Leader of ‘politically neutral’ 20mph Senedd lobby group intends to stand for Reform UK
Emily Price
The leader of a “politically neutral” anti-20mph lobby group has announced her ambitions to stand for Reform UK at the Senedd election next year.
Annette Jones launched the ‘United Voices Senedd Lobby Group’ in 2023 to monitor and protest against Wales’ default 20mph speed limit legislation.
The controversial policy saw most roads that were 30mph in Wales switch to 20mph.
It triggered almost half a million people to sign a Senedd petition calling for the road regulation to be rescinded.
Official statists later revealed that the new speed limit had saved lives with deaths and injuries down on roads across Wales.
Jones branded the collision data “misleading and imprecise” and claimed that deaths on roads had “increased” since the implementation of the new default speed limit.
‘Confession’
Jones has always maintained that the United Voices group she founded is not politically biased.
However, last week she told members of her group’s Facebook page that she had a “confession” to make.
In an online post, Jones wrote: “Confession time. I’ve decided to put myself forward for consideration to becoming a member of the Senedd for Reform.
“This, I appreciate is against the attempts I’ve made of the past two plus years to keep the group politically neutral.
“So… as I see it, we have decisions to make, or, rather you as members have decision to make.
“As you’re all aware, my intention was to close the group next May, after the Senedd elections anyway.
“What do you want me to do between here and there?
“1) I can remain. 2) I can hand over to our wonderful ladies and step aside (just don’t tell them, as they’ve not agreed to this).
“3) Or we can close the group now.”
Support
Members of the online group expressed support for Jones’ political ambitions with many encouraging her to remain as leader despite her bid to be elected.
She told members that despite her support for Reform UK – the Senedd lobby group would remain “politically neutral”.
In a post published to Facebook, Jones wrote: “United Voices is not about to be turned into a Reform page!
“For as long as I am here it will continue to represent the views of all.”
However, Jones later called on members of her group to “step up and get involved” in Reform’s campaigning.
In a Facebook post, she wrote: “Right folks. It would appear l’ve gone as far as I can with sending the truth out. I’m blocked all over the place.
“So it’s your turn. Please step up and get involved. Use facts that can be substantiated.
“Try not to get involved in slanging matches (yes I know, that’s a good one coming from me).
“But let’s add some more balance to the propaganda that’s being spouted by the various parties and their followers out there.
“Keep up the pressure. Keep opening people eyes. Keep sharing information. Keep signposting. Keep using your voice.”
‘Intense’
Jones told the group that she wanted to stand under Nigel Farage’s banner because she thought Reform were the only party “likely to come anywhere close to getting Plaid and Labour, in whatever combination, out of the Senedd.”
Discussing Reform UK’s selection process, she told the Facebook group: “Understandably, the process is quite intense and so it should be.
“They cannot afford to let any old person in, because they are under unprecedented scrutiny.”
United Voices Facebook page was hidden from public view on October 10.
A member of the group told Nation.Cymru that this was because the Facebook pages’ privacy settings were updated to private mode meaning it cannot be searched online by the public.
In a Facebook post shown to Nation.Cymru, Jones told members: “Already I’m having my social media history picked over.
“Just stop a second and think about how you would feel if it were you having people pick through groups and posts that you’ve been part of for decades and looking at decisions you’ve made etc.
“It’s not nice and as l’ve experienced first hand, yes there really are people out there who would wish harm on me and my family.
“Also, let’s not forget, that we have media and what not snooping in here as it is, so anything I say and have said, could easily be brought up and used against me.”
On the day of the recent Caerphilly by-election which saw Labour lose the key Senedd seat to Plaid Cymru despite polling predicting a Reform win, Jones published claims about the Welsh Government she had generated using Artificial Intelligence for members of her group to copy and paste and share online.
Three days later, she asked members of her group for their thoughts on a conspiracy theory that Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted to enact the Civil Contingencies Act, freeze bank accounts, seize property and assets and cancel elections.
The next day, she told members that she had been banned from sharing links to the Facebook group.
Petition
Last year, Nation.Cymru obtained an image shared on the United Voices Facebook page of former Tory shadow transport minister Natasha Asghar posing on the steps of the Senedd with a crude homemade effigy of former transport minister Lee Waters.
Jones later demanded that Nation.Cymru reveal the anonymous source who provided us with the image.
When we declined to do so, Jones complained to the press regulator about Nation.Cymru’s coverage of the incident.
The complaint was later dismissed.
Jones was one of the anti-20mph campaigners who was present on the steps of Wales’ parliament with Welsh Conservatives when the record breaking Senedd petition was handed in.
