Reform UK Wales leader Nathan Gill stopped being a member of the party straight after the Senedd election

The man publicly listed as the leader of Reform UK in Wales, Nathan Gill, stopped being a member of the party straight after the Senedd election, they have told Nation.Cymru.

Nathan Gill was announced as leader of the Welsh branch of Nigel Farage’s rebranded Brexit Party in March of last year. He was a regional list candidate for North Wales at the 2021 Senedd election but failed to be elected.

Reform UK had attempted to contact Nathan Gill on behalf of Nation.Cymru but then found: “Mr Gill has not been a member of Reform since May of last year.” The Senedd elections were held on 6 May, meaning that he was no longer a member of the party within a month of not being elected.

The party’s Reform UK Wales’ Facebook group has not posted any messages since before the Senedd election, but there had been no announcement that Nathan Gill had left the party and he is still listed as the incumbent leader on his own Wikipedia page.

Nathan Gill was first elected as a Member of the European Parliament for Wales in 2014. In 2016 he was also elected to the Senedd as UKIP group leader until September of that year, before becoming an independent member and then leaving the Senedd altogether in December 2017.

In February 2019 he became a member of the Brexit Party and served as an MEP until his constituency was abolished in January 2021.

Analysis of Electoral Commission data by Nation.Cymru last month found that Reform UK had spent more cash per vote at the Senedd elections than any of Wales’ other 10 largest parties.

Reform UK, which contested all 40 constituencies and five list seats, spent £101,481 on campaigning ahead of last May’s election, but only won 29,135 votes in total.

It means they spent £3.48 on campaigning for every vote they received – 70p more per vote than the amount spent by any other party which spent more than £10,000 on campaigning.

In one constituency, Torfaen, Reform UK outspent the Conservatives but finished sixth out of eight with just 730 votes, some 5,521 fewer than the second placed Conservative candidate.

Nation.Cymru has attempted to contact Nathan Gill for comment but has been unsuccessful.