Tories Select Former Neo-Nazi to Stand in Local Election

Former neo-Nazi activist Joshua Bonehill-Paine has been selected as the Conservative candidate for a local election in Somerset next year.

Bonehill-Paine was imprisoned from 2015 - 2018 for (amongst other things) running a blog where he published false racist stories, including one where he claimed an Asian teen threw a baby against a wall. He also instigated an Islamic hoax which resulted in the owners of a Leicester pub receiving death threats, and harassed the Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger. Berger said Bonehill-Paine's harassment "affected my life in lots of different ways because of the volume of the material that he was disseminating and putting out, the extremity of it in terms of just frankly how shocking and awful it was".

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has defended the decision by saying Bonehill-Paine is now: "part of the fight against antisemitism", and Bonehill-Paine, who now delivers counter-extremism sessions around the UK, claimed: “The branch and indeed party are fully aware of my past. Our chairman has been a vocal advocate and has supported me since I became a member of the party.”

But the decision has been met with intense backlash. A Labour Party spokesperson said his selection was "a total disgrace", and vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Karen Newman, said the board had contacted the Conservatives to: "set out our concerns and call on them to rescind his selection and review their vetting processes."

Written by Jorja Flitcroft