A Conservative source told Nation.Cymru that Jones had previously said she was encouraging people to support the Welsh Tories in the upcoming May Senedd election.
We asked Annette Jones the following questions:
*What made you decide you wanted to stand for election for Nigel Farage’s party?
*How long have you been a member of Reform UK?
*As a member of the United Voices Senedd Lobby Group, you spent some time with the Welsh Conservatives because the party has always pledged to scrap 20mph.
*A Conservative source has told Nation.Cymru that you had previously expressed support for the Welsh Tories in the Senedd. Is this true? Why are you now supporting Nigel Farage’s party?
*Could your anti-20mph campaign group ever really have been ‘politically neutral’ when your announcement of plans to stand for Reform UK and your previous support for the Tories suggests you had a political bias all along?
*How did your campaign group take the news of your plan to stand in the Welsh election next year?
*Your United Voices Facebook group appears to have now disappeared. Why did you disable it?
Annette Jones responded with an attempt to block Nation.Cymru from publishing details of the posts she had shared online.
She claimed our media request for comment amounted to “harassment” saying she would seek legal action and call the police if we contacted her again.
We explained to Jones that it was perfectly legitimate for Nation.Cymru to publish the posts provided to us by a member of her group.
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A conspiracy crackpot who cant seem to deal with the slighest bit of media scrutiny….she’ll fit in well in Reform. PS. will she call the police on any journo that asks her a question during the Senedd election campaign?
Pretty much expected really. Reform has a type.wonder how she feels going to a racist party.
The anti 20 mob want to make things dangerous and increase our costs.
petition pretty much gamed by online activists.
So Reform UK wish to spend £tens-of-millions on making Welsh roads more dangerous, leaving hard-pressed councils to spend council tax payers’ cash to have 20mph zones installed according to residents’ wishes.
With financial acumen such as this, no wonder Reform UK councils in England are having to go cap in hand to their residents next year.
Yeah, how many turned up to the steps. 30? Thats pushing it from pictures I saw (included a VoW person). The farmers crowded the whole area with a great showing yet 15K or so on the petition at that time. Something smells off with the petition.
It’s a well known fact that the soundness of that petition, whilst undoubtedly impressive, is questionable given the high profile case of a Conservative Sunderland councillor signing it despite advocating 20mph zones in his own English council ward.
What many of those who stand by the petition ignore is that more people actually voted for parties advocating the 20mph change in 2021.
“They cannot afford to let any old person in, because they are under unprecedented scrutiny”
Perhaps someone should tell Farage about this, because the party has made some calamitous errors of judgement over candidate selections in the past despite assurances that vetting had improved.
If this person/group are going to challenge official records, like how many have died from road accidents since the implementation of the 20mph speed limit, there had better be substantial evidence to back it up. There has been too many statements put out there that have eventually been found to be blatant lies. Brexit was proof of that. The forthcoming Senedd elections must not be tarnished by lie after lie. There is too much at stake.
Harassment!!? What a clown. And a dangerous one at that. The 20mph speed limit has saved lives. How heartless is she?
Going to hazard a guess that farage looked for the issue they think they can use and picked this lady. Not forgetting farage groomed the poor soul that was groomed and abused for his presser the other day. The bloke doesn’t have boundaries.
But they need to answer questions put to them from nation.cymru. If they can’t answer these questions, they are clearly delinquent and unfit to hold public office.
Reform run on trumps policy of avoidance when challenged directly, and you cannot have people saying things when it is a company owned by farage unless it is cleared by farage or on message for farage. They are not allowed to think.
Pin farage down on brexit and he bottles it every single time.
So, press have a duty but then we have the press that wont go there in the main.
Let’s pray that some investigative journalist can dissect and identify definitively who Nathan Gill’s associates were in his bribery case.
Have a look at BylineTimes. They have done several investigative pieces into the Farage-Kremlin links. See here: [https://bylinetimes.com/columns/the-nathan-gill-affair/]
I have yet to see any information on the extent to which Putin is financing Reform but it is clear that it is getting US billionaire funding. See: [https://bylinetimes.com/2024/12/18/the-reform-uk-mps-already-being-bankrolled-by-elon-musk/]
Much appreciated.
Cow
Rats and ships come to mind.
What a crackpot. It would be funny in other circumstances but the frightening reality is that people like this could be running the Senedd.
Of course she does
Where the heck is the mainstream media and our politicians to call out these clowns and subject them to some tough questioning and get answers from them? Thank you Emily, for doing just that. Alone.
