Reform to host Wales conference and regional events as it eyes up Senedd

Reform UK is to hold events in Wales, Scotland and across the English regions, as it eyes up representation in the Senedd and town halls, Nigel Farage has said.

The Reform leader announced a Welsh conference, a Scottish gathering, and regional events in the North East and South West, as the party rounded off its national conference.

Mr Farage on Friday laid out a plan to professionalise the party, giving its members a stake in its ownership.

He also pointed to the Liberal Democrats’ campaigning success as a model to follow and said he hoped Reform could set up a similar local branch structure in the future.

Insisting upon the need for the party to professionalise in his closing conference speech on Saturday, Mr Farage said: “There is a limit to what the leadership team and the professional management structure can bring you.

“Yes, of course, we can make the big arguments. Yes, of course, we can make the news.

“Yes, of course, we can dominate social media in a way the other parties couldn’t even consider, and yes of course, with a small professional team we can put together unbelievable stage sets and conferences like this.

“But that only takes us so far.”

He then spoke of the need to establish Reform’s roots across the UK, announcing first a conference in Wales on November 8 at Newport’s Celtic Manor Hotel.

A November 9 conference in Exeter will follow, as will one on November 11 in the North East.

On November 30, Mr Farage said his deputy Richard Tice and others would host an event in Scotland.

Reform is eyeing up the Senedd, Wales’ Parliament, because the proportional voting system there makes it easier for the party to gain a greater number seats than at Westminster, where it won five constituencies in July’s general election.

The system has, in the past, benefitted Ukip, a party Mr Farage used to lead, and could stand to benefit his new party further as the voting system in Wales will be tilted towards a more proportional system at the next Senedd election.

On Friday, he told reporters Reform will need to win “hundreds” of council seats to classify next year’s local elections as a success.

Asked by reporters at the party conference in Birmingham what his benchmark for success would be at the local polls, he said: “I’ve got my own little private thought on that, but we will need to win hundreds for it to be a success. It’ll have to be hundreds, and that’s the goal. That’s the end.

“And as I said a moment ago organisationally, that’s a huge feat, but we do have 266 branches that either have been set up, or will be, they’re in process. And without branches, you can’t sign nomination papers, you can’t do anything.”