‘Extremist’ Reform candidates elected to councils across the country, warn campaigners

Reform UK candidates who have allegedly expressed white supremacist, antisemitic or anti-Muslim views have been elected to councils across the country, campaigners have warned. A dozen new Reform councillors, including one who was elected to both a district and county council, have been tracked by the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate (HNH).

Social media posts logged by the campaign organisation ranged from the use of neo-Nazi symbols to antisemitic conspiracy tropes and references to Muslims as “rats”.

Among them was Stuart Prior, who won two seats; one on Rochford district council and one on Essex county council. He won despite media coverage exposing extremist activity on a social media account that posted pictures from his home. Prior allegedly described white people as “the master race”, said black people should be “segregated” and called Muslims “rats” who could never suffer a genocide. Confronted by the Daily Mirror recently, Prior initially denied the account was his before saying: “I don’t recall that at all, blimey.”

In Bolton, Derek Bullock was elected to the seat for Hulton. Bullock was twice expelled from the Conservative party for allegedly posting anti-Muslim hatred, including reacting to the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 with the words: “Shoot the Pakis on the spot.” Last week, he said he believed a screenshot of the post was fake.

Trevor Jones of Reform won in the ward of Tonge with the Haulgh in Bolton from the Labour council leader, Nick Peel. Jones once posted that, if you vote Labour, you “get sharia”, referring to Islamic law.

Another newly elected councillor, Andrew Mahon in Blackburn South East, once posted on Facebook that the British blackshirt leader Oswald Mosley “was 100% right” and calling for an “educational correction” in the UK. He also said that racist firebrand Enoch Powell was “correct”.

Caley Ashman, who won the seat for Cradley North and Wollescote ward in Dudley, once referred to “goyslop” in a post – a reference to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy to distract non-Jewish people using fake news. 

Ben Rowe, who was elected in the Ham ward in Plymouth, has posted that Keir Starmer is under the control of a “Globalist zion [sic] cult”.Rowe, who has accused “the Jews” of “creating division by forcing other races on our societies” and said immigrants are "breeding like rats", has said that his posts were “taken out of context”.

A dossier alleging antisemitism against more than 30 Green party candidates emerged last week and about a dozen were either withdrawn or suspended by the party. Two were arrested by the Metropolitan police on suspicion of stirring racial hatred over posts on social media, but none appear to have won their seats.

There were indications that a number of “paper candidates”, who had no intention of winning, were elected. Among them was Daniel Devaney, a Reform candidate in Bradford’s Clayton and Fairweather Green ward, who posted “blast them all off the face of the earth” about Muslims. Devaney, who apologised for the post, said he had withdrawn prior to polling day but appeared on the ballot and won. A byelection will be triggered if he does not take up the seat.

The Islington Tribune reported that two candidates in Finsbury Park, north London, had to be consoled after accidentally winning election to the council. Local party members promised to support the women.

Reform has said it is investigating a number of candidates, including those named by HNH, almost all of whom were reported for their extremist activities prior to the local elections last Thursday.

Georgie Laming, director of campaigns for HNH, said: “Zia Yusuf [Reform’s home affairs spokesman] boasts about the ‘best vetting in the country’, but Hope Not Hate has exposed countless Reform candidates, including racists, antisemites, Islamophobes, conspiracy theorists and even former BNP [British National party] members. The question is why do so many extremists think that Reform is the party for them?”

Photograph by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images, Facebook