Interview by Oskar Hyams and Ruaidhrí Gillen Lynch

Joe Martin, you are running as the first choice Reform UK candidate in Caerdydd Penarth. For those who might not know much about you, could you tell us a bit about yourself? Where were you educated? What’s your professional and electoral background?

I’m Joe Martin, just turned 28, born in Cardiff, lived in Cardiff my whole life, but I went to the University of Exeter in 2016. I started doing history and then changed to Arabic and theology with history in my second year and then changed to Middle Eastern studies and theology with history in my third year, and then came back to Cardiff. I started working; my first job was in customer service at Lloyds Bank. Then I bounced around financial services for a while and then pursued a career in wealth management. I started working for financial advisors and then I’ve branched from that to hopefully becoming an MS in May.

Mr. Martin, in a recent interview you stated that Reform drew you in as they were the only party who could fight the cost of living. What drew you to that conclusion?

So I was looking at sort of what young people were able to earn in Wales and in Cardiff specifically, so actual salaries and wages wise, given the industry I was in. Then I was comparing that with house prices, flat prices, etc., in Cardiff. The cost of housing in Cardiff and Wales was too high, something like a multiple of 10 that you’d need to actually buy something like a three-bed semi-detached in Cardiff. 

And so house prices too high, wages too low, and then immigration being something that pushes down wages and pushes up the cost of housing. So Reform being the only party that takes concerns regarding immigration seriously seemed like the party for me.

Sorry, just to come in on that. Could you maybe clarify a bit more why you think that Reform is the only one who can tackle cost of living and how you’ve come to the conclusion that immigration is a significant aspect of that?

Yeah, so immigration increases the supply of labour, which pushes down wages and then pushes up demand for housing, which pushes up the cost of housing. So it’s just supply and demand really.

Well, theoretical principles sure, but there are varying degrees, presumably not only within Cardiff but along the entirety of Wales and throughout the UK as a whole. Did you have any specific real experiences beyond the theoretical, maybe some practical experiences that might have supported that conclusion?

Well, so you can’t to an extent, separate out cost of living from the impact of mass immigration on the UK. So I think the cost of living was something that really took effect in sort of 2022 as a result of sort of supply-side shocks as a result of the Ukraine war and COVID, etc. 

So that’s obviously really sort of exposed the structural weaknesses of the UK economy and made things a lot worse. But obviously immigration has been something that’s, or the issues surrounding immigration, pre-exist the cost of living crisis by maybe two decades since sort of 1997. So obviously they’re intertwined, but yeah, there is a degree to which you can sort of identify the cost of living situation as separate from the issue of immigration.

So just moving away from immigration now, Reform are not polling particularly well with students. What is your pitch for the student community here in Cardiff? What will Reform deliver for the university student population?

I think for students in particular, we want to make sure that university degrees offer value for money. So I know sort of looking back at my experience at university, intellectually it was very stimulating, and I enjoyed that aspect of it, but at the end of the day, university degrees are very expensive, and we want to make sure that students are leaving university with qualifications that will help them in the marketplace, and that they aren’t saddled with debt that sort of pulls them down over the long term. 

So for example, one of the things that we’re looking at is maybe shortening degrees to two years so that your student loan is only two-thirds the size, but you’re still hopefully getting a three-year degree but in two years. And then for people who don’t want to go to university, we want to expand technical and vocational qualifications for them so that they can sort of upskill and find a place in the jobs market without taking on tens of thousands of pounds of debt. 

I just want to go back on that; you said that Reform would like to condense university courses to two years. Universities are already cutting staff as it stands. Do you think that universities will really have the right staffing levels to deliver such condensed course, and how will quality be ensured?

Yeah, it’s certainly the case that there may well be a trade-off and it’s something that we’ll have to be very careful about. We don’t want it to affect the quality of the education. 

So yeah, it’s something that we’ll have to do on a case-by-case basis and maybe a course-by-course basis as well. So maybe some courses need to be three years, but maybe others don’t. 

