Conservative Senedd member Laura Anne Jones has joined Reform UK.

The announcement of the party’s first member of the Senedd was made at the Royal Welsh Show in Builth Wells, Powys, on Tuesday.

The annual event is Europe’s largest agricultural show and attracts thousands of visitors every year.

Laura Anne Jones was initially a member of the Senedd for the South Wales East region between 2003 and 2007, before returning in 2020.

She is the second high-profile defection from the Conservative party in recent weeks, after former cabinet minister David Jones joined the party earlier this month.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the latest defection was a “big step forward for [the party] in Wales”.

Image:
(L-R) Nigel Farage, David Jones and Laura Anne Jones at the news conference

Speaking at the news conference, Ms Jones said she had been a member of the Conservative party for 31 years but the party was now “unrecognisable to [her]”.

She said the Conservative Party “wasn’t the party that [she] joined over three decades ago” and that she could “no longer justify” party policy on the doorstep.

Ms Jones said Wales was “a complete mess” and that she now wanted to be “part of the solution, not the problem”.

Reform is still without a leader in Wales, but Ms Jones did not rule herself out of the running for that position.

The defection comes with less than a year to go until the Senedd election, when voters in Wales will elect 96 members to the Welsh parliament for the first time – an increase of more than 50%.

Recent opinion polls have shown Reform UK and Plaid Cymru vying for pole position, with Labour in third and the Conservatives in fourth.

‘Very let down’

Ms Jones told reporters she had not notified the Conservative Party of her defection before the announcement.

The party’s Senedd leader Darren Millar said he was “disappointed” and Conservative members and voters would feel “very let down by her announcement”.

A Labour spokesperson said the defection was “further proof that Reform are just Tories in teal ties” and that “neither party cares about the people of Wales”.

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Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said it was “yet another desperate Tory defection” and that “the writing is on the wall for their party’s prospects”.

Welsh Lib Dem spokesperson David Chadwick said the Conservatives were “clearly dead as a political force in Wales” but that Reform had “no answers” for the country.