“THIS is a day of celebration, we should be celebrating, not panicking about what’s going on in Westminster, this is all about local politics and the people.”
That was the message from the leader of the first Reform UK council group in Wales at an event for supporters in a Cwmbran pub with Councillor David Thomas keen to avoid any controversies associated with the party he and two independent councillors have attached themselves to.
The formation of a new group on a borough council would normally be a strictly local story but the presence of a high-profile MP, from a seat 160 miles and three hours away by car, suggests there is more to the arrival of Reform UK on Torfaen Borough Council.
And it prompts the question why Lee Anderson, MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire was present along with several members of the media.
The party was one of the significant subplots of July’s UK general election that finished, as most polls and pundits predicted, with a large Labour majority, despite the party’s vote share increasing by just 1.6 per cent on what had been a dismal result in 2019.
Reform finished second in 98 seats including Torfaen and a swathe of others across the South Wales Valleys giving the party real optimism for the upcoming Senedd elections in 2026.
The 16 per cent of the vote it gained in Wales wasn’t enough for any MPs here and its 14.3 per cent share nationally only equalled five seats but that is likely to be a different story at the Senedd elections that will use a wholly proportional system.
The MP, turned to Reform when he was suspended from the Conservative Party he was deputy chairman of at the time, after refusing to apologise for claiming Islamists had a “hold on” London mayor Sadiq Khan.
Like party leader Nigel Farage Mr Anderson is a present on the GB News channel and popular with the Reform Party faithful, until he orders a Diet Coke from the bar at the Greenhouse pub in Llantarnam.
He insists he’d had a “skinful” on the weekend when he had a “good drink” with deputy leader Richard Tice.
“We then went to watch Jim Davidson. That’s not been in any papers yet, but he’s a good man who’s been cancelled,” he said of the right-wing comic whose material has often relied on racial stereotypes.
During his short address to supporters, Mr Anderson complained about being “cancelled” but promised “We will get our country back.”
A combative round of media interviews followed and the MP was asked who would the country be taken back from and the answer was: “From people like you. The wet, the woke, the weak.”
“Two tier policing” was also raised, alleging the police response to racist rioting in England wasn’t reflected in the response to “similar things, from a different demographic” when he insisted largely peaceful protests in support of Palestine, and Black Lives Matter in previous years, were either violent or threatening.
The trio of councillors who’d invited Mr Anderson to Torfaen sought to avoid commenting on controversial aspects of their new party’s policy platform but it is clear Reform UK won’t be content with just council seats in Wales.