𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Walking my dog on a rainy weekday, my phone pings in my pocket. I unlock my phone and see a message from a senior Reform figure. I’d been successful in my bid to top Reform’s Senedd list for Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf, or Cardiff North and East.

Fast forward to early May and, after weeks of campaigning, knocking hundreds and hundreds of doors and speaking to residents in Wales’ capital city, I am sat in a sports hall near Cardiff City Stadium, where votes are being counted for the two Cardiff Senedd constituencies.

Eventually, the surreal moment arrives, and I am elected. Eager to celebrate, I head to a pub in Cardiff with my dad where several Reform staff and successful candidates are already enjoying a drink as the final results trickle in. As I arrive, my phone pings in my pocket, this time it’s the party’s press officer asking me to go on BBC Wales at 11pm to talk about the election result. My pint will have to wait.

The following week I was sworn in as a Senedd Member, and was given some work equipment. I was surprised to receive two powerful laptops, one costing about £1,500 and the other around £1,800. Why, I wondered, did I need to have two laptops? After doing some digging it turned out that one laptop was supposed to stay in the Senedd’s debating chamber to be used for electronic voting. The job could, of course, be done with only one laptop, but having the two laptops meant it wouldn’t be an issue if Senedd Members forgot to bring their laptop to work.

I found this bizarre. Prior to my election I had always worked in the private sector, and if anyone forgot to bring their basic work equipment in the morning, they would be given a formal warning for being useless, rather than being coddled by being accommodated with a second expensive piece of hardware.

When I took to social media to point out this strange situation, it generated a fair bit of debate. I do not argue that cutting these laptops would provide enough savings to build a new hospital or school, but it does illustrate a culture of waste in our public bodies. The laptop issue is relatively small, I estimate savings of around £200,000, but if every decision-maker in our public bodies thought more carefully about these decisions, it would lead to bigger savings that could be passed back to taxpayers or invested into our struggling public services.

Shortly after this I submitted a subject access request to the Senedd Commission, asking them to disclose to me the information they held about me. I found that non-political Senedd staff had been discussing my social media amongst themselves, some slagging me off for my posts about efficiency savings. I suppose this comes with the territory when you start to challenge the Cardiff Bay blob.

Two weeks into the job I was beginning to get a feel for the building and was no longer getting lost. The Senedd can have a ‘moving staircase’ feeling to it, when you open a door and discover you’re nowhere near where you thought you were, think Hogwarts crossed with a community leisure centre. Like with any new job, it was all starting to become second nature. Then I got a call from Senedd security.

A friendly voice at the other end of the line informed me that there’d been a threat made towards me on social media which was severe enough to warrant informing the police. They asked me if I was aware of what had been said online, and I said I didn’t but was happy for it to be passed on to the police.

Eventually I found out that a keyboard warrior had said they would kill me and my family if I stopped democracy in Wales. Since stopping democracy was not really an issue that my new constituents were urging me to take forward, I don’t think the person needed to worry.

But where did this come from? I have never argued for stopping democracy. I would never argue for it. Still, this individual felt comfortable telling me, on a public forum, that they were prepared to kill me and my family. This is an occupational hazard of politics, and you can read pretty disgraceful stuff in the comment sections of most politicians from right across the political spectrum; though Reform politicians appear to be particularly badly treated. I am reminded of the 55 death threats to the Caerphilly by-election candidates, all targeted towards the Reform candidate.

A week later a policeman came to the Senedd to take an official statement and explain how they tend to handle these issues. It was encouraging to see that the police take these threats seriously, and afterwards I took advantage of the opportunity to ask the officer about how South Wales Police tackle the issue of e-bike crime. It’s been raised with me repeatedly by constituents, and I’m hearing that the police are being hamstrung by rules which prevent them from chasing people on e-bikes.

Shortly after my election, I began getting invites from people across my constituency. I walked around Llandaff North with the chair of the residents’ association, hearing about the work they do to improve their community. Many of these groups do better work than most politicians, and you can see the fruits of their labour on every street.

I met with an independent councillor in Lisvane and heard about the concerns they have with different services in their community. I came away with a list of issues to raise about access to healthcare and a range of other issues.

Then, when Reform’s Welsh Leader Dan Thomas formed his Shadow Cabinet, I was very pleased and immensely proud to be asked to take on the finance brief, keeping an eye on the Welsh Government’s spending plans and putting forward our own ideas. I knew it was a big job and I was nervous, not wanting to let my constituents, colleagues or my party down. Dan reassured me that he had every faith in my abilities.

During the Senedd election, Plaid came under fire for not releasing their costings on their flagship childcare policy, so finance was set to be a key battleground in Cardiff Bay. I opened a debate in the Chamber on this issue shortly after taking the role.

Then Plaid brought forward their first ever budget in Welsh Government. Scrutinising it was a big task, and when the documents were released on the Tuesday morning, it was a scramble to get to grips with what was in there. We discovered that huge sums of money were being diverted away from additional learning needs into Plaid’s questionably costed manifesto pledges.

I still spend every day at my desk in the Senedd, methodically going through my emails, following up with my caseworker and trying to make sense of my new role. Every few days I pop out with my team to meet residents, hear their concerns and work on solving them.

Every day my email inbox is flooded by lobbyists looking to influence how I vote and the position I take on different issues. This is part and parcel of the democratic process, but there’s no doubt that the murky world of lobbying in Cardiff Bay deserves to have some transparency injected into it. In our first few weeks, Reform put down a motion in the Senedd calling for the establishment of a lobbyist register, and we won the vote.

While Reform may not be in government in Cardiff Bay, we have huge opportunities to defeat the Plaid minority government and put a stop to some of their plans.

And while being in politics and sticking your neck out does come with its downsides, it’s a huge privilege to represent constituents of all political parties and none to try and make a real difference to all our lives.