So yeah, it’s not something that sort of you’d want to rush headfirst into, but I think generally if you look at the rates of student debt that students are graduating with, it’s untenable for a lot of them. 

You may be aware that it’s been a slightly controversial environment at Cardiff University the last few years, particularly with our Vice-Chancellor Wendy Larner, with some of the cuts she’s made to courses like nursing, for example, as well as others. How do you feel one that will address some of the broader issues around course cuts to things that are quite key to local communities like nursing, but also to what extent or through what methods do you feel that your role will be in dealing with the university? How are you going to actually have them make these changes?

Well, so with for example the cuts to nursing degrees, obviously I don’t know anything about that, I don’t know the particulars of the situation. I do know that it’s Reform policy that we’d like to enable people who want to go into nursing but don’t want to take on a two or three-year degree and don’t want to sort of uproot themselves and leave their families and their communities to go to university. 

So, we can introduce sort of nursing apprenticeships, for example. So that kind of ties into what I was saying earlier about positing sort of alternative pathways into the workforce where you’re picking up all these skills but don’t want to sort of spend tens of thousands of pounds on a full-blown university degree.

To be honest, I don’t know the ins and outs of how we’d go about implementing that. I suppose we’d have to liaise with the universities and sort of make sure that it’s something that they’d be able to offer, etc.

So just staying on universities, we’ve discussed how your manifesto promises that university students will have university courses that represent value for money.

 First of all, how do you measure value for money with university courses? Then, how will you actually monitor whether a course is value for money?

Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, so some people might sort of pursue a degree just for the sheer sort of intellectual enjoyment of it. And so perhaps value for money isn’t the best way to measure that. 

But I think most people go to university with the hope and aspiration that they’re going to find a degree that enables them to get ahead in life, really. I suppose it doesn’t help that it’s kind of become the default now where if you want to go into something even vaguely academic, you’ll need a degree just to compete with everyone else. So maybe we need to look at sort of how we think of degrees more fundamentally, where should it be the case that you need a degree, you need a three-year, £40,000 degree just so that you don’t look worse than other people your age? You know, is that what a degree should be for? Or can we sort of set people up for success in the workplace without degrees? 

You know, it’s going to require sort of a fundamental approach or a look at the fundamentals about how we’re setting young people up sort of from ages sort of 18 to 21.

Are there any courses in particular at Cardiff University that you would say represent poor value for money or represent poor outcomes for graduates?

It’s a great question. No, I don’t know off the top of my head what courses Cardiff University offers for a start, and then I don’t know which ones correspond to highest incomes. I’d anticipate that, and this is just me sort of guestimating, but I’d guess that subjects like STEM, for example, where it’s a highly sort of technical education that leads to highly technical roles that have clear specifications, might lead to higher incomes. But like you touched on earlier, it might be the case that you want to pursue a degree for the sheer intellectual enjoyment of it. And so, value for money isn’t the right way to go about measuring the utility of those degrees. 

When we attended a husting that the on-campus politics society had put on, there were representatives from all parties except your own. And a question put to the board was whether they felt that students were being exploited in student housing. Could I maybe ask what your view is on that situation, given you’re running to 

Yeah, so no student should be renting out a property where there’s an infestation of rats. That seems like something that the private landlord should absolutely, and I’m sure there are laws and regulations in place which state that you can’t rent out a property that’s infested with rats, and obviously they shouldn’t do that, and they should sort of adhere to the law. 

To pivot onto your economic promises, obviously income tax will be quite a big issue for especially for graduates. You’ve committed yourselves to cutting income tax by a penny on the pound, and in an interview recently with Bro Radio while discussing the reforms, you referred voters to your experience in government for local government in England and how you’ve delivered the lowest council tax rises. You must be aware that that’s blatantly untrue. I come from Worcestershire, which is a Reform County council, and the council there has raised council taxes by just under 9%, which is just under the legal limit needed for a referendum. With a track record like that of promising tax cuts and then rising them, why should the Welsh people trust that you’ll cut their taxes?

