Rats in a Sack doesn’t want to pull back the curtain too much on how the world’s second-oldest profession works, but here’s a little trade secret: political journalists sometimes have lunch with politicians.
It’s gone on as long as printing presses have existed – even if the lunches are not as long nor as well-lubricated as they might once have been – but it seems to have come as a shock to Reform in Wales, who took the decision to publish a picture of one the Senedd’s best-known correspondents breaking bread with Plaid Cymru members as evidence of some sort of bias.
Will Hayward, who writes a well-established Substack newsletter, was shocked after Reform surreptitiously took a photograph of him having lunch with a group of Plaid MSs in the Senedd’s canteen and published it on X with the message: “This is ‘award winning impartial journalist’, Will. He’s having lunch with his Plaid Cymru mates. Don’t be like Will.”
The message was reposted by Reform’s actual leader in Wales, Dan Thomas – a former North London Conservative council leader – their shadow local government minister Francesca O’Brien and shadow social care minister Claire Archibald. It received thousands of views on X and was shared by a far-right social media account on Facebook before the party eventually took it down.
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The meeting was hardly clandestine – the canteen is for use by any MS, staffer or journalist with a Senedd pass and hacks and politicos routinely lunch together – but Reform did not ask for permission to take the picture nor publish it.
In a social media post, Hayward wrote: “The ability of the free press to scrutinise and hold politicians to account is vital in a democracy.
“The deliberate misrepresentation of a journalist’s work from the official opposition inside the Welsh Parliament is very concerning and, in my view, is an attempt to discredit and intimidate reporters. It is not acceptable.”
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The words were echoed by David Nicholson, co-chair of the National Union of Journalists in Wales, who said: “We deplore the behaviour of Reform UK in taking a photograph of a political journalist at work in the Senedd and then publishing the picture with an inflammatory comment on social media.
“An important part of any political journalist’s job in the Senedd is to speak to politicians and staff of all parties. The Senedd canteen is a place for refreshment and chatting to people of all parties.”
But the move is par for the course for Reform in Wales, who have been at war with much of the Welsh media, and Hayward in particular, since first becoming a force in the country. It has barred political journalists whose questions they object to from attending media briefings and has removed them from its press release lists.
And leaked messages from an internal group chat last year showed that the party’s director of communications had branded Hayward a “c**t” for questioning why the party then didn’t have a Welsh leader. What absolute charmers they are!
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