A clue former Welsh Tory leader is set to defect to Reform?

Rats in a Sack reported as far back as January 2025 of rumblings in Wales’s Senedd that the former leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew RT Davies, was mulling a move to Reform.

Davies still sits as a Tory, but is largely estranged from successor Darren Millar and doesn’t sit in his shadow cabinet. Ever since his defenestration he has gone on a Liz Truss-style journey ever further right, with colleagues expecting the loquacious farmer to find an “off-ramp” to justify a move to Nigel Farage’s mob.

Now, with the Senedd election little more than four months away and Reform still without a leader and thus a potential first minister in Wales, Davies looks to have dropped his biggest hint yet. Last week he made a post on X with almost the exact same wording and messaging, and at almost exactly the same time, as David Thomas, Reform’s director in Wales and a man who also goes by the names of DJ Dowster (as a disc-spinner), Dr Squeegee (for his window cleaning business) and The Bald Clark Kent (a sobriquet he gives himself on social media for no discernable reason other than, er, being bald).

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“Wales does not want more Senedd members,” wrote Davies. “We want more doctors, nurses and teachers. We must end the idea that once devolution has been expanded, it cannot be reversed. The 36 new Senedd members must be scrapped.”

Oddly enough, exactly five minutes later, Thomas/Dowster/Squeegee/Kent wrote: “Wales isn’t crying out for more politicians. We’re crying out for GPs appointments, hospital beds, and teachers in classrooms. Devolution was never meant to be a one-way ratchet for more power and more politicians. Wales needs services not more suits. Wales needs Reform UK.”

Curious. Is it plagiarism? Flattery? Or a sign of a defection to come? Reform in Wales needs a leader – and Davies needs to find a way of staying in the Senedd next year…