So, I believe it is the case that we’ve delivered the lowest council tax rises across the board. So, council taxes have unfortunately gone up, but Reform has done the best job of keeping those low. 

The income tax pledge in our manifesto is costed, so we need £371 million. So, we’ll cut £145 million from net zero, £135 million from merging quangos and bringing their functions in-house, and then £95 million pounds can be saved via civil service pay restraint as well. 

You’ve discussed how you’d like to cut the net zero budget. First of all, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen different research to me, but from all the academic research that I’ve read, I can’t find one consistent figure to put down for the price of net zero. It’d be interesting to know, first of all, where you got that figure from. And secondly, 245,000 properties in Wales are at risk of flooding due to climate change. Do you not think the prevention of climate change is essential to those 245,000 residents? 

With regards to the 145 million pounds, that’s a figure that’s in our manifesto, but I don’t know where the policy formulators found that number from. With regards to the risk of flooding, I completely appreciate no one wants their home to be flooded, but Britain produces 1% of global emissions. I think Wales probably produces a fraction of that 1%.

So, if it was a trade-off between facilitating people’s lives, day-to-day lives, and being able to put more money back in their pocket versus cutting our CO2 emissions from less than 1% to a smaller fraction of less than 1%, then I’d certainly go with the former. 

Obviously, our environment is something that we’re going to have to look after, but I think that we can do that without imposing net zero on the people of Wales. 

I suppose another question would be sort of Reform position themselves as wanting to make Britain a world leader in so many different areas of policy. Surely if we want to be world leaders on the international stage, climate change would be a fantastic place to start. Surely other countries will begin to follow once we start to implement a proper climate policy?

Well, we’ve implemented a proper climate policy. I mean, we’ve had that since the 1990s. So, since the 1990s, our CO2 emissions have fallen by half, which is a pretty amazing job. And obviously that we’ve sort of done really well there. 

But China, there was a statistic that was true at one point, I don’t know if it’s still true, but there was at one point a statistic where China was opening a new coal plant every single week. 

So, there’s only so much you can do in Wales to stem the tide of CO2 emissions, and we don’t think that net zero is doing more good than harm. Obviously, we want the UK to be a world leader, but we want it to be a world leader in things that are really going to actually, or a world leader in things that it’s going to be able to affect.

 So, for example, investment in AI would be a good example of somewhere where we want to be leading the pack, but I don’t think net zero is somewhere where our investments are paying off. 

Could we clarify what your position on how do you think Wales or the UK as a whole should be carrying on with environmental issues, whether that’s climate change or biodiversity or pollution? 

Yeah, so I think we absolutely need to look after our environment because obviously we live in it, and we’ve only got one planet and it needs to be looked after. So, there’s lots of things we can do.

 So, with regards to this election, there’s things like the Wales Rivers Act, so making sure that our rivers are clean. And then sort of more broadly, looking at sort of investment in maybe nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels.

 Now obviously there’s risks that go along with nuclear power, so Chernobyl 1986, and then obviously the incident in Japan in 2009 as well. So, there are risks that go along with nuclear power, but I do think it is the way forward, particularly with the advent of small modular reactors as well.

So, it’s expensive, but in the short term it’s expensive, but in the long term it’s very cheap. 

So, I think we can look after our environment whilst not taking it out on people’s wallets. And also, you want climate policy to fall in line with common sense.

In an interview recently, you claimed that Reform is anti-establishment. Your leader, Nigel Farage, was a stockbroker, went to a private school. You yourself come from financial services. Six out of eight of your MPs are privately educated. Dan Thomas was the leader of a council in London, famously not a city in Wales. How are you anti-establishment with a leadership profile that is so privately educated and so England-centric?

