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Neil McEvoy sometimes says and does stupid things, but he has brought a campaigning zeal to Welsh politics that surely has its place.

He is currently serving one month’s suspension from Cardiff council because he was judged by an unelected panel to have bullied a council employee as they left a civil court.

The Fairwater councillor, who has since been elected as a South Wales Central regional AM, had been there to support a constituent who was facing eviction from her home because of rent arrears partly caused by the bedroom tax.

Such occasions tend to be emotionally charged, and sometimes things are said that people later regret.

When I heard that Mr McEvoy was facing a disciplinary panel because of some threat he’d made to a council employee, I assumed he had given vent to a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse.

I was surprised when I learned what he had actually said: that he was looking forward to a restructure of the council after the elections in May 2017.

(Image: Matthew Horwood)

These are hardly words, one might think, to leave anyone quaking in fear.

But according to the panel they constituted a threat to the officer’s employment and were therefore judged to be bullying.

Bullying is despicable and no-one should be subjected to it. But it’s usually understood as negative action towards someone that’s intended to undermine the victim over a sustained period of time.

The case against Mr McEvoy was based on a single sentence open to more than one interpretation that was uttered after a highly charged court hearing which culminated in a woman being told to leave her home. Who was the real loser in these circumstances?

Mr McEvoy didn’t do himself any favours in the run-up to his own disciplinary hearing. He fulminated against Welsh Government-appointed panel members who, he asserted, were going along with a preconceived plan to “get him”.

This was part of a narrative he has been keen to disseminate: that he is a victim of Labour’s one-party state which will go to any lengths to do him down.

This is one of his Facebook posts

He has hinted at dark forces behind a recent break-in at his campaign office, implying that his political opponents are using Watergate-style burglars to unnerve him and maybe steal his secrets.

Such stuff may sound far-fetched, but so,initially, did the idea that a US President would be involved in organising a break-in at the opposition party’s campaign HQ.

The fact is, though, that Neil McEvoy is a different kind of politician from the norm – certainly the norm we have come to expect at the Senedd.

In terms of the way he goes about his business, Mr McEvoy is at the other end of the spectrum from David Melding, a Tory AM who also represents South Wales Central. Mr Melding is renowned for his urbanity, and doesn’t have an enemy in the political world.

But more “ordinary” people are likely to have heard of Mr McEvoy, even though he has less than one year’s experience at the Assembly against nearly 18 for Mr Melding.

Mr McEvoy wants to shake up Cardiff politics, according to a video he has just produced for his social media accounts. The fact is that he’s already done that.

This is one of his Twitter videos

It’s true that his politics are often personal – and the feud he’s had for years with Labour councillors Michael Michael and Paul Mitchell doesn’t reflect well on any of them. Sometimes, too, Mr McEvoy’s approach comes across as too rough at the edges.

He’s repeatedly accused First Minister Carwyn Jones of lying about Cardiff’s Local Development Plan, for example, creating an uneasy mood in Assembly plenary sessions.

But perhaps in disapproving of his tactics we betray our own narrow definition of what inclusivity amounts to. It’s more than gender balance and minority race representation. What about the missing working classes?

Mr McEvoy is from a working class background and sometimes he doesn’t behave in the cosy way middle class consensualists would like.

When he thinks something is wrong, he’ll say so. Sometimes he misses his target, but other times he’s spot on.

His expression of concern about Ofcom Wales giving a contract without competitive tender to a company which has two members on its own advisory board hit the mark for many people beyond his normal circle of followers.

What Neil McEvoy lacks in urbanity, he possesses in campaigning energy. It’s no wonder that Plaid Cymru doesn’t know how to handle him.