Revealed: New Reform UK director Charlton Edwards promoted conspiracy theory and far right content online

The problems keep growing for Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage.

HOPE not hate can reveal that Reform’s newly appointed director and secretary Charlton Edwards has a history of promoting conspiracy theory and far right content online.

Following a row over new MP Sarah Pochin asking a parliamentary question about banning the burqa, Zia Yusuf resigned as Reform chair on 5 June, saying that working to get the party elected is no longer “a good use of my time”, a point he u-turned on just two days later. 

Filings on business register Companies House show that after his resignation, Yusuf was swiftly removed as a director of Reform UK Party Limited.

The very next day, on 6 June, Charlton Edwards was appointed one of the company’s directors, with his occupation listed as Party Treasurer and Secretary in the official documents.

Edwards’ LinkedIn profile details that he became deputy treasurer of the party last September and a report in the Spectator magazine in March set out his “key role” in Reform’s fundraising effort. 

On a now deleted X/Twitter account, Edwards shared an array of posts propagating conspiracy theories about Covid vaccines and climate change.

In December 2022, for instance, the now Reform party treasurer shared a post which thundered: 

“The Satanic WEF [World Economic Forum] Leaders around the World forced their Citizens to submit to a BIOWEAPON VACCINE that has killed millions… and NOT ONE of these Motherfuckers have been arrested and it makes me fucking sick.” 

On 27 November 2022, Edwards himself posted: “COVID has been an absolute con to cover the largest robbery in history assisted by MSM & social media hysteria.” 

Earlier that same month on Twitter, Edwards wrote, “Climate Change is a Malicious, Dangerous Myth,” and promoted a post which declared: “There is no ‘Climate emergency’ there is a Global transfer of wealth emergency! You are being manipulated again.”

Edwards also retweeted a post by the conspiracy theorist Australian politician Malcolm Roberts, in which he asserted: “The ‘Science’ (TM) behind the supposed climate crisis simply doesn’t stack up.”

While the X/Twitter account on which Edwards so keenly propagated these conspiracy theories has now been deleted, another account of his on the social media platform remains active. 

On this account, in December 2023, Edwards shared a video of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who leads the country’s far right Party for Freedom, in which he calls Islam “evil,” claims that the religion “is incompatible with freedom” and declares: “That’s why we should de-Islamicise our societies in order to stay free nations. No appeasement, no concessions.”

A month earlier, in November 2023, Edwards promoted posts by the far right politician and Reclaim party leader Laurence Fox, who was sacked as a GB News presenter in October 2023 after making misogynistic and derogatory comments about the journalist Ava Evans. 

In one of the posts shared by Edwards, Fox declared that “there is no climate emergency”. 

In another, Fox wrote that “the propaganda media are trying their hardest, but are totally out of touch with people,” in response to a MailOnline article headlined: “Fears that far-Right hooligans will clash with pro-Palestine march on Armistice Day grow after Tommy Robinson returns to Twitter to issue chilling rallying cry to his supporters”. 

Accepting his new role as Reform chair yesterday, following Yusuf’s resignation, David Bull said he will continue with “the growth, the development and the professionalisation of the party”. 

Given someone as unsuitable as Edwards has been appointed to such an important position in Reform, the party’s “professionalisation” certainly has a long way to go.