LONDON: The British right-wing political party Reform UK is under renewed scrutiny after an anti-racism campaign group alleged that several of the party\u2019s candidates for local elections had posted hateful and extremist content online.<\/p>\n
The offensive messages were discovered despite assurances by party leader Nigel Farage that a rigorous vetting system was in place for the selection of candidates.<\/p>\n
The group Hope Not Hate said last week it found evidence that a number of Reform UK candidates for the May 1 local elections in England had promoted far-right conspiracy theories or made Islamophobic remarks on social media. The party has more than 1,600 candidates standing in next week\u2019s polls.<\/p>\n
In a report published on Thursday following an investigation into the allegations, the BBC confirmed it had found several offensive messages, including a call to \u201cnuke\u201d Islam, a claim that a British town with a large Muslim population was a \u201cs***hole,\u201d and support for a \u201cdemographic jihad\u201d conspiracy theory that accuses Muslims of seeking to replace the native population of the UK.<\/p>\n
Some of the posts were recent, others dated back several years, but they could still be viewed when the candidates were selected by Reform.<\/p>\n
One of them, Steven Biggs, who is standing in North Durham, had posted a message that stated \u201cIslam has no place on this earth\u201d and linked to content from extremist right-wing anti-Muslim group Britain First.<\/p>\n
A candidate in Doncaster shared content alleging an Islamic colonization plot, while a third, in Lincolnshire, endorsed the idea that Muslim immigration was a strategy to supplant native populations.<\/p>\n
At a campaign event in Dover on Thursday, Farage said Reform UK had put in place a vetting system \u201cas good if not better than other parties.\u201d He added that \u201chundreds\u201d of applicants were rejected because of offensive or \u201coutrageous\u201d remarks.<\/p>\n
Farage has long rejected claims that Reform UK harbors extremists. The party is chaired by Muslim entrepreneur Zia Yusuf, and has taken steps to distance itself from figures such as jailed anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson. Farage previously said he would \u201cnever want anything to do with\u201d Robinson.<\/p>\n
Hope Not Hate, which said it focuses on monitoring the far right, argued that the examples of hate speech it uncovered call into question Reform UK\u2019s vetting claims. Some of the posts the group highlighted were subsequently deleted or hidden.<\/p>\n
Reform UK has yet to respond publicly to the latest report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: The British right-wing political party Reform UK is under renewed scrutiny after an anti-racism campaign group alleged that several of the party\u2019s candidates for local elections had posted hateful and extremist content online. The offensive messages were discovered despite assurances by party leader Nigel Farage that a rigorous vetting system was in place for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80143,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80128\/revisions\/80143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}