Cllr Francesca O’Brien described her defection as “a gamble” but said she’d never seen a political party break through to voters in the way she said Reform UK has.
And although the mother-of-two said she lived and breathed being a councillor in Mumbles, she said “speaking off the top of my head” she would be keen to stand at next year’s Senedd elections if the opportunity arose.
Critics of Reform UK say the party’s policies – or set of reforms as it calls them – don’t stand up to scrutiny financially. Welsh Labour’s outgoing minister for delivery and Swansea West MS, Julie James, said she thought a Reform UK Government in Wales would be a “disaster” in an interview over the weekend.
Others question whether its proposed freeze on “non-essential immigration” would include or exclude social care workers, whose work underpins the NHS.
Asked by the Local Democracy Reporting Service if her decision to switch was more about disillusionment with the Welsh Conservatives or enthusiasm about Reform UK, Cllr O’Brien said it was more of the latter.
“For me it’s very much a gamble,” she said. “Reform are very good at engaging with people across all ages, particularly the younger generation and I think it’s really important to get younger people into politics.
“I’ve never seen a party that engages like this across generations and wherever you sit demographically. I want to be part of that, get involved and help fine-tune some of the policies.”
Cllr O’Brien was first elected as a Swansea councillor in 2022 and is also a Mumbles community councillor.
Did she feel she’d let voters down who put their cross by her as a Welsh Conservative? “No I don’t feel that I have,” she replied. “Irrespective of party politics my heart is in the community and delivering for them. For me it’s very much business as usual with Angela (Cllr Angela O’Connor) and Will (Cllr Will Thomas, both Welsh Conservatives) as part of ‘team Mumbles’. We are local parents who genuinely want to make Mumbles a better community.”
She added: “There will be some people who will be disappointed, of course, and I understand that.”
Cllr O’Brien said said she had toyed with the idea of switching to Reform UK but only made a firm decision in the last fortnight. She suggested similar thoughts might be going through some other councillors’ minds.
“With me stepping forward now I think it will push others, if they have the same feeling as me,” she said. “I’m not expecting it to be in the tens, but I think there’d be more to follow.”
Swansea has 75 councillors – 43 Labour, 11 Liberal Democrat, eight independent, five Conservative – including Cllr O’Brien’s father, Cllr Richard Lewis – two Independents@Swansea, two Labour and Cooperative Party, two Uplands Party and one Green Party and now one Reform UK.
The Labour cabinet formulates policy, although opposition councillors can help shape it as well as scrutinise it, and makes key spending decisions.
In a Reform UK media announcement on the morning of August 18 Cllr O’Brien said she felt the party was the only chance to “finally break up the Labour-Plaid consensus in Cardiff Bay and create a government in Wales that understands the concerns of ordinary people”.
Asked what she thought those concerns were, she said she believed voters were “absolutely fed up” with the way the country had been run since devolution a quarter of a century ago. “I called it the extended honeymoon,” she said. “Nothing has changed in all those years.”
She added: “I think the 20mph speed limit policy really highlighted how much the Welsh Government spends on projects and initiatives like that. Education and health need more money. It does need Reform to break it up or at least cause a stir.”
All political parties say they want the economy to grow and Reform UK is no different. Cllr O’Brien said her new party had policies to do that and that in her view a booming economy led to improvements in the population’s health.
Spending on the NHS in Wales, meanwhile, has risen considerably under a Welsh Labour Government.
Reform UK’s 28-page set of reforms, called Our Contract With You, doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail about taxes, which fund expenditure on the NHS, schools, defence and servicing the UK’s large national debt.
The party has, though, pledged to raise the income tax threshold to £20,000 from the current rate of £12,570, and said the basic tax rate would stay at 20% with the higher rate beginning at £70,000.
“The way to see Reform at the moment is there are a lot of ideas which speak to people and, yes, there probably needs to be more detail,” said Cllr O’Brien. “It’s not a party that has been established since time began. This is why I want to get involved. We’ve got that opportunity now. I think that’s what makes it very exciting.”
In a wide-ranging interview published on Wales Online over the weekend Labour minister Julie James, who isn’t seeking re-election next year, said she thought a Reform government would be a “disaster” and that it would end free prescriptions and free hospital parking and stop rail and bus nationalisation.
Cllr O’Brien said she hadn’t read the interview but said as far as she knew it wasn’t correct to say Reform UK would stop those things. “It’s going to be Reform versus Labour, obviously she’s going to put the frighteners out,” she said.
On the subject of next May’s Senedd elections, Cllr O’Brien said she’d only just joined Reform UK but that running as an MS candidate had always been at the back of her mind. “Speaking off the top of my head I would be keen to run,” said the 37-year-old, of Mumbles. “At the moment I love being a councillor. I absolutely live and breathe it.”
Fellow Mumbles councillor Will Thomas said it was a shame she’d left the Welsh Conservatives as she was “a very good and hard-working councillor” but that he’d continue to work closely with her in the best interests of the community.
Cllr Lyndon Jones, leader of the Swansea Conservative group, said: “Obviously I’m disappointed by Francesca’s decision. We have spoken about it, but I respect her decision. I think it’s the wrong decision. To my knowledge no-one else is going.”
Liberal Democrat councillor Sam Bennett, who will stand as a prospective MS at next year’s Senedd elections, said he felt Reform UK was very good at offering sound bites and pointing out problems but never offered any solutions.
Cllr Bennett, who represents the city’s Waterfront ward, said: “We are looking to make major gains both at the Senedd elections, and at the next council elections in 2027.”
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