Meet the new face of Reform in Wales

To much fanfare, Nigel Farage dropped in at the Royal Welsh agricultural show last week to unveil the latest defection to Reform – and its first member of Wales’s Senedd.

That member was Laura Anne Jones, MS for South Wales East, who explained she was defecting as Farage was “a great man” and the Tories were no longer “the party that I joined over three decades ago” (the fact that the Tories are likely to be wiped out in next year’s election and Reform is her best chance of holding on to her £76,000 salary being, presumably, a bonus).

But what are Reform getting in the woman who is now the party’s de facto spokeswoman in Wales? As much as Jones is known to the Welsh public, it’s in her ability to attract negative headlines.

Last year she was investigated by the police and the Senedd’s standards commissioner after leaked messages she allegedly sent to her staff appeared to show her telling them to add extra journeys she didn’t make onto her expense claims. “When doing Petrol thing – always make more than I did – add in stuff please ok,” she appeared to say in the leaked messages, adding thumbs-up and praying emojis (the police eventually said they had found “no evidence” of fraud and Jones has always strongly denied any wrongdoing).

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In 2021 Jones, from wealthy Monmouthshire stock, was forced to apologise after posting on Facebook she “would like to do a spot of Chav shooting”, adding it was “a shame that isn’t legal” (“They do not represent me or my views,” she said of the words she herself had written on her own Facebook page).

And last year she was forced to say sorry again after more leaked WhatsApp messages showed her using a racial slur. While discussing the Chinese-owned app TikTok she wrote: “No c**nky spies for me!” Replying to her, someone else in the group chat wrote: “That’s the Laura we love,” followed by a heart emoji.

Still, as Jones has no electoral mandate of her own – she was elected as a regional MS in the Senedd’s top-up system which ensures proportional representation in the chamber – she will now presumably resign her seat to make way for a Conservative, as voted for by the people of South Wales East?

“No,” she said.