‘Do you endorse Dr Parry’s grim remarks – or will you sack him as your candidate?’
Nigel Farage is being urged to fire Chris Parry, Reform’s mayoral candidate for Hampshire and the Solent, over “vile” comments he has made.
An investigation by the Telegraph last week revealed that Parry had posted on X that the Justice Secretary David Lammy should “go home” to the Caribbean where his “loyalties lie”.
The Reform candidate, who is also a former Royal Navy officer, described several female Cabinet ministers, including Rachel Reeves, Bridget Phillipson, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall as “harpies”.
A harpy is a type of mythological creature depicted as half-woman and half-bird. The term can be used in a derogatory way to characterise a woman as “nagging” or “bad-tempered”.
He called the Chancellor an “ideologically corrupted and incompetent harpy” and a “vicious harpy”, and referred to Phillipson, the Education Secretary, a “Marxist harpy”.
In July, Parry called Cooper “a lying harpy” and in September, he said Kendall was “a totalitarian harpy”.
Parry also shared a post suggesting Parliament would be filled with Muslim MPs by 2035, with the caption: “There won’t be any women…”.
The revelations raise further questions about Reform’s vetting process, which Farage vowed to “professionalise” after the 2024 election, following a string of candidate scandals.
According to the HuffPost UK, Labour MP Calvin Bailey, who served in the RAF, has now written to Farage urging him to take action against his candidate.
In his letter, he said the Telegraph article “exposed a string of utterly vile racist and misogynistic remarks made by Dr Parry about fellow politicians”.
Bailey added: “Do you endorse Dr Parry’s grim remarks – or will you sack him as your candidate?”
“A failure to act on your part would further demonstrate a lack of suitability for high office.”
The MP also said in his letter to Farage: “You have consistently claimed Reform’s vetting procedures are of the highest standards. Yet from the leadership and down, senior Reform figures continue to be dogged with accusations of racism and misogyny.
“It’s dragging our politics to a dangerous place and it must be challenged.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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