Well, just because you’ve been privately educated doesn’t mean that your part of the political establishment that runs the country. I mean, there are lots of privately educated people who have nothing to do with politics. 

So, and obviously the Labour Party, for example, you’d describe as, well I’d describe as establishment. There are lots of people in the Labour Party that weren’t privately educated. 

 Okay, so going off of that logic, if the Conservatives are the establishment, let’s look at your leadership profile again, Nigel Farage, former Conservative, Robert Jenrick, immigration minister that facilitated the Boris wave that your party has recently been talking about, Thomas Kerr, Glasgow, was former Conservative leader of the Glasgow Council. 

Are you not the establishment by letting in so many Conservatives? 

Well, for the past sort of 100 years, there’s only really been two mainstream political parties. So, if you were anywhere right of centre, then you’d have been part of the Conservative Party. That’s no longer the case, and the Conservative Party, particularly in Wales, has died. 

So, people are going to need to find a new home that represents their views, and they’ve found that in Reform. But then, you know, people who have never been involved in politics before have also found a home in Reform. So, I think we have former Conservatives or people who are formerly Conservative because there were only two parties. 

So, if the Conservatives have stayed very quiet on whether they’d go into coalition with Reform, so in the event of a hung Senedd, if the Conservatives are the establishment, will you decline to go into coalition with them? 

I’m not in charge of those decisions, unfortunately. I don’t know, I wouldn’t be tasked with sort of working out coalitions with people. So yeah, I wouldn’t be able to say. I mean, I’d hazard a guess that, you know, if we were a seat short and the Conservatives had a member, then I think we’d be crazy not to take advantage of that opportunity. 

Dan Thomas, I’ve mentioned already that he was the leader of a council in London. How can we trust that he will be a good representative on the national level for the Welsh people considering the majority of his elected experience is London-centric? 

I think he’s a good combination, so obviously born in Wales and then grew up in Wales and then wanted to sort of do as well as he could for himself and didn’t think that he’d be able to achieve his full potential, sadly, in Wales.

So, he had to move to London, which is where a lot of the opportunity, not just elsewhere, but a lot of the opportunity in the UK as a whole is. I think he did a really good job in Barnet and then he’s come back to sort of apply that experience to his home country, the place that he loves, where he grew up.

But you know, if you spend sort of 20 years somewhere, you’re going to develop really deep roots and place and you’re going to consider that place to be home. So, you know, that’s how he thinks about Wales and that’s how I think about Wales and that’s why I’m happy that he’s leading us. 

Okay. So, I want to pivot onto the NHS now. So, your manifesto discusses the need for lawful residency for non-emergency planned care in order to cut waiting lists. But the NHS in Wales already requires lawful residency for non-emergency planned care. So, is this policy actually about delivering better outcomes or is it just being used as a scare tactic to try and blame NHS waitlists for those not born in this country?

 I don’t know the ins and outs of that, sorry. So, you’re saying that you need to fulfil X criteria and you’re saying that that’s already the criteria, is it? 

Yes. So, your manifesto states that you need lawful residency under a reform government for non-emergency planned care. However, that’s already the law in Wales. 

Okay, well, great. That sounds like that’s one thing ticked off already then. 

Okay, so back to sort of the crux of the question. Is that not being used as a scare tactic then to try and demonize those who perhaps don’t have residency in this country, trying to blame them for the waitlist, perhaps, rather than, I don’t know, administrative issues within the NHS or poor funding within the NHS?

Well, considering it’s already a policy, would you accuse the person who implemented it as a policy of scaremongering? 

The question would be whether trying to put it in a manifesto despite it already being implemented is one, either ignorance to what already is the situation, or two, conscious of that, but still putting it forward because they’re aware of the electoral benefits that such scare tactics might bring.

To be honest, I don’t know how you’d read that policy proposal and come to the conclusion that we’re trying to scare anyone. It seems just like a common-sense proposal. And so, yeah, I don’t really, if you read that, I don’t think you’d think, oh my goodness, you know, that’s scaremongering at all.

