Conservative Senedd member Laura Anne Jones announces defection to Ref

Conservative Senedd member Laura Anne Jones has joined Reform UK.

The announcement of the party’s first member of the Senedd was made at the Royal Welsh Show in Builth Wells, Powys, on Tuesday.

The annual event is Europe’s largest agricultural show and attracts thousands of visitors every year.

Laura Anne Jones was initially a member of the Senedd for the South Wales East region between 2003 and 2007, before returning in 2020.

She is the second high-profile defection from the Conservative Party in recent weeks, after former cabinet minister David Jones joined the party earlier this month.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the latest defection was a “big step forward for [the party] in Wales”.

Speaking at a news conference, Ms Jones said she had been a member of the Conservative Party for 31 years but it was now “unrecognisable to [her]”.

She said it “wasn’t the party that [she] joined over three decades ago” and that she could “no longer justify” party policy on the doorstep.

Ms Jones said Wales was “a complete mess” and that she now wanted to be “part of the solution, not the problem”.

Reform now inside the Welsh political tent – as Farage targets farming vote

The Royal Welsh Show attracts thousands of farmers each year.

For some, it’s their annual break from their physically demanding work.

Today, it was the backdrop for Nigel Farage’s break from Westminster politics for a significant announcement – his first recruitment to Reform’s ranks in the Senedd.

Mr Farage has positioned himself as a champion of the farming community, attending some of the recent protests in which hundreds of tractors have lined the streets.

Demonstrators have been calling on the UK government to reverse controversial changes to…