Reform UK Senedd candidate booed and branded ‘fascist’ in fiery hustings clash

Emily Price

A high-profile Reform UK Senedd election candidate was booed, jeered and branded a “fascist” during a heated hustings debate that ended with him shouting at a member of the audience.

Reform’s lead candidate for Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, James Evans, took to social media to express his frustration after participating in the community Q&A session in Talgarth on Wednesday (April 22).

After the session, Evans said that a group of “left wing activists” had spent the evening “jeering, shouting, and laughing” at participants that “dared to put forward a different point of view”.

Prospective Senedd Members were quizzed on topics such as wind farms, women’s rights, immigration and abortion laws.

Each candidate was given only one minute to provide an answer.

Video footage of the hectic session showed that at times, the crowd hissed and booed at Evans, as well as Welsh Conservative candidate Dr Liz O’Shea and Heritage Party candidate Jennifer Roberts.

The debate began in a relatively subdued tone but quickly descended into chaos after Jennifer Roberts claimed that the children and grandchildren of Welsh voters were not safe due to “illegal immigration.”

As heckling broke out, Roberts stood up from her chair and called for silence, then began pointing at a member of the crowd saying: “You’ll have your chance to speak, I’m here, I’m standing to speak my mind, and that is what I’ll do.”

Audience members laughed when the Senedd hopeful said she wanted Wales’ parliament abolished, and later booed as she made a series of contentious claims, including suggesting that women in Wales were resorting to backstreet abortions and that three-year-olds were being taught to masturbate in schools.

‘Yes’

Tory candidate Dr Liz O’Shea received a similar response when she suggested that pupils were being taught shocking “sexualisation content”.

During a discussion on Welsh independence, O’Shea asked if the audience believed that breaking up the UK would work for Wales.

A number of audience members off camera could be heard shouting: “Yes!”

Although Evans initially received a warm response when answering questions, he was later met with a chorus of boos and jeers.

Audience member Helen Jones quizzed the former Welsh Conservative Senedd Member on his party’s pledge to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights .

Jones’ question centred around concerns that this would remove vital protections against workplace discrimination, pregnancy related sackings and gender based harassment.

Jeered

Evans was heckled as he said that the ECHR was a barrier to removing people who entered the UK illegally.

Shouting over the audience, he said: “You may not like the truth but that’s typical left they like shouting people down. People like freedom of speech but they don’t like it when they don’t hear something they agree with.”

During his closing remarks Evans said that the evening had only been “semi-respectful” adding that it was a shame that issues such as business, agriculture, sport and wellbeing hadn’t been raised.

When Evans called on Welsh voters to lend their vote to Reform UK on May 7, shouting broke out in the room again.

Responding to one audience member’s jeers, cameras showed Evans pointing across the room and shouting, “What? How dare you. How dare you.”

It is unclear what the audience member said to prompt Evans’ reaction.

Following the meeting, the Reform hopeful took to Facebook to vent his frustrations about the event.

Shouting

He wrote: “I attended a hustings tonight and, honestly, it summed up everything that’s wrong with politics in this country right now.

“A group of left wing activists spent the evening jeering, shouting, and laughing at anyone who dared to put forward a different point of view.

“It’s says a lot when people who claim to stand for tolerance are the least tolerant in the room.

“Meanwhile, the decent, reasonable majority are expected to just sit there and put up with it.

“And I can tell you this, the silent majority is watching, and they’ve had enough.”

Helen Jones, the audience member who had challenged Evans on women’s rights, responded by posting a comment beneath his update, accusing him of misleading the public.

Equality

She wrote: “I think we must have been at different meetings, James? From where I sat, it was not that at all.

“I asked a question which referred to the question posed about women’s rights, stating that Reform UK’s policy is to leave the ECHR and scrap the Equality Act.

“Your response had nothing to do with my question but went straight to ‘illegal immigration’.

“You are being very disingenuous stating that this was how the hustings played out. For info, I am not a ‘leftie’ as you called me.

“I have always been Centrist. I am a Veteran, having served in the Royal Navy, later working for MoD for 12 years at 3 RSME Regt and HQ 160 (W) Bde. Hardly the career of a leftie.

“However, I will speak out when I see the wool being pulled over people’s eyes. I was able to use the Equality Act as evidence when I challenged the lower pay I was receiving compared to male colleagues at one of my previous jobs. It has nothing to do with ‘illegal immigration’.

“Perhaps if you had answered the question instead of veering to your own narrative, there might have been a more accepting response.”

‘Fascist’

Evans responded saying that human rights laws “reach far beyond their original scope”, adding that they are being used to “frustrate the proper enforcement of immigration law”.

On the hustings itself, Evans said that he was “heckled, laughed at, and called a fascist at one point”.

He said: “The Heritage Party candidate received sustained abuse throughout the evening, and the Conservative candidate was also heckled while trying to speak.

“That kind of atmosphere makes it very difficult to give detailed answers to complex legal questions.

“When candidates are being interrupted and shouted down, responses are inevitably cut short when we only had 60 seconds to answer.”