Pembrokeshire MP in 'Social media war' with local peace campaigners

Following a spate of social media exchanges Henry Tufnell has released a video on his official Instagram account complaining that PARC Against DARC had put out a meme depicting him as Donald Trump’s puppy-dog which he describes as his ‘going to bed with Trump’. The campaign, which was established in 2024 to oppose the US military’s proposed DARC radar array in Pembrokeshire, has today hit back calling for a face-to-face showdown with Tufnell, citing his abject lack of understanding around the DARC radar issue.

This isn't the first time that Tufnell and the anti space-wars campaign have come to blows. At a recent demonstration outside County Hall in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, which was organised to oppose the planning application, the campaigners held up masks depicting Tufnell’s face which they had called ‘Toffsicles,’ along with a sign reading ‘Where’s Tofnell?’ as a play on his aristocratic background, the fact that he’s not local to Pembrokeshire or Wales, and was, the campaign points out, parachuted in by Sir Keir Starmer. The campaign criticises his failure to engage with what it describes as the thousands of people who have written to him asking for dialogue around their grave concerns about the proposed military radar.

The timing is also poignant as the DARC radar planning application has now been ‘called in’ to Welsh Government under Plaid Cymru who have made clear their party’s opposition to the radar. If they refuse planning consent for DARC as expected they will be set on a direct ‘collision course’ with Westminster, as the MOD and UK Government may attempt to override the Welsh government and try to steam roll the proposal through. This would be an unprecedented move if it happened, and would likely cause major ructions between the two parliaments.

Apparently with a somewhat bruised ego, the Member of Parliament for Mid and South Pembrokeshire’s video WATCH HERE begins by telling the audience that the PARC Against DARC campaign has released a meme of his face cozying up to Donald Trump, before proceeding to say he’s going to ‘set the record straight’ with a series of ‘facts’ about the timing of the project, the 100 jobs he says it will create that the campaign disputes, how he alleges the radiation emitted by the radars would be safe and how DARC is the right thing for the Pembrokeshire, ‘the Country’ and the world. The MP fails to mention Wales by name.

Campaigners, however, have hit back hard, referring to Tufnell as ‘utterly clueless’ and issuing a statement calling on the MP to meet face to face with campaigners and local residents, and finally face up to the overwhelming local opposition to the radar.

The statement begins:

“Following reports of hundreds of unanswered letters, we call on Henry Tufnell MP to meet with the PARC Against DARC campaign and local residents, and to once and for all address our pressing concerns.”

The campaigners went on to say:

“Though previous MPs in Pembrokeshire were unpopular, at least they sometimes did their homework. Tufnell constantly sounds like he knows nothing about one of the most serious and widely opposed proposals our county has ever faced. He doesn’t even know that because DARC necessitates the evacuation of Cawdor Barracks in Brawdy, it would lead to a net loss of hundreds of jobs. He hasn’t read the 750,000 word planning application, which states that even the claimed jobs, which would all be for US personnel anyway, are more like around 20-40. We imagine he would keep lying about the jobs anyway even if he did. And he certainly hasn’t listened to a single constituent’s email, 1,121 planning objections to only one in favour, a massive public petition, the opposition of dozens of elected politicians on both sides of the border, or multiple major protests. Instead, he is in a Trump fanclub of one.”

“Tufnell’s grip of the facts gets even worse though. He doesn’t even seem to realise that after all the bluster from the MOD about DARC meeting radiation regulations, DARC has not even been demonstrated to meet ICNIRP requirements specifically at all, and researchers have serious concerns that those regulations, which permit radiation hundreds of times more powerful than in other countries, are toothless anyway. Six of the massive 27 radar dishes that the National Parks and Natural Resources Wales have objected to and both agree would cause huge environmental damage transmit radiation of enormous power outputs, and the MOD has to this day done absolutely nothing to robustly alleviate local resident’s concerns about radiation that has proven to be capable of serious harm in over 4,000 studies. It’s a major reason why many have been considering abandoning their homes and lives. Tufnell and his kids should be fine at the other end of Pembrokeshire, but we doubt he would be moving to the St Davids peninsula in a hurry, and it’s clear he aggressively doesn’t care about the people who live here.”

The original meme was posted to the Campaign’s Facebook page in April

A spokesperson continued:

“Tufnell’s attempt to distance himself from Trump who established the so-called ‘US Space Force’ in his first term is absolutely preposterous. Who’s actually running the US government right now, and actively pushing DARC? Donald Trump. Who came forward with the whole idea for the whole unhinged US ‘Golden Dome’ Trumpian fantasy that DARC was really for in the first place? Donald Trump. If Tufnell’s desperate plan is to post gimmicky reels to try to distance himself from a deranged Trump who is bombing the world and trying to ram DARC down the throats of Pembrokeshire people and the Welsh Government who almost unanimously reject it by blaming the project on Genocide Joe of all people as if that somehow excuses DARC, it’s clear how weak and unserious the calibre of yawn-fest South England elites that Labour is parachuting into Wales are increasingly looking in the face of public opinion.”

“The reality is that previously Starmer’s and now Burnham’s support for the deranged Trump administration is doing nothing but putting UK security at risk. An illegal war in Iran, a genocide in Gaza, and now hitting civilian infrastructure in Russia in order to expand NATO eastwards against all historical red lines that created the Russia-Ukraine problems in the first place: these acts of bizarre violence, opposed by most people globally, are all leading to increasingly serious threats against the UK and making Pembrokeshire into a far bigger strategic target. The US recently announced that they have put a military weapon in space orbit, and it’s long been the US creating a Space-Wars Race rather than China, which has issued a statement criticising these contraventions of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty by the US, It’s abundantly clear that the US is driving the so-called threats in space rather than Russia or China, which have a history of cooperating to strengthen international law in space. Yet all Tufnell does is act like a deranged cheerleader for all of it. The man is a danger to our county and our country’s security, and he should be locked up.”

The stage is now set not only for a ‘Wales vs Westminster’ showdown over the planning consent for the project, but now the ‘Pembrokeshire People vs Tufnell’ too. Whatever becomes of DARC radar, it’s sure the issue is becoming more contentious and of greater significance on the national agenda by the day.