On 31 July, council by-elections will be held for the Barnstaple with Westacott ward in North Devon and the Thames View ward in Barking and Dagenham.
While Reform UK is trying to present itself as a respectable and professional party, such an image is rather undermined by the candidates it has chosen to fight these by-elections.
David Jarvis – Reform’s candidate in Barnstaple with Westacott – is a homophobic conspiracy theorist, who has even indulged the notion of a flat earth, while Lewis Holmes – the party’s candidate in Thames View – has used offensive slurs and promoted far-right content on social media.
Marking yet another failure for Reform’s vetting process, here are the details of the two candidates:
On his Facebook account, David Jarvis has promoted homophobic content on a number of occasions.
In a post on 16 January, for instance, he wrote, “Powerful testimony and truth,” above a video of the American evangelical Christian activist Rosaria Butterfield.
In the video, Butterfield declared that “five lies of our anti-Christian age have coiled their way from the world to the church” and included in her list the fact that “homosexuality is normal” and that “feminism is good for the church in the world”.
Butterfield went on to claim that “a world that… grows in its homosexuality” is “a world cursed, not blessed.”
In September 2018, Jarvis wrote on Facebook that he knows “of many previously ‘Gay’ persons” who “have been able to understand where the twist came in, where the lie was implanted and have embraced their original identity.”
Around a year after that, he shared an article headlined, “Several baptised as 400+ proclaim their freedom from gay lifestyle,” and huffed: “This is not getting any mainstream coverage because like the truth, it does not fit with the global agenda of family destruction and societal breakdown”.
As well as being homophobic, Jarvis has promoted a variety of conspiracy theories.
That includes the belief in a flat earth. On 8 March last year, he reposted a video, from a Facebook account called ‘Plane Level’, which posited a number of things that would have to be true for the earth to be flat and set out to prove why all of those things are apparently true.
Additionally, on 17 November 2021, the now Reform candidate shared a post he felt helped prove the earth isn’t globular to a Facebook group called the ‘Philippine Flat Earth Truthers’.
Jarvis also voiced conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change.
He has referred to the pandemic as a “scamdemic”, written that governments “kill people with the vaccine”, and claimed in a post in July 2020: “Even with all the evidence and false information the MSM is still complicit and driving this scaredemic.”
The now Reform candidate has also called himself “a Global Warming Denier of the first degree”, asserted that “the scientists were lying” about climate change, and written on social media:
“The whole ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ gambits by activists and politicians are to create a supposedly sound, scientific basis to justify a federal government power-grab… Never forget the main motivation they have!”
If Jarvis’ homophobia and keen propagation of conspiracy theories wasn’t bad enough, he has also promoted anti-Muslim views on social media.
In August 2019, Jarvis shared a speech delivered by the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, in which he claimed that “Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy” and declared: “If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.”
Lewis Holmes is not only Reform’s council by-election candidate for the Thames View ward, but also chairman of the party’s Barking and Dagenham branch, according to his X (formerly Twitter) account.
On his X account, Holmes has promoted a slew of far-right content and used offensive slurs.
The Reform candidate has shared posts by the anti-Muslim extremist and serial criminal Stephen Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson), as well as a post declaring him “a national hero”.
Holmes has also reposted content from Catherine Blaiklock, a politician with the far-right English nationalist party English Democrats; Laurence Fox, the leader of the far-right Reclaim party; and Andrew Tate, the infamous misogynist charged with rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women.
But it’s not just the content Holmes has shared which raises concerns.
He regularly uses the offensive term “r*tard” to refer to those he disagrees with, such as the Labour MP Sam Carling, the Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, and the broadcaster Piers Morgan. Holmes also used the offensive slur “m*ng” in a post on 11 January this year directed at the Governor of California Gavin Newsom.
Strangely, given Holmes is both a Reform candidate and a branch chair, he has also expressed agreement with the party’s critics.
On 7 June, he wrote, “Amen,” in response to a post by the ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe, which declared that “we need a credible alternative to the utter shambles that is Reform UK”.
Holmes also reposted Lowe commenting, on 5 June, that “Farage and his ego are together incapable of building a team” and pronouncing: “He must never be Prime Minister.”
Earlier this month, Reform told its members that prospective candidates would henceforth go through a “common sense” vetting procedure, which would be less stringent than the previous process, despite the fact that numerous far-right, conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim candidates were nevertheless allowed to stand for the party under it.
So, does Reform really think it’s “common sense” to allow a homophobic conspiracy theorist and someone with a track record of using offensive slurs and promoting far-right content to stand under its name?
Let’s see whether or not the party withdraws its support for Jarvis or Holmes.
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