Do you remember the ‘5 families’ nonsense when Tories were in government? They tried to create a number of opposition parties within their own to ignore any on the outside. How has that gone? Well they are left with Toryform, the two cheeks of the same butt party masquerading as two and totally interchangeable to suit. We even had one person recently defecting against the general direction of flow. Now here is another one who can’t decide which label to stick on herself, spouting nonsensical rubbish then complaining and spitting threats against a media outlet which dares to scrutinise her… Read more »
No real surprise, surely, that the inititiator of this particular pressure group has revealed her intention to stand as a candidate at the election for this particular party. They’re a faction of people dedicated to restoring what they see as ‘the good of days’ of Britain’s former glory, with a reflex instinct to pretty much oppose change of any sort, even if their sole argument is that it involves change, and change is something that they reflexively always resist. Their ideal would be a reversion to the sort of country the UK was a century ago and more.
“Also, let’s not forget, that we have media and what not snooping in here as it is, so anything I say and have said, could easily be brought up and used against me.”
That does sound like an implicit confession that she’s said some awful things.
Precisely what has she got to hide? What aren’t we being told?
“It triggered almost half a million people to sign a Senedd petition”
With signatures from 51 countries including the Vatican according to North Wales Live.
And who can forget this.
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/north-wales-anti-20mph-facebook-28462603
“North Wales anti-20mph Facebook group was run by Tory councillor living in England
Lyall Reed from Sunderland was an admin for four Welsh groups opposing the new limit despite supporting a reduced limit in his own area.”
The leader of the 20sPlent campaign in favour of the measure was Fiona Andrews now living in Llandudoch (St Dogmaels) in Pembrokeshire, but at the time she was living in Bristol, England. Her arrival in Pembrokeshire prompted a ‘pilot’ there.
Meanwhile..
Surprised no one from the planet Pluto called to sign. Oh, wait, is it still a planet?
No. Its’ occupants voted to leave the Solar System. It was called ‘Solexit’. Now all these people who we see as living on another planet can’t even say they do.
I love it.
These anti-20mph sites have been toxic from the very start. Any effort of reasoned debate is responded to by aggression, false statistics and outright lies. They now regularly feed conspiracy theories and are nothing more than recruitment sites for Reform.
They’re nothing other than echo chambers, eschewing any reasoned debate.
I joined one earlier this year and highlighted the benefits to residents in communities that had campaigned for years, decades sometimes, to have traffic measures put into place in their villages and towns with little or no progress made.
I lasted a couple of days before being kicked off.
Yet another one joins the race to the bottom. We are in serious trouble if the country votes for this very poor level of political ineptitude.
You should be comforted by the evident lack of mental horse power displayed by so many prospective Reform candidates. The electorate, or at least the bit of it that does some critical thinking, will recognise the lack of talent on offer. Now is the time for other parties with serious intentions to address their own candidate selections and avoid endorsing people of low calibre, or is a dimwit wearing Plaid colours perfectly acceptable? .
If we have to have dimwits, I would prefer Plaid dimwits to reform dimwits. In reality however, the worst Plaid politician is an intellectual giant compared to the best reformer (or I should say, the least worst). Also, anyone capable of critical thinking would not take reform seriously; the problem is that reformers don’t do thinking, and yet they still get one vote each.
The anti 20MPH petition was full of English who hate seeing Cymru make its own democratic decisions and in many cases hate us in general.
Exactly this.
Petions on the Senedd website validates postcodes to that in Wales and only those within Wales are considered in the tally’ to the petitions committee. A breakdown by Welsh constituency is provided on the petition page as well as those not counted from ‘outside of Wales’.
And only people in Wales are able to view Welsh postcodes on Google.
You mean like SY217BL? (Tesco Welshpool). I just looked it up. Oh my, you can use the Internet to look up addresses post codes…
Wonder how many email addresses I can get. One ISP used to give me 11, which was an odd number, though guessing +main one=12.
I did get a list of the postcodes used for the petition submissions. Didn’t notice any obvious anomalies but should go back to it one of these days.
I think Milo is being facetious.
Reform councillor Michelle Beer organised a petition opposing a solar farm in Bynea. Mary from London and Susan from Walsall are amongst the concerned residents who are signatories. Bynea was in Carmarthenshire the last time I checked.
I wonder why didn’t she refer to herself being a Reform councillor when she organised it.
I totally agree.
Deform have long been hiding in plain sight as so-called “independents”. Why don’t they want to confess who they are?
That’s all we need, another Reform UK fruitcake!!
So, she despises Wales and those lives that have been saved?
This is really turning into some alt right/weird conspiracy nut stuff.
She’s a self confessed know-it-all
Well, colour me surprised.