As campaigning for the local elections kicks off around the country, we’ve already seen a litany of terrible candidates from Reform. And, despite having to select just 19 candidates, it seems that Reform in Plymouth is no better.
Meet Ben Rowe, Reform’s candidate for Ham ward on Plymouth City Council.
Since Zia Yusuf has assured us that Reform UK has “the best vetting in the country”, is it safe to assume that they looked at Rowe’s Facebook account and were happy with the following posts? Does Reform welcome candidates who fantasise about impaling Muslims, enjoy crude anti-black stereotypes and believe that Keir Starmer is beholden to a “Globalist zion cult?”
If Reform did not bother to check Rowe’s publicly accessible Facebook profile, it’s even less likely that they’ll have come across his anonymous YouTube account, where he goes by “TheRedEyedJedi” and elaborates on his bigotry in more detail.
They won’t, for example, have seen his inciteful (and likely illegal) posts during the riot outside a mosque in Southport in 2024, in which he urged the rioters to “get rid of that filthy building”
Nor would they have seen his other antisemitic comments, in which he puts forward the antisemitic conspiracy that Jews are “forcing other races on our societies” and “flooding the west with Islamists”
“The Jews creating division by forcing other races on our societies? Who’d have thunk’ it”
But again, a simple perusal of Rowe’s publicly accessible Facebook profile would have made it immediately clear that he was a hateful and wildly unsuitable candidate. Visitors to Rowe’s Facebook page are greeted by the mocking bio “You Found Me”
If only someone from Reform had bothered to look, they could perhaps have saved the party yet another embarrassment…
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…
