UPDATE: Just hours after our investigation was posted, Reform UK has dropped both candidates. Read the full investigation below.
After an embarrassing fortnight for Reform UK, which saw them forced to deselect three candidates in quick succession following revelations of racism, we’ve got more bad news.
HOPE not hate can reveal another two Reform candidates that are wildly unsuitable for public office:
Standing for Reform in Lancashire’s South Ribble constituency is Jonathan Kay, who previously stood as a Reform candidate in the West Lancashire by-election in 2023 and the local elections for South Ribble Borough Council in 2021.
Kay frequently expresses extreme racist and Islamophobic views on his public Twitter account, making wild claims about the IQ levels of Muslims and African people and suggesting that they are below the intelligence that would allow them to serve in the US military:
Kay holds a particular dislike of Muslims, saying that they “never coexist with others” and must be deported, and accusing London Mayor Sadiq Khan of being a “Muslim supremacist supporter”:
Reform’s candidate for Orpington, Mick Greenhough, is another shockingly bigoted candidate who was first exposed by HOPE not hate following his appearance at the anti-Muslim For Britain party’s conference in 2018. Via his Twitter account and pro-Brexit blog The Europrobe, Greenhough has promoted antisemitism, Islamophobia and the White Genocide conspiracy theory.
On Twitter Greenhough has expressed racist and Islamophobic views on countless occasions, saying “Ashkenazi Jews are the problem” and that the UK must “remove the Muslims from our territory”:
Greenhough’s blog also displays his embrace of far-right rhetoric on immigration and the so-called “White Genocide” conspiracy theory, including this bizarre and incoherent rant about how “the UN wishes to see the demise of white tribes” and for “Western culture to merge in to the Marxist New World Order”:
It is becoming more and more obvious that the UN wishes to see the demise of the White tribes by reducing their birthrate to extinction or overwhelming them with migrants. The UN and the Left wing want world government with no nation and to see the white tribes to become Coudenhoves Mestizo people by mixing with Afrians and Middle East peoples ‘as they will be easier to control’ and Western culture to merge into the Marxist New World Order.”
Published on Greenhough’s blog, 19 November 2023
Reform UK’s utter failure to screen hateful and crankish characters from their candidate list looks likely to be an ongoing embarrassment for Reform UK in the buildup to the general election.
As can be seen above, both Kay and Greenhough made their comments from public Twitter accounts under their own names and would have been immediately accessible to any Reform Party employee who took the time to check.
Following HOPE not hate’s revelations about Swindon South candidate Beau Dade, which saw him swiftly dropped by the party, a spokesman gave an astonishing quote to The Guardian in which they acknowledged that “vetting process is now taking place in public, and everyone is now being re-vetted.”
A more competent and professional party might have attempted to vet these individuals more thoroughly prior to announcing them as candidates, but Reform UK can rest assured that HOPE not hate will continue to assist them with this process in the months ahead.
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HOPE not hate reveals two more extremist candidates from Reform UK, in the latest of a string of embarrassments for the party UPDATE: Just hours…
