This comes amid wider criticism of Reform UK’s approach to journalists
Reform UK’s director of communications, Ed Sumner, was caught using an offensive slur to describe Welsh investigative journalist Will Hayward.
Nation Cymru reported that in a leaked internal party WhatsApp chat, Sumner referred to Hayward as the c-word.
Sumner sent the messages in January this year, after Hayward reacted to Reform UK announcing that they will not appoint a leader of Reform in Wales before the Senedd elections in May 2026.
Reform said they will instead vote for a leader after the elections.
“What they’ve essentially said to people in Wales is vote for us, we’re going to try and form a government but we’re not going to tell you who your first minister will be.”
Hayward described this as “really disrespectful” and said “it is indicative of how the party sees Wales”.
In the WhatsApp exchange, which saw senior Reform figures reacting to Hayward’s comments, former Brexit Party leader in Wales, Mark Reckless, wrote: “Ignore him.”
Councillor David Thomas, the party’s Wales regional director, then asked what Hayward was like.
Sumner replied with the offensive slur. Thomas then responded with a laughing emoji.
This latest Reform UK controversy comes amid ongoing criticism of its approach towards journalists.
Nigel Farage recently called high-profile journalist Mishal Husain ‘love’ after she pressed him on his Russia stance.
At Reform’s party conference in September, Farage called a Mirror reporter “disgusting” when she asked about his tax affairs and whether he should resign over not paying stamp duty on his constituency home in Clacton.
In August, Reform council leader at Nottinghamshire County Council, Mick Barton, imposed a reporting ban on Nottinghamshire Live and its sister publication Nottingham Post.
Barton lifted the ban in October, but said just last week that he would “do it again”.
Sumner replaced Gawain Towler as Reform’s director of communications in August last year.
When he was appointed, Reform faced a headache over comments Sumner previously made to colleagues on WhatsApp.
While Sumner was working for the Welsh Tory party, he wrote messages to colleagues saying London’s New Year firework display was too focused on “immigration, diversity and gays”.
“F*** me. This firework display. All about immigration, diversity and gays,” he allegedly wrote on 1 January 2024. “All about what we have in common, trying to force immigration and multiculturalism on us,” he is said to have posted in the WhatsApp group.
Sumner was previously a member of UKIP Youth. While he was deputy chair of the group in 2016, it was revealed that UKIP Youth members were using a closed Facebook group to post islamophobic, homophobic and anti-semitic comments.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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