“I feel that my promise to professionalise the party is now on track,” pronounced Reform UK leader Nigel Farage back in September, adding: “I also promise you that in future we will be vetting candidates rigorously at all levels.”
It must be embarrassing, then, that numerous Reform candidates standing across England in the local elections have keenly propagated far-right, conspiracy theory and anti-Muslim content, as HOPE not hate analysis has revealed.
The situation is no different in Northumberland, where the party is hoping to make big gains on 1 May.
The candidates that appear to have slipped through Reform’s ‘professionalised process’ and ‘rigorous vetting procedure’ are:
David FitzGerald, Choppington & Hepscott division
FitzGerald’s Facebook account exhibits a slew of anti-Muslim content. The content he has shared include posts declaring “everything Islam touches dies” and that the religion has been “turning every single country it touches into a shithole for over 1400 years,” as well as another reading: “How to take any prospering civilized western country and turn it into a dustbowl of poverty and death… Just add Islam.”
Other posts promoted by FitzGerald include one calling London mayor Sadiq Khan a “proud racist”, who “hates whites”, and another calling for “mass deportation” as “the only way to save Europe”.
In December, he wrote on Facebook that “British people and our way of life, culture and Christian beliefs are under attack by aggressors”, adding: “The invaders have been aowed [sic] to establish no go areas and their own courts. This is the United Kingdom a Christian country.”
Martin Jackson, Stakeford division
Jackson has promoted a range of conspiracy theory content. On 29 March, for instance, he wrote, “My feelings entirely, wake up people, we are fighting for survival,” above a video of the far-right politician Andrew Bridgen. In the video, Bridgen says that “the elites of the world” have decided to run “the Western world” on “the Chinese model”, before commenting:
“The developments that are very close to fruition in artificial intelligence and robotics are so good, so good that they feel they don’t need 90 percent of us on the planet any longer to fulfil their needs. It’s clear that we have a depopulation agenda around the vaccines and it will be through repeated pandemics, wars and famines.”
But it’s not just the content shared by Jackson which raises concerns. In a Facebook post on 24 March 2023, for instance, Jackson wrote that there are “globalist elites” who are “obsessed with total control of the planet” and, on 1 February 2024, he referred to “the globalist hysterical climate hoax”.
Later in the year, on 5 June, he claimed the “chaos and lack of progress we have suffered in the last decade is part of the plan” prepared by “globalist dictatorial masters”, to gain “the total domination and control of our lives.”
Pip Robson, Bamburgh division
Robson is another conspiracy theorist among the ranks of Northumberland’s Reform candidates. Posts shared by Robson this year include one stating the “future will show that this whole hysteria over climate change was a complete fabrication” and another thundering: “The billionaires buying farmland are the same ones funding the climate panic. It’s not about saving the earth… it’s about owning it.”
The Reform candidate has also shared a video of the climate science denier and Australian politician Malcolm Roberts, in which he claims that “parasitic billionaires” are helping to force “the public into acceptance of the World Economic Forum’s fake global warming scam.”
Another video promoted by Robson is of the Holocaust denier David Irving, in which he can be heard saying: “If the soldiers who stormed the beaches in Normandy in June 1944 could see England as it is today, they wouldn’t have gone 40 yards up that beach.”
Rick Baker, Cowpen division
Baker is yet another Reform candidate holding anti-Muslim views. On 20 February, he posted that “the Muslim Brotherhood are controlling Councillors in Birmingham, where the only allocated social housing, is to Muslim families,” while “non Muslims are excluded”, despite that having no basis in fact. He went on: “Most majority councils in the UK are Labour, with Islamist mayors… We never voted for this. It has been forced on us all.”
Roger Spriddell, Sleekburn division
In March, Spriddell shared a graphic, which was titled “How Islam is Colonising non-Muslim Countries” and stated that “this is known as Demographic Jihad.” The next month, he wrote that we need “people who will stand up for our Country, our History, our Families, and our Beliefs”, above a graphic with text declaring: “I WANT YOU TO STOP BEING AFRAID… OF OFFENDING MUSLIMS…”
Arty Hume, Amble division
Earlier this month, Hume was revealed by the X account Reform Party UK Exposed to have expressed support for the anti-Muslim extremist and serial criminal Stephen Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson). On 25 April 2024, he wrote on Facebook: “IMHO we will look back at Tommy Robinson as a letter [sic] day Enoch Powell, ridiculed at the time but ultimately proven correct by events!”
“I think we could do quite well.”
When Nigel Farage visited Morpeth in Northumberland on 15 April, the Reform leader appeared confident about his party’s prospects in the county, telling reporters: “I think we could do quite well.”
The party will certainly be hoping its performance is better than its vetting procedure.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button to hear the audio version. Harry Shukman Reform UK is staffed by oddballs and enigmas, but none odder…
Gregory Davis and Harry Shukman Reform UK is trying hard to convince voters that it is now “professional”. After last year’s shambolic election, when he…
