Reform will shake-up status quo in Wales, vows Farage

Nigel Farage has pledged to shake up the status quo in Wales if Reform wins next year’s Senedd election.

The Reform UK leader said it is too early to make any specific policy commitments, but he promised “fresh thinking”.

Labour has led Wales since the Welsh Parliament was first established in 1999, but Reform UK and Plaid Cymru have topped recent polling for the election next May.

On Sunday, the leader of Plaid Cymru refused to say whether he would form a coalition with Labour to keep Reform UK “out” of the Senedd.

Speaking to BBC Politics Wales during a campaign visit to Caerphilly on Friday, in an interview which aired on Sunday, Mr Farage said he has a “full-time team” working on policies and he has been meeting with the former Conservative Welsh secretary David Jones.

“We’re going to bring in fresh thinking,” he said.

“We want to use every devolved power we possibly can to make the lives of small businesses and other bigger businesses easier in Wales.

“That is what we’ve got to devise for our manifesto coming up for May, to say we’re actually on the side of people working and people having jobs.

“We’re taking this very, very seriously indeed, but mid-October is too early to give answers to all of these things.

“All I can promise you is it’ll be very different to the status quo of the last quarter of a century.”

On BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Rhun ap Iorwerth was asked whether his party would do a coalition deal with Labour “if it meant keeping Reform out”, to which he replied: “Well, we certainly want to keep Reform out, I think, in the interest of Wales.

“We would be in a position now if the polls are anywhere near to reflecting what the vote would be to being able to form a minority government of our own, but remember that there has never been a majority government in the history of devolution in Wales.”

He added: “What we’re doing is offering new leadership for Wales, a new way of doing things when we will be asking other people, well, back these ideas of ours, on poverty, on childcare, on the economy, so we can provide that stability, but under Plaid Cymru leadership that we haven’t had before.”

The candidates in the Caerphilly by-election are: Llyr Powell for Reform; Lindsay Whittle for Plaid Cymru; Richard Tunnicliffe for Labour; Gareth Potter for the Conservatives; Gareth Hughes for the Greens; and Anthony Cook for Gwlad.

Steve Aicheler is running for the Liberal Democrats and Roger Quilliam is the candidate for UKIP.