Irony was laid to rest as a Reform Senedd member slammed a journalist for their question – at a press conference all about ‘defending free speech.’
This week, Reform Wales called a press conference to announce they would be boycotting the Welsh parliament on Wednesday because they felt the free speech of one of their members was being restricted.
Reform Senedd member Joe Martin has been banned from speaking in the Welsh parliament by the speaker for comments he made claiming that white people are being replaced in the UK.
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The speaker has said Martin must apologise for his comments, which echoed the far-right conspiracy theories that white populations are being deliberately replaced by minorities and other ethnic groups.
Martin had said: “Can I have a statement from your government on the demographic replacement of white British people taking place in the UK?
“Mass immigration and differing birth rates mean that, in just 37 years’ time, in 2063, we will be a minority in our own country.”
The parliament’s Presiding Officer Huw Irranca-Davies called the comments “unnecessarily provocative and deliberately offensive”.
In response to Martin’s ban, Reform’s leader in Wales, Helen Jenner, said the party would not be attending the Senedd in protest.
At a press conference announcing the boycott, Jenner said Reform felt they were being “silenced” and that Martin’s ban was an “infringement on freedom of speech.”
Just moments later, Martin suddenly didn’t seem to happy with freedom of speech though when he reacted with fury at a journalist’s question.
When the journalist asked Jenner if Reform is a racist party, Martin snapped: “How dare you ask that question, how dare you.”
In footage shared on X by journalist Will Hayward, Reform’s politicians then walked away when he tried to ask them a question.