More Weird And Worrying Reform Candidates

Voters should Google their Reform candidates before voting – because Reform clearly didn’t!

The gobsmackingly unsuitable characters included on the Reform UK candidate have provided an endless stream of negative press for the party over the past few months. Now with just one day to go until the deadline for nominations, HOPE not hate can reveal another four bizarre characters who have somehow been selected to stand. 

Many of the candidates dropped so far have been deselected for depressingly predictable racism, such as the candidates for South Ribble and Orpington who were dropped after HOPE not hate revealed that one had claimed African people had an average IQ of 75 and the other for suggesting that Jewish and Muslim Brits should be banned from standing for office.

Then there was the candidate for South Swindon who was dropped after we revealed that his “policy roadmap” included a call to “deport millions of foreigners”, leading to “Whole families crying and shrieking”. There was also the candidate for Stevenage dropped for endorsing the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and suggesting that gay couples who adopt are paedophiles.

Slightly less predictable were the candidate for Leeds Central and Headingley who was dropped after it was revealed that he had a conviction for possessing indecent images of children, or the candidate for York Central who was dropped for what the party said was “complete inactivity” but who later turned out to have died months earlier. 

But there are stranger stories in the Reform UK candidate’s list still to be told, so read on for four characters whose views and life stories stand out from the pack:

1) Stevie Bates, Ayrshire Central

Stevie Bates is a colourful character, best known for his two-decade long career as a drug smuggler, which ended with a three-year stretch in a Moroccan prison. Bates has memorialised his experiences in two confusingly-titled autobiographies: From Chinos to Kilos and the sequel From Kilos To Chinos.

It’s unclear if Reform UK bothered to read Bates’ books before selecting him as a candidate, but if they had they’ll have seen that Bates dedicated his first book to “all the prostitutes and sex workers of the world” who “taught me the wonders of life and lovemaking”. This radical honesty is unusual in a politician, but might protect him from future scandals.

2) Lucian Fernando, Hastings & Rye

Encapsulating the chaos at the heart of Reform UK, current Hastings councillor Lucian Fernando has for months been listed as the party’s candidate for both Croydon South AND Hastings & Rye, though he appears certain that he is only standing in the latter.

Cllr Fernando was elected as a Conservative in 2021, but his reputation has taken something of a hit since then: arrested a month after the election for drink driving and disqualified from driving for a year, he would be again arrested for driving without a licence and failing to provide a urine sample just six months later. 

Fernando has claimed that he joined Reform after becoming “disillusioned with the Conservative Party’s betrayal of Tory principles and its drift to the left since Brexit”, although it might also have been related to the Conservative group’s decision to expel him at around the same time.

3) Marc Burca, Kensington and Bayswater

The Reform Party is undoubtedly a broad church, albeit one where the views tend to be varying shades of unpleasant, but voters in Kensington and Bayswater might be less tolerant of candidate Marc Burca and his impassioned defence of convicted sex-trafficker of underaged girls Ghislaine Maxwell and everyone’s least favourite royal, Prince Andrew.

It is odd and quite disturbing that a candidate for high office believes that the trafficking of underaged girls for sex – the youngest of whom was 13 – could be considered “a favour” to the victims, and that he believes age of consent is a “gray area of the law” 

Augustine Obodo, Bicester and Woodstock

Reform appear to hoping Oxfordshire’s Bicester and Woodstock is fertile ground for pro-Trump conspiracy theories, judging by their selection of Augustine Obodo as candidate there. Describing himself as the “UK leader Friends Of Trump UK & Commonwealth Affairs the Middle East & North Africa MENA Region”, an organisation of which he appears to be the only member, Obodo is a fanatical supporter of President Trump, who he refers to as “Daddy Trump”.

Obodo’s social media posts also suggest that he endorses or endorsed the QAnon conspiracy theory that sprang from Trump supporters during his presidency; his posts frequently use the abbreviated form of the QAnon slogan “Where We Go One We Go All” [WWG1WGA], and shares the movement’s key principle that Trump’s political enemies should be interned in Guantanamo Bay.

Obodo’s enthusiastic campaigning for Trump since 2017 is not his first foray into global politics; his 2012 campaign on behalf of the former President of Nigeria Atiku Abubakar was so vitriolic that Abubakar himself was forced to publicly distance himself from it, condemning Obodo’s “Atiku for Nigeria” group as a “criminal and mischievous” organisation and calling for them to be investigated by the authorities.

Worse To Come

With the return of Nigel Farage as leader widely expected to boost Reform’s chances at the polls, it is plausible that Reform will actually take some seats in the General Election, but this could lead to major headaches and scandals for the party as more scrutiny is applied to whichever of their unvetted candidates manages to make it across the line.

So if you’d rather not return to the polls for a by-election within the year, it’s best to thoroughly vet your Reform candidate before voting – because Reform never do.