After storming out of the blocks at the beginning of this campaign, polls suggest that Reform’s support has now tailed off slightly in the past week. So what’s the reason for this? Nigel Farage himself suggested to ITV yesterday that he had been ‘wilfully misinterpreted’ over his Ukraine comments but added that: ‘I think the other thing that’s perhaps had a bigger impact is we’ve just had too many candidates who’ve said stupid things. I think that’s perhaps the reason that we’ve dropped off a little bit.’
So who are these candidates saying ‘stupid things’? Mr S has started pulling together a handy guide of Reform’s nominees across the party who have all found themselves in the headlines in recent weeks. Below is a list of candidates embroiled in controversy since the election was called at the end of May – so not including the ten dropped in April:
Raymond Saint – Basingstoke
Reform dropped Saint as a candidate this week after the Guardian revealed that he had been on a list of members of the British National party. The party withdrew its support and accused Saint of failing to declare his BNP membership.
Grant StClair-Armstrong – North West Essex
Reform UK’s parliamentary candidate in the same constituency as Kemi Badenoch resigned from the party after it emerged he previously urged people to vote for the BNP. StClair-Armstrong posted on one of his websites ‘I could weep now, every time I pick up a British newspaper and read the latest about the state of the UK. No doubt, Enoch Powell would be doing the same if he was alive. My solution … vote BNP!’
Ben Aston – Bournemouth West
In October Aston wrote on Twitter/X that Jews are ‘agitating’ to import ‘third-world Muslims’ into Britain and said the government was deliberately ‘injecting’ Britain with African men.
Ian Gribbin – Bexhill and Battle
Apologised earlier this month for claiming that Britain would be ‘far better’ if it had ‘taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality’ instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. He also wrote online that women were the ‘sponging gender’ and should be ‘deprived of health care’.
Jo Hart – Aberdeenshire North and Moray East
Hart reportedly shared a post on social media over the Platinum Jubilee bank holiday weekend, branding the Royal family ‘benefit scroungers’ and calling for the monarchy to be abolished. The Daily Mail reported that she shared the comment but did not write them herself, with the emotive message included the phrases ‘fuck the royals’ and ‘make Lizzy the last’.
Jack Aaron – Welwyn Hatfield
Aaron, who is standing against the defence secretary, Grant Shapps, tweeted in 2022 that Hitler ‘was basically incoherent in his writing and rationale’ but was ‘brilliant’ at using specific personality traits ‘to inspire people into action’. In other comments he called Syrian dictator President Assad ‘gentle by nature’ and President Putin’s use of force in Ukraine was ‘legitimate’.
He told The Times: ‘Yes, Hitler was as brilliant as he was utter evil. How is that controversial to say, given that he was able to turn the Germans to such destructive acts, including killing many members of my own family?’
Julian Malins – Salisbury
At a hustings this week, Malins was booed for praising the Russian president, saying ‘I have actually met Putin and had a 10-minute chat with him and he seemed very good. He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again.’
Lee Bunker – Exeter
An account in the name of Bunker asked in 2018 when they would ‘be deporting Diane Abbott’. The tweet, deleted after it was flagged by the BBC, came in response to a tweet by the then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, about immigration deportation targets.
Angela Carter-Begbie – Queen’s Park and Maida Vale
Carter-Begbie promoted several conspiracy theories online, including claiming that King Charles was ‘weak’ and ‘under the WEF’ meaning the World Economic Forum. Others included suggesting that the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers was an ‘inside job’ and the Covid-19 vaccine rollout was ‘like the Holocaust’.
Samantha Goggin – Surrey Heath
At a hustings this month she appeared to blame Margaret Thatcher for the Falklands, telling a meeting ‘We’ve already been put through… the Falklands War by the Conservative party’.
Dave Holland – Mid-Bedfordshire
Dave Holland wrote on his official website that the increase in gender dysphoria could have a range of causes including canned food, the pill and car fumes. He later told the Telegraph: ‘My article asked questions and I don’t believe there is anything in there that is critical of the transgender community, that certainly wasn’t my intent.’
Pete Morris – Melton and Syston
In a local newspaper article for the Melton Times this month, Morris suggested that the coronavirus had been manufactured and released so the pharmaceutical industry could make billions from ‘potentially harmful so-called vaccines’.
Leslie Lilley – Southend East and Rochford
In a Facebook post in June 2020 he reportedly commented on the arrival of a small boat in Dover, saying: ‘I hope I’m near one of these scumbags one day. I won’t run away, I’ll slaughter them then have their family taken out.’
David Burgess-Joyce – Wallasey
Burgess-Joyce resigned from the Conservative party after posting a tweet in 2019 in which he claimed that Tottenham’s Labour MP, David Lammy, had done ‘more damage to community cohesion than any KKK member’.
