Reform UK head of comms branded prominent Welsh journalist a ‘c***’
Warning: this news article contains highly offensive language.
Emily Price
Reform UK’s director of communications used a highly offensive expletive to describe one of Wales’ most prominent journalists in an internal party group chat, Nation.Cymru can reveal.
Leaked screen grabs of a WhatsApp group chat from January this year show that Ed Sumner branded award winning investigative journalist and author Will Hayward a “cunt”.
Nigel Farage’s comms lead used the offensive swearword in response to an X post by Hayward that had been shared into the group chat which questioned why Reform UK hadn’t elected a Welsh leader.
Hayward had written: “Reform have said they will not name a Welsh leader ahead of the Senedd election in 2026.
“Instead they say they will elect a leader afterwards?!
“In my opinion this is incredibly disrespectful to Wales.
“They are telling the people of Wales: ‘Vote for us, but if you do, you’ll only find out who your First Minister will be after we win’.
“Imagine going in to a General Election not knowing who the Prime Minister would be if you voted for a party.”
Members of the group chat include a number of Reform’s senior figures such as Regional Director for Wales Cllr David Thomas and Mark Reckless – the former leader of the Brexit Party in Wales who is now managing Reform’s policy behind the scenes.
Responding to Hayward’s X post, Reckless told the chat: “My inclination would be to ignore it/him.”
Ed Sumner responded: “Ignore him.”
Cllr Thomas asked: “What’s he like this guy?”
Sumner responded: “Cunt.”
Cllr Thomas then sent a laughing emoji to the chat.
It’s understood that Nigel Farage is not a member of the WhatsApp group.
Nation.Cymru made Will Hayward aware of the messages prior to the publication of this article.
A Reform UK source said: “After the embarrassment at Caerphilly with a decent experienced local candidate, basically a comms and management disaster by Thomas and the comms ‘experts’ in HQ, another cock up is last thing we needed.
“All the polling companies said we’d win and Llyr was supposed to be there in that Senedd fighting for Caerphilly.
“Now it’s clear Thomas and Sumner can’t manage the media properly and can’t watch their language either. We let all those voters in Caerphilly down with this sort of business.”
Hayward appears regularly as a commentator on Times Radio, the BBC and Sky News as well as writing a column for the Guardian on Welsh politics.
The ‘For Wales See Wales’ podcaster first rose to prominence at Wales Online for his work holding the Welsh Government to account during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Labour MS Alun Davies: “This is pure poison. And it reflects the sort of people at the heart of Reform. They despise and abuse anyone who questions them or seeks to hold them to account.
“These people should not be anywhere close to our politics. I expect Farage to give this guy his marching orders. Farage has spent the last week making excuses for racism. Now he needs to act to root out this culture of abuse.”
The leaked messages come following concerns about Reform UK’s treatment of journalists and the media.
Earlier this month, Nigel Farage accused BBC Wales of left-wing bias because the organisation’s interim director of nations Rhuanedd Richards had previously worked for Plaid Cymru.
A BBC spokesperson said Richards was “wholly committed to upholding the impartiality of the BBC”.
Last week, we reported how a Reform UK barrister had tried to bully Nation.Cymru after we named Ed Sumner as implicated in the events that led to the suspension of Reform MS Laura Anne Jones from the Senedd.
In June last year, we had reported how Sumner had sent “sickening” and “hateful” messages to a Tory group chat when he worked as a senior advisor to Jones.
The disparaging messages included comments about immigration, diversity and “gays” as well as jokes about an MS’s dead father.
This week, it was revealed that the same Reform Barrister that sent threats of legal action to Nation.Cymru had been communicating with the Guardian regarding the newspaper’s intention to publish claims made about Farage by multiple school contemporaries of his at Dulwich College.
The newspaper reported how Richardson had warned that if “the Guardian proceeds to publish any allegation suggesting that Mr Farage engaged in, condoned, or led racist or antisemitic behaviour, or that such claims bear upon his present character or fitness for office, proceedings will be issued without further notice.”
Despite this, the Guardian published an article on 18 November with the headline: “‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school.”
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Bullying anyone who disagrees with them or oppose their views! These fascists need to be kicked put of Cymru a.s.a.p.
Will Hayward is obviously doing his job right to get such unsurprising response from such vile people.
Please keep shining a spotlight on this vile political movement so everyone understands what they stand for.
“Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”
Its despicable language especially behind closed doors. If this how they react to the press and questioning, how are they going to behave when the electorate ask them for reasonable and sensible answers? There is no point asking Garage for his take on racism considering his past. And Zia and Garage cannot even deny that he never used such disgusting racist and antisemitic language when he was younger. Now he is just surrounding himself with islamaphobic beings at one end and Zia at the other.
