When Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s head of policy, was interviewed earlier this summer, he boasted that “the talent density available to this party continues to grow very significantly”. It has been a key part of Reform’s narrative that the vetting crisis afflicting the party during last year’s elections has been resolved. The “bad apples” would be gone, Nigel Farage promised.
However, the rot appears to have spread. HOPE not hate can reveal that four people working for Reform – including senior staffers with leadership roles – have voiced and endorsed views of the kind Farage once described as “at best loopy”.
They are:
Pete Durnell is the party’s West Midlands regional director and is listed as one of Reform UK Party Limited’s three directors on Companies House.
On X (formerly Twitter), he has promoted outlandish claims regarding climate change and the World Economic Forum (WEF).
In a slew of posts in October 2022, Durnell argued that the British government and other politicians around the world had become WEF puppets. “From now on globalists will run our country how the IMF, EU, WEF… tells them to,” he announced on 20 October – the day Liz Truss resigned as prime minister. Three days later he wrote: “Sunak PM, Hunt Chancellor, Mordaunt Foreign Secretary, Shapps Home Office. Don’t you just love it when a (#WEF) plan comes together… #Puppets #DeathofDemocracy”.
In another post the same month he said the WEF, International Monetary Fund, European Court of Human Rights, and World Health Organisation are “really running the country,” adding: “If you’re happy for your govt to be nothing more than puppets, keep voting #LibLabCon.”
In December 2022, Durnell directed his ire at climate change, writing on X: “They are building in the ability to have complete control over when/where you can charge your car up, – and prevent you from doing it at certain times of day, or at all. #ClimateChange It’s not about controlling the climate, it’s about controlling YOU”.
On top of all that, Durnell has also used his X account to express views comparable to the far-right “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. In March 2018, he prophesied that “the whole of Europe will be Islamic sooner or later… #SimplyAMatterOfTime Rather than silence people: #LetsTalkAboutislam”. The following month, he wrote: “The UK will become Islamic, due to high Muslim birth rates, immigration and lack of integration.”
During last year’s general election, Reform’s candidate for Widnes and Halewood, Jake Fraser, was the subject of controversy, after it was revealed he had compared the government’s pandemic policies to the Holocaust.
Likening travel measures to Hitler’s restrictions on Jews, he wrote on Facebook: “We’re on the precipice of a health Holocaust… The same methodology the Nazis used to rise to power, with minimal opposition by appealing to both sides of the political spectrum… is unfolding before our eyes.”
Rather than cut ties with Fraser, however, Reform has since appointed him as the party’s head of discipline.
Another Reform candidate who raised eyebrows during the general election campaign was Dave Holland.
As the Telegraph reported at the time, on his own website Holland had suggested that tinned food and car emissions could cause gender dysphoria.
The Reform candidate’s website also indulged in conspiracy regarding the WEF, positing that it controls the government. According to Holland’s website, “our government is itself being governed by”, among other things, “non-elected organisations such as the WEF and WHO”.
Such wild theorising certainly wasn’t enough to put Reform off Holland, however. He now serves as the party’s Eastern regional director.
Nick Harris is a new recruit to Reform’s head office, having joined in September, according to his LinkedIn account.
On X, Harris has promoted content from Andrew Tate, the infamous misogynist charged with rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women. In July 2023, for instance, he shared a post in which Tate claimed that “Reading books is for middle-brain losers… Winners act. Losers read.”
Harris has additionally shared posts by the far-right conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson and expressed support for the extreme anti-Muslim Dutch politician Geert Wilders. In February 2017, for instance, he shared an interview in which Wilders compared “the Islamisation of our free societies” to fascism and commented: “After watching this interview. I would vote for this man.”
Using the messaging app Telegram, Harris has also promoted Covid conspiracy theories. Messaging in a public chat room in August 2021, he excitedly shared what he called a “VERY IMPORTANT DOCUMENT”, before describing its contents as “super interesting”.
The document in question claimed that “overwhelming evidence” suggests “two pre-planned goals”: namely, “an engineered economic collapse” and “a so called ‘economic reset’, where we can ‘Build Back Better’, a slogan promulgated by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, whose slogan, interestingly, contains three sixes”. It went on to declare that “COVID was initially seasonal flu re-branded and then aggressively marketed globally as COVID” and pronounced that “it seems likely the long-term plan is to introduce… nanotechnology into humans”. A key part of the “evidence” for this was that the vaccines apparently contained graphene oxide – something proven to be false.
These are just the latest examples of so-called “bad apples” working for Reform.
Among those already exposed by HOPE not hate are:
Adam Bounds (national director)
On Twitter, Reform’s national director Adam Bounds voiced conspiracy theories regarding Covid 19 and the WEF, at the same time as promoting content by extreme far-right figures like the ethnonationalist influencer Steve Laws. As well as that, using a since-deleted account on the messaging app Telegram in August 2021, Bounds tried to recruit members to “a physical resistance group” he was building up, explaining, “got to keep the powder dry until the time comes then we switch to gorillas by night tactics” — an apparent reference to guerilla warfare.
Charlton Edwards (party secretary and director)
In June, Charlton Edwards became a director and secretary of Reform UK Party Limited. Edwards was an interesting pick by Reform, given that he had previously shared an array of posts propagating conspiracy theories about Covid vaccines and climate change on X.
Ethan Thoburn (parliamentary business manager)
Back in 2017, Ethan Thoburn was an enthusiastic supporter of the serial criminal and anti-Muslim extremist Stephen Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson). As well as sharing Lennon’s Twitter posts 91 times that year, Thoburn claimed that he is a “really nice bloke” and wrote: “Brilliant meeting you Tommy… No surrender.” Thoburn’s political journey has now taken him to Reform, where he plays a key part in the parliamentary party’s whipping operation and manages their parliamentary business. His parliamentary pass is sponsored by Reform MP Lee Anderson and he describes his job on LinkedIn as, ‘Head of Office, House of Commons’.
Simon Marcus (strategic adviser)
Since October, Simon Marcus has served as a strategic adviser to Reform, prior to which he was the party’s head of policy. In articles published in 2022 and 2023, Marcus indulged in bizarre conspiracy theories, depicting society as being manipulated and brainwashed by an ill-defined set of shadowy global elites into accepting the Covid vaccine, believing in the climate crisis and supporting Ukraine.
Paul Nuttall (vice chairman)
In July, ex-UKIP leader Paul Nuttall was announced as Reform’s new vice chairman. Nuttall was given this position, despite having a history of dubious beliefs, like suggesting that global warming is a money-led scam. He was also the subject of controversy back in 2016 and 2017, when it was revealed that his website and a LinkedIn account under his name carried a series of false claims about his past.
HOPE not hate presented the above to Reform and offered the party an opportunity to comment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Reform decided not to respond.
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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…
