'My property porfolio is being weaponised', moans Reform's new leader in Wales

If you’re the new leader of Reform of Wales, pitching yourself as a salt-of-the-earth Valleys boy taking on the elites, you probably don’t want to be publicly whingeing about the media “weaponising” your “property portfolio” against you. Yet that’s precisely what Dan Thomas has found himself doing just a week into being parachuted into the role.

Thomas, a long-serving Conservative councillor in North London, was named the new leader of Reform in Wales by Nigel Farage last week, ahead of much more established candidates. Thomas had not lived in Wales for 20 years and only defected from the Tories last year.

This set the website Nation.Cymru sniffing around where Thomas actually lived. All candidates to the Senedd have to have their primary residence in Wales – a rule change brought in after members of Farage’s previous parties chose to commute over the border (Neil Hamilton, disgraced former Tory minister turned Welsh Ukip leader, spent his entire five years in the Senedd travelling in from his Wiltshire mansion).

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Nation.Cymru reported that Thomas was living in Bath, where he had recently bought a £1m home, having sold his previous home in West London. It quoted a former colleague of his on Barnet Council, Peter Zinkin, who said: “Our understanding is that he sold his house in Edgware and moved to the Bath area, where he is working for a large financial institution.”

Blaenau Gwent Labour MS Alun Davies told the website: “The last time this shower had seats in the Senedd, when they stood as Ukip, they were led by Neil Hamilton, who lived in a mansion in Wiltshire. This time their leader lives 10 miles nearer to Wales. At this rate they will have a leader who actually lives in Wales by 2050.”

Now, after much to-ing and fro-ing, Thomas has insisted that he isn’t living in Bath, but has bought a house there which he is renting out. He told BBC Wales in a heart-breaking interview: “Look, I have a property portfolio. I’m not going to talk about locations of properties and all of that kind of thing, but that is being weaponised against me to try and make out that I’m not living in Wales, I’ve been ‘parachuted in’, it’s nonsense.”

Of course, Thomas was parachuted in – as ever with Reform, there was no pretence of internal democracy – but at least he’s put the record straight. A bit, anyway: Reform won’t say where he is living beyond “in Wales”, apparently for security reasons. Wales is more than 8,000 square miles in size.