The ‘vetting processes’ have failed yet again…
Reform UK candidates are continuing to post hateful and extremist content online, even as party leader Nigel Farage insists that it has taken candidate vetting seriously.
An investigation by anti-extremist group Hope not Hate ahead of the upcoming local elections has found candidates who have called for ‘one big nuke bomb’ to remove Islam from the world, as well as others who have promoted the conspiracy theory that Muslims are seeking to “supplant the native population” in the UK.
Reform is putting up more than 1,600 candidates for 1 May’s English council elections, and says it has made efforts to strengthen its vetting processes. The party was heavily criticised at the last general election for failing to vet its candidates, after it had to remove more than 100 general election candidates since the start of the year, more than a dozen of whom were sacked after offensive and racist comments were revealed.
Yet despite the party’s insistence that it has implemented stronger vetting processes, candidate are still being found to have posted hateful content.
Among the examples is Steven Biggs, a Reform UK candidate hoping to win a seat in Pelton in North Durham. In August 2015, he posted on his Facebook page that “Islam has no place on this earth. One big nuke bomb needed”.
He has also repeatedly posted links to Britain First, the anti-Islam political party, on his Facebook account.
Another candidate, Isaiah-John Smith Reasbeck, standing in Hexthorpe and Balby North in Doncaster, posted on X: “Bradford has one of the biggest Muslim populations in Europe it’s also one of the biggest shitholes in Europe draw your own conclusions”.
Still a nasty far-right party.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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