the communities they seek to represent. All Reform candidates who get elected do so after riding on the coattails of Farage, the cult leader whose name isn’t even on the ballot paper.

Nobody voted for Dan Thomas; everyone voted for Reform, and he was only elected because Farage approved his place at the top of the party list.

His performance since entering the Senedd has been woeful. He has embraced enthusiastically his party’s culture war emphasis on blaming migrants for all the nation’s ills, thus departing from the commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion he followed while he was the Tory leader of Barnet Council in London.

In any properly run party, he would have been suspended from the group. Instead, he sat in the meeting which discussed how to choose his successor.

Opting out

It seems that members of Reform’s Senedd group will be allowed to pick their new leader. Perhaps Farage, who normally insists on controlling such things, is opting out because – as demonstrated in his previous choice of Dan Thomas – he doesn’t consider any other Reform MS is up to the job.

The calibre of the Reform group is not great, and only a few have been mentioned as potential leaders. James Evans, who defected from the Conservative Party to Reform when he was staring defeat in the face – and whose bizarre claim to be a farmer when he isn’t one has not improved his credibility – has dipped out of the contest.

Laura Anne Jones, another ex-Tory MS best known for asking staff members to engage in creative accounting to enhance her expense claims, has also been mentioned as a potential leadership contender. Many might take the view that she doesn’t – ahem – have the intellectual heft for the job.

Temperamental

Then there is Llyr Powell, the group’s chief whip who briefly achieved fame as the man who lost the Caerphilly by-election in October 2025. A fragile but temperamental soul who is prone to fits of anger, observers concluded he was unable to deliver a concession speech after losing Caerphilly because he couldn’t have kept it together and would have burst into tears.

Some have mentioned Joe Martin as a potential contender, the snarling culture warrior from Caerdydd Penarth who enjoys winding up lefties with his schoolboy humour and racist discourse. Making him leader would be a godsend for Plaid Cymru.

The one remaining likely candidate – and the group’s current deputy leader – is Helen Jenner, a fluent Welsh speaker and long-term Brexiteer from Bangor Conwy Môn.

An articulate and intelligent former teacher who will improve as her confidence increases, it would do the misogynists in the Reform group good to elect a woman leader – not to mention one endorsed by Nation.Cymru!

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.