Campaigners turn their backs on Brexit Party in Wales after proposing abolition of Senedd

Mark Reckless, leader of the Brexit Party in the Senedd. Photograph: BBC. - Credit: Archant

Brexit Party activists have said they will turn their back on the organisation after its leader in the Senedd called for the Welsh parliament to be abolished.

Former Tory MP Mark Reckless, currently the Brexit Party’s leader in the Welsh parliament, has said he will lead a system to scrap the current system in next year’s election.

He complained that devolution – backed by the public in the referendum – had ‘gone so much further’ than people thought in 1997.

Speaking to the BBC’s Politics Wales programme, Reckless claimed many in Wales would rather be governed by Westminster than those in Cardiff.

He said: ‘A lot of people who haven’t engaged with devolved politics now see the powers this place has, and many of those people would prefer to be governed on a UK basis rather than having things done differently in Wales just for the sake of it, as so often has been the case under Mark Drakeford.’


Have your say
Send your letters for publication to The New European by emailing letters@theneweuropean.co.uk and pick up an edition each Thursday for more comment and analysis. Find your nearest stockist here or subscribe to a print or digital edition for just £13. You can also join our readers' Facebook group to keep the discussion and debate going with thousands of fellow pro-Europeans.

He is instead proposing a new system for Wales, which would include directly-elected first ministers.

But his comments have led to local party activists to turn their back on the Brexit Party.

A spokesperson for the Brexit Party Swansea group told Wales Online they were now looking for a pro-Senedd political party.

‘Mark Reckless appears to be running the Brexit Party in Wales as a dictatorship.

‘No meetings with activists, no political party official meetings, no democracy, no election of officers, just him making decisions; (he) might as well set up Brexit Party Wales as a limited company with himself as 100% shareholder and director.

‘Former Brexit party activists will be asked in an online poll which pro-Senedd political party we should join/campaign for and switch the Facebook pages to.’

Reckless also said he was ‘supportive’ of the Brexit Party rebranding ahead of the next set of elections.