I used to commute past the school for a few years in the seventies, a tidy looking place. As luck would have it my local rev used to teach there before ministering here in Cymru, our paths crossed again years later. A very social and likable fellow, his previous comments over dinner were a little sharper, probably a low parapet surrounds him these days…
If you’re insulted by Reform, take it as a compliment and badge of honour.
Reform did have a leader in this country, but he’s just started 10.5 years in jail for taking bribes to represent another country instead.
I wouldn’t worry too much about insults from anyone in Reform, many of them have received jail sentences for numerous crimes ranging from drug production, serious fraud and much worse. I expect they used similar expletives against arresting officers and judges, so reporters exposing them need to remember they’re providing a great service to inform the respectful law abiding public.
It’s not so much the insults, it’s what acts the insults drive idiots on to commit that we should be concerned about.
Reform have a type. Just think what they think of the voters. Putins chumps in Wales are trying to take us for mugs.
What was that? 10.5 years? Who did they miss then.
The English Nationalist Party are a vile, dangerous far right racist party. They hate Cymru our language, our culture and our values. Basically everything about us
Obviously they don’t see the need for a county of England to have a leader when there’s Nigel.
This language sums up Reform UK. These are the type of people you ridicule and mock for their outlandish ideology not by defacto hand them the levers of power to cause chaos.
Councillor Thomas Reform’s Duracell bunny has confirmed he is not standing for the Senedd.
You can see why
Got a kit of time for Will Hayward. He seems to understand Cymru and the appalling way it’s been treated. I was surprised however to recently hear he wasn’t a supporter of Welsh Independence must admit that rather confused me slightly.
Check out his excellent 2022 book ‘Independent Nation’.
They’re not nice people politicians and journos have always had a volatile relationship. I recall a Guardian journalist punching Alastair Campbell in the face. Twas ever thus.
Whataboutery
‘the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue’
Twas ever thus..
Any professional comms officer would apologise for such a comment. It would be a fabricated excuse around stress of the moment etc, but it’s what you do to have any credibility in politics.
The British traitor party doing what the British traitor party does best. I’m surprised it wasn’t in Russian.
BBC Wales doorstepped an ex mep in France asking about taking russian coin.
Surprised me.
the BBC that is. Well done them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn09x11yr7ro
I’ve just received the first flyer from the Reform Party. I can’t describe my feeling of revulsion in getting this through the post. So different from getting material from any other political party that I don’t support.
Ditto. And it’s a data grab. Shredded mine but thought occurred, do they pay for the return postage? Send back empty?
Wonder what the rules are when I asked my voter data to be limited.
Good point. I think the restricted electoral register is available to political parties, but not commercial interests? But then Reform is a Limited Company…
ah, forgot that. Off to the relevant org for a look see.
Sent mine back with comments but cut out all parts that could be used to trace me.
Even if no extra cost to Reform a little bit of a minion’s time in their office in England will be wasted opening the envelope and throwing the contents in a bin.
You and me both, and, from the look of it, not a few others; I suspect that Reform UK in Wales are now doing a mailing right across our country as their first initiative in attempting to build voter support in preparation for the Senedd elections next May. Costly for sure, but then they have some seriously wealthy backers, both here and – maybe more significantly! – in the land of the ‘Orange One’ on the other side of the north Atlantic. I suspect that they can afford it. Tomorrow I’ll be composing a rejoinder pointing out that Nathan Gill… Read more »
Ed Sumner could only ever aspire to be a c**t because he lacks the requisite warmth and depth
Will Hayward – an English guy who came, as I once did, to university in Wales and like me took to the place and stayed on here – has, as a professional and talented journalist, significantly contributed to Welsh political journalism by putting us rather more ‘on the map’ in terms of our Welsh national politics, which largely has been, and still pretty much is, ignored by the UK-wide news and comment media.
He’s now even started contributing to the ‘Guardian’ on Welsh politics. Quite some accomplishment.
Message to Ed Sumner” A c*** is useful. You’re not.
On the matter of Reform UK’s recent mailing to what looks to have been all Welsh voters, in the end I responded to it by recycling the survey form and just using their freepost envelope to send them something else down to their office in Caerffili! I don’t regularly buy ‘Private Eye’, but did happen to get a very recent edition in which they published a photo of a grinning Farage standing shoulder to shoulder with a similarly grinning Nathan Gill, with a speech bubble in which Farage is saying something along the lines of ‘The reality is that I… Read more »