EXPOSED: Islamophobic Conservative Councillor Rick Payne

Birmingham Councillor Payne has been spreading vile Islamophobia and racism from an anonymous Twitter account.

UPDATE: Councillor Rick Payne was suspended from Birmingham Conservative’s following this investigation. When approached for comment by the Birmingham Mail, Payne said “I am deeply sorry for anything offensive on the account and I have therefore deleted the account.”

Elected in the 2022 Birmingham local elections, Conservative Cllr Rick Payne serves on the council of one the most ethnically diverse cities in the UK. It is therefore shocking to see that he has been spewing anti-Muslim hatred on Twitter, but perhaps less surprising that he chose to do so using an anonymous account.

Under the pseudonym ‘Ryk And The Los Palmas 7”, Payne has unleashed a foul stream of tweets that describe Muslims as “scum” and “pigs”. Responding to a tweet by Stephen Lennon AKA Tommy Robinson in February this year, Payne called Pakistani people “disgusting inbred medieval filth”.

“Definitely blood will spill”

Payne’s deep loathing of Muslims even veers into justification of racial violence. He has warned of a civil war between Muslims and non-Muslims, and declared that “we need to relieve the UK of its medieval cult and their filth”:

Payne reserves a particular hatred for the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, whom he refers to as “Imam Khan” and “Caliph Khan”.

Responding to a post by the anti-Muslim party Britain First, Payne said that in “Khan’s Islamic London this lot can do whatever TF they want”, and responded to a ludicrous list of allegations against Khan by saying that police should “arrest this creature for treason” and stating that “white British [would be] forced to convert or leave or die”.

The Conservative Party and the Radical Right

In our annual State of Hate 2024 report, HOPE not hate warned that the Conservative Party is experiencing a shift towards the divisive and dangerous politics of the radical right. Party officials and their media cheerleaders – some of whom are true-believers, others doing so opportunistically – are adopting the language and narratives traditionally associated with traditional far-right movements. 

We have noted that people like former Home Secretary Suella Braverman are among those spearheading this shift, and it is significant that Cllr Payne sees her as someone worth pledging his loyalty to: 

Our fear is that, with the current direction of travel, the Conservative Party might soon become a place where party officials like Payne will feel free to express such vile racism under their own names.