As the main opposition in the Senedd, the party should be taking politics seriously. Spoiler alert: it’s not
In May 2026, Reform UK became the official opposition inside the Welsh Senedd. It was the best result the party had ever received in a national parliament – and since that time it has been a wild ride. Given that its leader, Nigel Farage, claims he expects to one day lead the UK government, how it performs in Wales matters more than just for the people of Cymru; it gives the rest of the UK a sense of what it could expect if Reform does well in the next general election.
Just to give you a taste, here are two developments. In September, Reform’s leader in Wales, Dan Thomas, resigned after he was arrested and released on bail on suspicion of assault and coercive or controlling behaviour. (Thomas said that he had done “nothing wrong” but resigned to avoid becoming a “distraction”.) It has also lost one of its members in a bizarre defection from the rightwing Reform (which has been sceptical about even the existence of the Welsh parliament) to the leftwing Plaid Cymru (which wants more devolution and ultimately an independent Wales).
To mark six months of Reform holding more than a third of seats in the Senedd, two colleagues and I decided to undertake a deep-dive investigation into the party in Wales, which we published on my newsletter. We spoke to several Senedd members and staffers who all agreed to speak to us on the condition of anonymity. They took us inside Reform WhatsApp groups and revealed a world of paranoia, leader worship and an obsession with “disruption”, rather than a party of serious opposition or government in waiting. Our findings flew in the face of the Reform UK Wales deputy leader’s claim in September to be the “most effective, professional and united opposition the Senedd has ever seen”.
Our investigation found that out of 100 Senedd committee meetings held between 8 May and 21 October, there have been 31 times when at least one Reform MS has been absent. For context, here are the figures for the other parties: Plaid, eight times; Labour, nine; the Tories, nine; the Greens, six; and the Lib Dems, one. Committee meetings are a key way for MSs to hold the Welsh government to account, and the number of Reform MSs to have missed meetings is almost as many as all the other parties’ absent members put together.
But what was most striking was the total aversion to scrutiny and the dictatorial way that the party’s MSs are managed. According to the members we spoke to, there is a “banned list” of organisations and journalists whom Reform Senedd members are forbidden to talk to. These include Oxfam and the Books Trust charity. I must now admit a certain amount of professional pride that I too have managed to make the list.
For example, back in the summer I sat inside the Senedd canteen eating lunch. The number of MSs increased by more than 50% at the last election, so space is at a bit of a premium. There was a seat free on my table and a Reform MS came up with his tray and asked: “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Please do,” I said.
He sat down and we ate our food in silence. After a minute he looked up at me, paused, and said: “You’re Will Hayward.”
I replied: “I know.”
He then looked panicked, like a man who had just clicked on a link in a phishing email. “I am not allowed to be here or talk to you,” he said.
I said: “You are a grown man and an elected representative on £80,000 a year, you are allowed to talk to who you want.” He stood up, glanced around and squeezed his way on to a packed table elsewhere.
But is it surprising that they behave like this? Sources told us that there is a large picture of Farage on the back of the Reform group’s office door in the Senedd. More significantly, the power of the leader is captured by the fact that the Welsh Reform constitution states that he must give permission for the Reform group to work with any other party.
However, the fear of journalists within the party pales into insignificance compared with how paranoid the Reform higher-ups are about Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain. As one MS told us: “Everything the party is doing is about countering Restore. HQ are obsessed.”
This drive to defend their right flank has manifested itself inside the Welsh parliament in just the past week, when the Reform MS Joe Martin made claims that white British people were being “replaced” and would be a minority in the UK by 2063 (the definition of “white British” used by Reform is so narrow it would exclude King Charles).
The speaker in the Senedd told Martin that he would not be called to speak again until he apologised for his comments. This prompted one of the most surreal press conferences I have ever attended where Reform’s leader in Wales, Helen Jenner, said that the rest of the party would be boycotting the Senedd in solidarity.
And if you really want to know what a large Reform group could be like in Westminster, look no further than the WhatsApp message Jenner posted when talking about attending a group in the Senedd established to develop policy to tackle the issues affecting women in parliament and wider society.
“Sort of makes me feel like we should go along and disrupt,” she wrote.
By the way, I put everything we found out in our investigation to Reform UK to comment. They said, “These claims are blatantly outlandish, ridiculous and unsubstantiated.” We sought clarification on which of the 13 different points we put to them they were referring to. Despite repeated attempts, they did not reply.
At a time when Wales is crying out for a credible and serious opposition, we are left with disruption for disruption’s sake. To quote Succession’s Logan Roy, these “are not serious people”.
Will Hayward is a Guardian columnist. He publishes a regular newsletter on Welsh politics