I think it’s a common-sense idea that I think most people would agree with. Surely the common sense would already know what the situation is and therefore not need to put the policy forward. Or if the policy was, if they were unsure about the policy being put forward, they should have learned. 

Okay. So just staying on the NHS. So, Reform have promised a massive capital program to modernize wards, audit the entire maintenance backlog, build a new dental school in Bangor.

Would the one penny increase in income tax be enough to cover that?

So, I think every single party has plans for the NHS because there is money in the budget to be spent on the NHS. It’s just how you go about spending that money. For example, we’re prioritizing a new dental school in Bangor because that’s what we’ve identified as something that the NHS in Wales needs.

So just the final question from me. Again, we’re just going back to the university focus. Last year, after a row with Bangor University, as you’ll be aware, your party chairman, Zia Yusuf, threatened to defund the university. 

Firstly, can Reform be called the party of free speech if their chairman can threaten to withdraw funding on students who are exercising their right to free speech?

And is that still the policy of Reform UK Wales that if you don’t follow the party line, then you could risk having your funding withdrawn?

 So that question was presented to another Reform politician and there are particular nuances with regards to the actual situation that we saw in Bangor University last year.

 So I’d need to double check those before I could give an answer on that particular situation. I think sort of more generally, there is definitely an issue with free speech in not just universities, but in the UK as a whole.

And free speech is essential for a society that’s liveable. And so Reform want to be the party that champions free speech, even if it’s used against us

You know, as being a politician from Reform, you get people employing the sort of full range of free speech against you, which can be, you know, upsetting at times. But we’re the party that believe fundamentally in free speech. And if people want to use that to criticize us, then bring it on because they’re using their free speech and fundamentally that’s what we believe in.

And I think the issue is particularly acute in universities as well. And so we’ll intervene in whatever ways that are right and just and lawful to make sure that universities are facilitating free speech and aren’t just centres where you can only have a particular opinion, which is the case these days.

Okay, so just stay on that. You say that it’s particularly acute freedom of speech being threatened within universities. Could you give me any concrete examples of that?

If you gave me sort of five minutes to look at recent headlines, I would be able to. You say the problem’s acute, but you don’t actually know for sure that it is. Well, look, if you want me to give you, I could probably summon, you know, 25 to 50 examples just by having a look at newspaper headlines from sort of the last 10 years.

 Surely you’d have found those headlines before forming the opinion, no? Or are you forming the opinion before knowing the evidence is there? 

I’m forming the opinion based on my own experience at university where free speech was stifled.

I mean, so when I was looking at universities 10 years ago, because it was already an issue 10 years ago, probably an issue prior to then as well, there was a traffic light system. And so if you were going to attend a university that encouraged and facilitated free speech, it’d be green and then yellow and then red. 

And Exeter was a red and that’s what I saw there as well. I don’t think anyone who’s looked into the topics of free speech in university would dispute the claim that free speech is being limited and is under attack at university.

And I’d be more than happy to get lots of examples for you guys if you wanted them. 

As a final close, is there a headline pitch from yourself for why you should be elected in your seat from those students who are voting for you? 

I think if you’re, it doesn’t even necessarily matter if you’re a student, if you’re a voter, then what you need is a politician who’s going to identify important topics and then tell the truth about them. And some students are going to disagree massively with what I say and then lots of students will agree with what I say.

And so, you know, I’m going to do my very best to give an honest and fair account of what I think about all of these important issues. And if that resonates with voters and if it resonates with students, brilliant. And if it doesn’t, then I can’t change my view on things just to try and sort of drum up a particular vote from a particular demographic. 

So look, if honesty and courage is important to student voters, then they can vote for Reform. And I’m standing in West Cardiff for Reform in the full knowledge that that’s what I aspire to. And I hope that’s good enough for them.