BBC under pressure to bar Farage from Senedd election debates
Martin Shipton
The BBC is coming under pressure to block Nigel Farage from appearing in leaders’ debates in the run-up to next May’s Senedd election.
The national broadcaster has yet to decide whether Reform UK would be allowed to nominate their UK leader to debate with the likes of First Minister and Welsh Labour leader Eluned Morgan and Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth.
So far Reform has not appointed or elected a Welsh leader to take charge of its campaign or to be put forward as a potential First Minister.
Opponents argue this is because the party is essentially a personality cult built around Mr Farage, and that Reform is unwilling to give the leadership role to someone perceived as less likely to win votes than him.
However, Mr Farage was previously happy to appoint Nathan Gill as Reform’s first leader in Wales – a post he held for only two months in 2021. He subsequently relinquished the position and in November 2025 was jailed for ten and a half years after pleading guilty to accepting bribes totalling an estimated £40,000 from a Russian agent to push Russia’s interests in the European Parliament, where he represented Wales.
Reform sources have suggested to Nation.Cymru that a number of people are vying for the party’s Welsh leadership including its sole MS Laura Anne Jones, who defected from the Welsh Conservatives after it became clear that she was unlikely to be re-elected to the Senedd.
Other potential Reform Wales leaders are Mark Reckless, the former UKIP MS who failed to get re-elected to the Senedd in 2021 as a representative of the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party; Llyr Powell, who was runner-up to Plaid Cymru’s Lindsay Whittle in October’s Caerphilly Senedd by-election; and David Thomas, a Torfaen councillor and Reform’s campaign director for Wales. All have their opponents within the party,
It has been suggested that Reform will not elect a leader in Wales until after the Senedd election, but that might come to be seen as a disadvantage during the campaign itself.
Nevertheless, the party may try to insist that Mr Farage should be allowed to take part in the pre-election debates because he is the overall leader of the party in Wales.
Decision
We asked BBC Wales if it had made a decision about whether Mr Farage would be able to represent Reform in leadership debates.
A BBC Wales spokesperson said: “We’ll be announcing our plans for election programmes and coverage in due course.”
ITV Wales has, however, already made a decision. In May 2025, at an event to mark a year to go to the election, the broadcaster’s head of news Zoe Thomas restated its nearly decade-long position that participants in its debates must be candidates in the relevant election.
Speaking in a personal capacity, a UK Labour source told Nation.Cymru: “Farage is the leader of the party and I think it sends out the wrong message if he is blocked from appearing in debates.
“If his opponents are so convinced that their arguments will defeat him, they should be prepared to debate with him and demonstrate the strength of their beliefs in comparison to his.”
But Blaenau Gwent Welsh Labour MP Alun Davies responded: “An argument like that may go down well in London, but it doesn’t wash in Wales.
“We’re not talking about what happens in a debating society – we’re talking about the governance of Wales.
“Farage has no place in such a debate. He will not be a candidate and is not a potential First Minister.
“The people of Wales have a right to hear from those who are in a position where they could become First Minister what their vision is for Wales. That must be the focus of any leadership debates that take place, and the broadcasters involved should adopt that position.”
Different formats
Mr Davies said that over the years there had been different formats for such debates – some of them better than others.
He said: “The best debates are those between people who have a realistic chance of becoming Prime Minister. When you have six, seven or eight people representing all the parties including the smaller ones, it becomes unwieldy, and not much is achieved, in my opinion.”
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Unfortunately, as neither Labour nor Conservatives have a chance of winning the election, a debate between Plaid Cymru, the Green Party and an empty seat for Reform would look rather odd
Agreed. So awful was the televised debate in the run up to the Caerphilly by election, Reform might be glad to be excluded. It might even put a couple of percentage points on their vote. The only way to defeat Farage is to expose his arguments in debate.
Reform must fill any seat with their candidate for First Minister. End of.
It would look more odd if MP of Clacton was there. .
The English Broadcasting Corporation has been even more anti Cymru recently, but this issue is a definite no. It’s Senedd Cymru elections so a party from another country that hasn’t even appointed their leader for this country for years, with the last one now in jail.
But in these strange times..
Well yes, whoever is representing Reform UK in TV election debates should not only be a candidate for the Senedd but a candidate for potential Welsh First Minister. This has nothing to do with Farage.
Is Mark Reckless going to be standing for the Senedd, do you not have to live in Wales to do so?
If Reform UK want an outside influence then why stop at Farage? Putin appears to be a good debator, you just need a Russian translator.
An MP — including Nigel Farage, the MP for Clacton — has no standing, speaking rights, or voting rights in the Senedd. So how can he be allowed to participate?