Tommy Robinson supporters and conspiracy theorists: Meet Reform’s Lincolnshire candidates

Gregory Davis and Harry Shukman

Reform UK is hoping to make big gains in the local elections in Lincolnshire.

The former Conservative minister Andrea Jenkyns is the party’s mayoral candidate, and on her website she promises: “I will govern with an Iron [sic] rod of common sense.”

But do her running mates for Lincolnshire County Council have the same level of common sense she aspires to?

A HOPE not hate analysis of Reform’s candidates in Lincolnshire has found an embarrassing number of candidates that call into question the party’s claim to have professionalised its operation.

They are:

Martin Smith, Market Rasen Wolds

Smith wrote about attending a Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) rally on St George’s Day last year, adding: “lets up the anti this year and show the establishment our true feelings. Britain First free Tommy Robinson [sic].” He elsewhere wrote that if Keir Starmer was not booted out of Downing Street, “we will all be guilty of allowing the UK to become a Muslim State [sic]”.

Trevor Bridgwood (Bardney & Cherry Willingham)

Bridgwood shared an article on his Facebook claiming that Muslims are dedicated to “supplanting the native population”. It said:

“Immigration as Islam sees it is an instrument of Islamic expansionism that employs religious and ethnic separatism in order to gain special status and privilege, then subvert, subdue, and subjugate non-Muslim societies and pave the way for their total Islamization and implementation of Shari’ah law.”

Bridgwood wrote: “Now does this not look like what is happening in the news?”

He also suggested that Covid vaccines prepare the body to accept microchips. “If you don’t want people to believe the truth, get them to think the people telling them are mad,” he wrote.

Philip Roberts (Horncastle & the Keals)

After a terrorist attack in France, Roberts wrote on Facebook: “But let’s not forget this is nothing new we’ve been fighting the Muslims ( not all mostly radical groups for 1000 s of years why can we never live in peace [sic]?”

After last year’s shambolic general election — in which Reform had to drop more than 100 candidates for racism and extremism — Nigel Farage made a promise to his voters. “Those few bad apples that have crept in will be gone, will be long gone, and we will never have any of their type back in our organisation,” he said. Has he delivered?