It's the Farage show as candidate stays quiet

AS NIGEL Farage makes his way through Caerphilly’s town centre he is clamoured by press photographers, while grinning shoppers take pictures of their own.

- CONOR GOGARTY

The Reform leader shakes hands with a series of visibly awestruck middle-aged and elderly locals, though the party’s Senedd candidate Llyr Powell goes largely unnoticed.

As is invariably the case with Reform, which is yet to announce its leader in Wales, it is the Farage show. It seems odd, at an event supporting Mr Powell's campaign for the constituency’s by-election on October 23, that we get a chance to interview Mr Farage but not the candidate himself.

Mr Farage is all smiles and jokes, at one point posing before a statue of Caerphilly-born comedy legend Tommy Cooper, but the feelgood tone belies what has been a tricky couple of weeks, in which Reform’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, has been convicted of taking bribes to make statements in favour of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Yesterday's event begins at the party’s high-street campaign office, where reporters cram into a small room while waiting for an interview. One journalist fits a mic to Mr Farages lapel and, when our turn for a four-minute interview comes, we put another one on him.

This prompts Mr Farage to joke: “I feel like I'm wearing a suicide vest” It's the sort of quip that has long lured the easily offended into outrage that only bolsters his straight-talking image.

We ask Mr Farage about Mr Powell angering the local Ukrainian community by claiming £55m of taxpayers’ money has been “wasted” over the last six years by the Nation of Sanctuary programme. Immigration is not controlled by the Welsh Government but the Nation of Sanctuary is its policy to help refugees and asylum seekers.

Leaflets from Mr Powell's campaign have slammed the policy as a £55m “scheme for asylum seekers” - but the Caerphilly Ukrainians group has pointed out that more than £45m of this money has been used to support Ukrainian refugees, who are not classed as asylum seekers.