Between 14 and 21 August, Reform UK members will vote for who they would like to sit alongside leader Nigel Farage and chairman David Bull on the party’s board.
Things got off to a bad start in this internal party election when on 7 August – just two days after Reform released the list of candidates – one of those standing, Darren Selkus, announced, without explanation, that he has been disqualified from the race.
HOPE not hate can now reveal that three candidates standing for a place on Reform’s main management and administrative body have promoted and voiced conspiracy theories online.
They are:
Nicholas Goulding is the chair of Reform’s Crewe and Nantwich branch and stood for the party in the Chester and Neston constituency in last July’s general election.
On X (formerly Twitter), Goulding has promoted conspiracy theories about Covid-19, climate change, and the World Economic Forum.
In particular, Goulding appears to be a fan of the conspiracy theorist and GB News presenter Neil Oliver, having shared his content on numerous occasions. Among the various outlandish theories Oliver propagates are those about the Covid 19 pandemic, which he has described as “nothing but government lies and propaganda from start to finish” and “the greatest crime ever committed against humanity”.
As well as promoting Oliver’s conspiratorial ramblings about Covid 19, Goulding has called the “climate emergency” a “scam” and shared a post, in November 2024, which read: “Its [sic] never been about climate. The climate’s doing fine. Its [sic] about money. Always has been”.
He has also reposted content propagating conspiracy theories about the World Economic Forum (WEF), which organises a meeting of politicians, business leaders, celebrities and journalists in Davos, Switzerland, every year. The WEF is a common bugbear of fantasists who believe it is trying to take over the planet.
Posts shared by Goulding include one calling Keir Starmer a “soulless WEF stooge”, another declaring that “WEFminster must fall” and a video of the American conspiracy theorist Jedediah Bila claiming:
“The biggest fear that the World Economic Forum has is that there are going to be people that will not comply… I don’t care if you’re talking about carbon emissions and what’s ‘safe and effective’ as far as they’re concerned. I don’t care if they’re talking about an experimental injection, a series of injections, whatever they may, and what’s ‘safe and effective’ as far as they’re concerned. This is not about those individual things. This is about the desire to control you from the outside in.”
Goulding has also promoted posts by Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a far-right Dutch political activist who propagates the Great Replacement conspiracy theory; Laurence Fox, the leader of the far-right Reclaim party; and Calvin Robinson, a far-right political commentator and evangelical priest.
A similar array of conspiracy theories have been promoted by another board candidate, Sean Matthews, the Reform leader of Lincolnshire County Council.
On 21 July last year, Matthews wrote on his X account that “Labour and the conservatives hide it well but they are controlled by WEF”.
He also shared a post on 11 April this year which claimed that former Conservative leader and prime minister David Cameron had a “sinister plot to hand UK leadership to Muslims” and declared: “The Islamic takeover is real and happening – doesn’t matter who you vote for, every party’s in on it!”
Perhaps most notable from a glance at his X account, however, is Matthews’ promotion of conspiracy theories regarding climate change.
Posts shared by Matthews include one referring to “the great global warming scam” and another declaring that “the climate crisis really is a scam”. In January, the leader of Lincolnshire County Council also filmed a video of himself wearing a MAGA hat and saying: “Hopefully Donald [Trump] will get to grips with this climate scam… That’s what I want from Donald Trump.”
On top of all that, last August, Matthews also shared a post by David Kurten, the leader of the far-right Heritage Party, in which he voiced his anti-vaccine views.
Richard Barker, chair of Reform’s Woking branch, is also hoping for a seat on the party’s board. Just like Goulding and Matthews, he has voiced conspiracies about climate change on X.
On 11 September 2023, he wrote about “the global socialists plan to redistribute wealth under the guise of climate change catastrophism”. A day before that he responded to a post which declared, “Bankrupting the West is THE PLAN,” by stating: “when you join all the dots (Climate Change Catastrophism, Net Zero, Wokism etc.) it’s difficult to conceive of an alternative purpose than the destruction of western society, culture and economic model”.
In another post that month Barker also claimed that data shows “no correlation between CO2 and Earth Temperature”.
On its website, Reform says that all candidates standing for the party board have had to “pass the vetting process”.
So, did Reform’s vetting team fail to realise that these candidates have promoted and voiced outlandish conspiracy theories online, or do they simply not care? Let’s see whether the party takes any action against Goulding, Matthews and Barker.
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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…
