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Four AMs are in talks to join the Brexit Party and a fifth has already been turned down, we can reveal.

The four thought likely to be accepted by leader Nigel Farage and other senior Brexit Party figures are Caroline Jones, Mandy Jones, Mark Reckless and David Rowlands.

Michelle Brown has been told she would not be accepted by the recently established party.

All five were elected as Ukip AMs, but only Mr Rowlands is still in the party.

Caroline Jones, who was briefly the Ukip group leader last year, represents South Wales West. She ousted former group leader Neil Hamilton by three votes to two in a ballot of Ukip’s then- AMs. But after herself being defeated in an all-members ballot by current leader Gareth Bennett, she left Ukip to sit as an Independent.

Mandy Jones, who was Ukip’s number-three candidate in the North Wales region at the 2016 National Assembly election, became an AM in December 2017 after the resignation of Nathan Gill. She was, however, not admitted to the Ukip group because she insisted on employing at least one member of staff who was said to be a member of the Conservative Party. Since joining the Assembly she has sat as an Independent.

Elected in 2010 as the Tory MP for the Kent seat of Rochester and Strood, Mr Reckless defected to Ukip shortly before the Conservative Party conference in 2014. He resigned his seat, was re-elected in a by-election, but lost it in the 2015 general election.

In 2016 he was elected to the National Assembly in South Wales East, but less than a year later left Ukip, whose group was in turmoil following the election of Neil Hamilton as leader. Since then he has sat as an Independent AM, but has been allowed to join the Tory Assembly group.

Mr Rowlands, a former businessman, was also elected as a Ukip AM in 2016 to represent South Wales East. He has stuck with Ukip until now.

(Image: MLA photography)

Ms Brown sits as an Independent AM, having quit the Ukip group in March this year. She was quickly the subject of controversy after her election, being accused by Future Inns of smoking recreational drugs in a room she occupied in its Cardiff Bay hotel, and leaving it in a state in which it could not be occupied for 24 hours.

The hotel chain issued her with a £250 clean-up bill. Earlier this month she was suspended from the Assembly without pay for a week after referring to MP Chuka Umunna as a “f...ing coconut”.

We have been told that the Brexit Party would not allow her to join because of her offensive comment about the former Labour and now Change UK politician.

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A Brexit Party insider told us: “We are likely to have a four-member Assembly group by the middle of June at the latest. Nigel is due to visit Cardiff possibly next week, although his schedule is very changeable at the moment because of the European Parliament election.

"He will decide, together with others, whether the four should be admitted to the party. One person who will be consulted will be Nathan Gill, who knows them all.”

Mr Gill was elected as a Ukip MEP to represent the whole of Wales in 2014. Two years later he headed up the party campaign in Wales at the Assembly election in which Ukip won seven seats. But at the newly elected group’s first meeting he was successfully challenged by Neil Hamilton for the leadership. He then spent little time in the Assembly before eventually resigning his seat at the end of 2017.

The Brexit Party insider said: “Caroline Jones and David Rowlands made public statements saying he should resign from the Assembly because of his lack of attendance, but he doesn’t bear grudges.”

Mr Reckless, Mr Rowlands, Caroline Jones and Mandy Jones did not respond to our request for comment.