Reform UK could win next Senedd election, says party spokesman

The 2026 vote will see Reform standing for seats in Cardiff Bay for the first time.

They came second in 13 of the 32 Welsh constituencies at last summer’s UK general election, securing 16.9% of the vote across Wales, compared to 5.4% in 2019 when it stood as the Brexit Party.

Reform’s share of the vote in Wales at the general election was greater than Plaid Cymru, who won four seats, and the Liberal Democrats, who took one.

Last September, Cardiff University polling expert Dr Jac Larner said Reform should be “very confident” ahead of the 2026 Welsh election, and that polling then suggested the party could win “somewhere between 14 and 17” Senedd seats.

Reform leader Nigel Farage has previously said the 2026 Welsh Parliamentary election will be his party’s “biggest priority” that year, that Reform would be “a serious contender” at that poll, and it could “win a lot of seats”.

But, in an interview to be broadcast on BBC Politics Wales on Sunday, Oliver Lewis goes much further, saying there has been “so much change since our conference on the 8th of November”.

“At that point I think Nigel was of the view that we would form the official opposition to Labour,” he said.

“Now, given that we had 50,000 people join our movement over the course of December, I think it’s well within the realms of feasibility that we could form a government in Wales.

“We’ve now established branches in each of the Senedd constituencies.”

Reform UK says it now has 7,800 members in Wales, considerably more than the 5,000 reported to be members of the Conservative Party in Wales.

The BBC is unable to verify either of the numbers, but the Tories have not disputed the 5,000 figure.