Reform UK criticised for candidates’ offensive posts

Reform UK is fielding local election candidates who have “posted hate, pushed far-right conspiracies and praised extremists” – despite Nigel Farage’s claim to have beefed up the party’s vetting process, campaign group Hope Not Hate has said.

Reform UK, which has recruited more than 1,600 candidates for 1 May’s English council elections, has made much of its efforts to “professionalise” the party after a series of racism scandals at last year’s general election.

Speaking at a campaign event in Dover on Thursday, Farage said the party had put in place “a vetting system that was as good if not better than the other parties” for this year’s elections.

The Reform UK leader said “hundreds of people who applied to be candidates for the county council elections were rejected… often because of repeated use of words beginning with F and C on social media.”

He said others had been rejected “because they just said things that were just ridiculous, outrageous, embarrassing”.

But Hope Not Hate, an anti-racism campaign group which has clashed with Farage in the past, said the examples it had found undermined his vetting claims.

On Thursday last week, the group published details of social media posts it had found from 14 different current Reform UK candidates.

The BBC has spent the past seven days checking the posts and seeking a response from individual candidates, as well as the party’s head office.

We sent several requests for comment to Reform UK HQ but have yet to receive anything back.

The posts seen by the BBC include:

• A Reform UK candidate saying “one big nuke bomb” should be used to remove Islam from the world
• Another saying Bradford has a large Muslim population and is a “shithole”
• Others promoting the conspiracy theory that Muslims are seeking to “supplant the native population” in the UK

Some of the posts, on Facebook or X, were made this year, others date back up to a decade.

They appear to have been open to anyone to view when Reform UK selected and vetted the candidates but some have now been hidden or deleted.

Steven Biggs is a Reform UK candidate hoping to win a seat in Pelton in North Durham on 1 May.

On the Reform UK website he says he is “standing for Reform UK because they stand for good old fashioned traditional values”.

In August 2015, he posted on his Facebook page that “Islam has no place on this earth. One big nuke bomb needed”. The BBC confirmed that post was still visible last week, but by this week it appeared to have been deleted.

Biggs has also repeatedly posted links to Britain First, the anti-Islam political party, on his Facebook account.

The BBC attempted to contact Biggs for comment by phone but he did not reply.

Another of the Reform UK candidates highlighted by Hope Not Hate is Isaiah-John Smith Reasbeck, standing in Hexthorpe and Balby North in Doncaster.

On 6 August last year, Reasbeck wrote 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”.

When the BBC checked the account of the user @ij_Reasbeck the post was visible last week. It has since been deleted.

The account, however, remains active and identifies Mr Reasbeck as a Reform UK council candidate.

The BBC contacted Reform UK’s Doncaster branch seeking comment from Reasbeck. None has been received.

Other posts the BBC has been able to confirm were made by Howard Rimmer, who is also standing for Reform UK in Doncaster, hoping to win in Roman Ridge.

On 16 January this year, Rimmer reposted to his Facebook page an item from the “Traditional Britain Group – Lifeboat” which describes itself as “a home to the disillusioned patriot”.

The group’s post said: “We are importing low IQ people and when they commit heinous crimes they are given more lenient sentences by the Judges as they are ‘Low IQ and don’t understand our way of life'”.

It also referenced “the Great Replacement”, a conspiracy theory that elites are seeking to replace the populations of western nations with immigrants.

That post was still visible this week, along with other items Rimmer has reposted, including a graphic titled “How Islam is colonising non-Muslim countries”, something, the graphic said, was “known as Demographic Jihad”

Several times in the past year, Rimmer reposted items about far right activist Tommy Robinson, including one describing him as someone “vocal about the importance of celebrating British identity, culture and values” and another saying “Batley needs these people”.

The BBC has contacted the chair of Reform’s Doncaster branch by email and phone several times but has yet to receive a response.

Another candidate whose posts the BBC has seen is Trevor Bridgwood, standing in Bardney and Cherry Willingham in Lincolnshire.

Bridgwood, who has past links to the Conservatives and UKIP, shared an article on his Facebook page in 2015 titled “The Goal of Muslim Immigration” which said it was “a means of supplanting the native population” of a country. He added his own comment “now does this not look like what is happening in the news?”.

The BBC emailed Bridgwood for a response last week but has not received a reply.

Hope Not Hate, which is funded by individual donations and trade unions, says it is a nonpartisan campaign that “focuses on the organised far right,” something Farage has repeatedly insisted does not include Reform UK.

Reform UK is chaired by a Muslim, Zia Yusuf, and Farage has said he “never wants anything to do with” Tommy Robinson, rejecting calls from some members to allow him to join Reform.

In 2024, Reform UK dropped a number of candidates it had selected for the general election over offensive comments on social media.

Following that, Farage told the BBC “I had no idea how bad it was. I had no idea that half of these people simply haven’t been vetted – that’s got to change.”

At a party press conference in February, Yusuf said the new system “while it will not be perfect” was “the most thorough vetting process of any party, I think I can say that with confidence and conviction, certainly at the council level.”

In recent weeks comments by other Reform UK candidates, aside from those identified by Hope Not Hate, have also come to light.

Earlier this month, Reform UK stood by a council candidate in Leicestershire over a racist post accusing black drivers of tailgating.

Responding to the resurfacing of that post Elliott Allman, a Reform candidate for Leicestershire County Council, claimed he had “matured” since the post.

And, separately, East Hunsbury Parish Council has warned Reform candidate Ron Firman after old tweets with racist and sexist slurs came to light.