Reform UK has been accused of a “systemic failure” in its vetting after candidates were found to have described the Nazis as “real visionaries”, complained that immigrants breed “like rats” and encouraged Southport rioters to burn down a mosque. 

Despite Nigel Farage claiming its background checks had been significantly enhanced since the general election, the party is investigating eight of its candidates over posts identified by The Times. 

Kevin Hollinrake, the chairman of the Conservative Party, called on Reform to “urgently explain what vetting was carried out on these candidates and what action will now be taken”. 

“This litany of antisemitism, Islamophobia, ethno-nationalism and homophobia will rightly raise serious questions about Reform UK’s judgment and standards. This is not just a handful of poor choices — it points to a systemic failure,” Hollinrake said. 

Kevin HollinrakeIan Forsyth/Getty Images

“The British public will rightly ask how individuals expressing such extreme views were ever approved to stand.”

Riots and neo-Nazi imagery

More than 5,000 council seats are up for election on May 7, with Labour expected to haemorrhage support to Reform and the Greens. 

Farage’s party has nominated candidates in 95 per cent of seats, roughly equivalent to Labour and the Conservatives, according to the independent tracker Democracy Club. 

One of Reform’s candidates is Ben Rowe, who is standing in the Ham ward of Plymouth. He urged protesters throwing bricks at police defending a mosque to “get rid of that filthy building” during the 2024 Southport riots. 

Commenting beneath a YouTube video in February, Rowe accused “the Jews” of “creating division by forcing other races on our societies”. He elsewhere described immigrants to the UK “breeding like rats”, posted blackface memes and labelled Islam “a cancer”.

Nathaniel Menday, standing for Reform in Woodhouse, Sheffield, has called himself an “ethno-nationalist” and encouraged the use of white supremacist symbols. Last October, he asked a fellow Sheffield United fan to add a sonnenrad “sun wheel” emblem to a flag — a symbol widely used by neo-Nazis. 

In January 2024, he shared a picture of Berlin’s Olympiastadion and wrote: “Whichever group of people built this must have been real visionaries!” The stadium was built by Nazi Germany to host the 1936 Olympics and designed by Albert Speer, the munitions minister who was convicted at the Nuremberg trials of crimes against humanity. 

Nathaniel Menday

In 2023, Menday suggested “Jewish people in the West” were responsible for the antisemitism they were suffering because they “overwhelmingly favour open borders”. He added: “Sow the wind reap the whirlwind.” 

Approached by The Times, he apologised for bringing Reform “into disrepute” and said he enjoyed “risky humour and pushing boundaries”, adding: “I am not antisemitic nor do I have any Nazi sympathies.”

“I have flirted with what could reasonably be referred to as ‘far-right ideology’ but ultimately I have come to reject its core tenets,” Menday said. “I am passionate about my country but I am and always have been motivated by love, not hate.” 

Empire and Enoch Powell

David Davies, a Reform candidate for Wanstead Village in Redbridge, east London, said putting black people in positions of power would be “disastrous”, described Roma travellers as “the worst people on the planet”, and Muslims as “by far the biggest group of fraudsters”. 

In reply to a video about Black History Month, Davies wrote: “Blaqs [blacks] bang on about slavery here in the UK and how evil the British Empire was … please you people — shut the ** up.” 

In January he wrote that Islam had “no place in the West”, adding: “I would go so far as to outlaw this backward religion. Where there are mz [Muslims] there is always trouble.” 

Paul Hewson

Paul Hewson, standing in nearby Chadwell Heath, Barking and Dagenham, has repeatedly expressed his support for Enoch Powell. His posts include “free Tommy” and “listen to Tommy” in support of Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Despite the far-right agitator having been barred from Reform by Farage over his extreme views, Hewson said Robinson was “not far right .just right [sic]”. 

Reform also selected Peter Bucklitsch as their nominee for Meads in East Sussex, despite the former Ukip candidate’s 2015 comments, when he said the three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi “died because his parents were greedy for the good life in Europe”. A picture of Kurdi’s body washed up on a beach in Turkey had come to symbolise deaths at sea during the migrant crisis. “The little Syrian boy was well clothed and well fed,” Bucklitsch commented. “Queue jumping costs.” 

Bucklitsch apologised for his comment at the time but Ukip said he was nonetheless unlikely to pass any future candidate vetting. He told The Times he had been “wrong and insensitive” but that “a single comment out of many years of public service should not, in my view, be weaponised”.

More recently, comments made by Reform’s former candidate for mayor of Greater Manchester caused a walkout at a public meeting when he said that Sale, a neighbourhood in the south of the city, risked becoming “unrecognisable”, describing it as a “cultural Christian, white” area.

Dan Barker, a former Conservative who is running for the party in nearby Trafford, was filmed telling a resident to “shut up” before several people stood up and left. He was approached for comment.

Conspiracy theories 

Reform candidates have also shared conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic and American politics.

Rowe reposted content that suggested Covid had a “Hebrew” source, while Axel Tye, standing for Reform in Penshaw & Shiney Row, Sunderland, said: “Stop covid in it’s [sic] tracks in two simple steps. 1. Delete the app. 2. Stop getting tested.” 

Trevor Jones, a Reform candidate for Bolton North East, said he was “not buying another convenient virus just before Christmas” in November 2021. 

Farage and Trevor Jones

He also shared posts calling the former US president Joe Biden “Bin Biden”, accusing him of having “rigged elections” and urging a suspension in the rollout of 5G. 

Bev Watkins, standing in Wakefield for Reform, shared hoax content which warned against taking a “new” paracetamol which “contains ‘Machupo’ virus, considered one of the most dangerous viruses in the world, with a high mortality rate”. 

Failed vetting

All candidates were approached for comment. A Reform UK spokesman said the party was looking into the allegations but declined to answer questions about how the candidates had passed its vetting process. 

Farage had vowed to improve Reform’s procedures after admitting the party failed to properly check candidates ahead of the 2024 general election. The MP for Clacton said hopefuls are asked “to tell us the truth” and hand over their social media profiles. 

Gregory Davis, a senior researcher at the anti-racism research group Hope not Hate, said many of the offensive comments were “easily found if someone had bothered to look”. 

“Reform chairman Zia Yusuf has multiple times boasted that the party has ‘the best vetting in the country’, but yet again we see antisemitism, misogyny and xenophobia run rampant,” Davis said. 

“These candidates are not just a few bad apples. They represent a wider pattern of the type of people Reform UK have deemed fit to stand in our elections. So is the issue Reform’s vetting, or do they just see no issue with such hateful rhetoric?” 

Anna Turley, the chair of the Labour Party, called on Farage to withdraw support from the named candidates. 

“These horrific comments and dangerous conspiracy theories from Reform candidates are despicable,” she said. “People who hold such abhorrent views and spread so much hate have no place in our politics, let alone in positions of power.”