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Former council leader Sean Morgan, who left Labour last year to join the Green Party, has spoken of the abuse his new party has faced while campaigning for tomorrow’s Senedd election.

Cllr Morgan, who represents Nelson on Caerphilly County Borough Council, said he was out driving the Green Party van on bank holiday Monday with last year’s Caerphilly by-election candidate Gareth Hughes.

He said: “Gareth was on the tannoy saying ‘hope not hate’, and what was shocking was the absolute amount of abuse. I’ve never been in a campaign where people are openly angry, antagonistic, argumentative and abusive.

“The abuse from Reform supporters is unreal.”

Green Party candidate Alexis Celnik, who is second on the party list for Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni, likened it to a football match.

He explained: “I quite like the banter in a football match, but there’s a time and a place for that kind of gesticulation.

“You know what you’re signing up to if you’re in the away end, whereas here, it’s like, a bit weird to have that in the street in front of all the families.

“I’ve not had it individually, I’ve had people returning the leaflets, and I’ve had a few going, ‘I can’t wait for Trump to have all the influence’, almost like trying to get a goad out of you.”

On Monday, Green Party activists, with children, unfurled a banner on the pedestrian bridge over Caerphilly bypass and again faced abuse from passers-by who said they would be voting Reform.

Mr Celnik said: “You’ve literally got a two or three-year-old under the word ‘hope’, and he was just enjoying himself on the bridge. There were people going past swearing.”

He added the tactics of Reform UK foster a “toxic environment” for public discourse.

Referring to the party’s announcement that it would build immigration detention centres in areas with a Green MP, if it became the next UK Government, he said: “It is about shock tactics. They’re very short-sighted.

“They think it’s ‘just get the attention, get our supporters on board’. They don’t appreciate the repercussions or statements like that, because it does create a toxic environment. And that is where this comes from.”

Mr Celnik also said the tone of coverage from certain sections of the media, such as GB News, has contributed to an environment where it is “okay” to be abusive.

A spokesperson for Reform UK rejected the Green Party’s claims of abuse, describing them as politically motivated and unsupported by evidence.