Sarah Morris – Isle of Wight East
The Times reported that she had liked posts referring to Covid-19 as a ‘plandemic’ and saying that the vaccines were killing ‘millions’ as part of the ‘depopulation agenda’. She also reposted a conspiracy theory on Facebook saying that the World Health Organisation was installing an ‘autocratic world government’ which marks ‘the end of democratic process’.
Jake Fraser – Widnes and Halewood
He reportedly wrote on Facebook in July 2021 soon after vaccine certificates for travel were introduced: ‘We’re on the precipice of a Health Holocaust. The same methodology the Nazis used to rise to power with minimal opposition by appealing to both sides of the political spectrum… is unfolding before our eyes.’ He claimed his ‘rhetoric was a tip of the hat to parallels of totalitarianism employed by National Socialists during the rise of Hitler prior to (not during) the Holocaust’.
Pete Durnell – Smethwick
The Mail Online reported that he wrote on social media during lockdown in 2020: ‘Idea that elderly and/or infirm should be forcibly isolated, virtually indefinitely, is one which fits better with 1940s Germany than a modern day democracy.’ He also defended those refusing the Covid jab, saying he used to be baffled by how ‘ordinary German folk meekly comply with orders to hate and persecute Jews, with zero justification’ but was now watching ‘something so similar unfold around me’.
Mark Butcher – Blackpool South
According to the Daily Mirror, Butcher expounded on various conspiracy theories on his YouTube channel, including a claim that the CIA made TVs to put people to sleep so they would not be alert to other conspiracies.
Edward Oakenfull – Derbyshire Dales
After Nigel Farage officially withdrew support for his campaign last Saturday, Oakenfull claimed that social media posts he made about the IQ of sub-Saharan Africans had been ‘taken out of context’. He also claimed that Muslims would ‘inter-breed’ if ‘imported’ into the country.
Robert Lomas – Barnsley North
Dropped alongside Oakenfull, Lomas has reportedly made past comments about ‘black people of Britain’ acting like ‘savages’. Farage has since said that he wants ‘nothing to do’ with the Barnsley North hopeful.
Robert Smith – Orkney and Shetland
From JK Rowling to Andrew Marr to Carol Vorderman to David Attenborough, Robert Smith has railed against a number of big names. The Scottish candidate used slurs against gay people and called for Nicola Sturgeon to be shot in social media comments between 2016 to 2023. Read more from Steerpike here.
Andrew Husband – North Durham
Husband hit out at the King over his environmental policies, referring to His Royal Highness as a ‘climate cracker’. He also has history spouting anti-vax conspiracies – but his Twitter/X account was removed after 19 July. How curious…
Garry Sutherland – Exmouth and Exeter East
Beagle-basher Sutherland was found guilty in June last year of causing unnecessary suffering after he kicked a dog in a Dorset village. The Reform candidate now faces a two-year ban on owning a dog. The Devon choice has also retweeted antisemitic videos from conspiracy theorist David Icke. Yikes.
Amelia Randall – Herne Bay and Sandwich
A self-confessed ‘psychic fortune teller’, the Mail reveals that Ms Randall sold both tarot card readings and, er, spells for a cool £200-a-pop on OnlyFans. ‘My psychic abilities have grown as the years have gone by’, her website claims.
John Edwards – Southampton Test
Edwards has previously referred to Love Island contestants as ‘thick tarts’ – and blasted former Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson as being a ‘gobby bird’. A gardener by trade, the Solent man recently claimed in a hustings that climate change was ‘a bit of a hoax’.
Malcolm Sedgley – Meriden and Solihull East
Taking to social media to bash the Royal Family, Sedgley compared the Windsors to ‘Nazis’ in 2019. Two years previously, he also called Queen Elizabeth II a ‘tax avoiding OAP on benefits’. Oo er.
Hamish Haddow – Chipping Barnet
It seems Farage isn’t the only one with a penchant for Putin: Haddow stood down as Tory candidate for local elections in 2022 after saying he was rooting for the Russia leader. He has also claimed the RNLI was a ‘taxi service for illegal immigrants’ and called Prince William ‘antisemitic and ‘anti-British’ for supporting an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Gary Ling – Watford
The Mail reports that back in 2022, Ling wrote an offensive social media post about the current King. He posted online that ‘Chump Charlie is back at it… If he becomes King, his bulls*** will ensure he will be the last.’ Crikey.
Donald Brookes – Wolverhampton West
And in another anti-royal jibe, Reform’s candidate for the new seat of Wolverhampton West, said just last year that Charles ‘is not my King – we need to get rid of the monarchy, it’s a joke’. So much for patriotism, eh…
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