Reform UK criticized for the offensive publications of candidates

Reform UK presents candidates for local elections who have “displayed hatred, pushed conspiracies from the far right and congratulated the extremists” – despite the pretension of Nigel Farage to have strengthened the party verification process, said the Hope Not Hate campaign group.

Reform UK, which recruited more than 1,600 candidates for the English Council elections on May 1, made a large part of its efforts to “professionalize” the party after a series of scandals of racism in the general elections of last year.

Speaking during a campaign event in Dover Thursday, Farage said that the party had set up “a verification system that was as good if not better than the other parties” for this year’s elections.

The leader of the British reform said that “hundreds of people who asked for candidates for the county council elections have been rejected … Often because of the repeated use of words starting with F and C on social networks”.

He said that others had been rejected “because they had just said things that were just ridiculous, scandalous, embarrassing”.

But Hope Not Hate, an anti-racism campaign group that faced with frage in the past, said the examples he had found were unable to check.

Thursday of last week, the group published details on the publications on social networks it had found from 14 candidates for the current reform of the United Kingdom.

The BBC has spent the last seven days to check the positions and seek an answer to individual candidates, as well as to the party’s head office.

We have sent several requests for comments to reform the headquarters of the United Kingdom, but we have not yet received anything.

The messages seen by the BBC include:

• A British reform candidate saying that “a large nuclear bomb” should be used to remove Islam from the world
• Another saying Bradford has a large Muslim population and is a “sea hole” “
• Others promoting conspiracy theory that Muslims seek to “supplant the native population” in the United Kingdom

Some of the messages, on Facebook or X, were made this year, others go back to a decade.

They seem to have been opened to anyone to see when Reform UK has selected and checked the candidates, but some have now been hidden or deleted.

Steven Biggs is a reform candidate in the United Kingdom in the hope of winning a seat in Pelton in North Durham on May 1.

On the Reform UK website, he says that he “represents Reform UK because they represent good traditional old -fashioned values”.

In August 2015, he posted on his Facebook page that “Islam has no place on this earth. A large nuclear bomb needed”. The BBC confirmed that the position was still visible last week, but this week it seemed to have been deleted.

Biggs has also repeatedly published links to Great Britain first, the anti-Islam political party, on its Facebook account.

The BBC tried to contact Biggs to comment by phone, but it did not answer.

Another of the reformist candidates in the United Kingdom highlighted by hope and not of hatred is Isaiah-John Smith Recbeck, standing in Hexthorpe and Balby North in Doncaster.

On August 6 of last year, Reasbeck wrote on X “Bradford has one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe, it is also one of the largest Shitholes in Europe draws your own conclusions”.

When the BBC checked the user’s account @ij_reasbeck, the message was visible last week. It has since been deleted.

The account, however, remains active and identifies Mr. Reasbeck as a candidate for the reform of the British council.

The BBC contacted the Doncaster branch of Reform UK to request comments from Reasbeck. None have been received.

Other messages that the BBC has been able to confirm was published by Howard Rimmer, who is also for Reform UK in Doncaster, in the hope of winning at Roman Ridge.

On January 16 of this year, Rimmer republished on his Facebook page an element of the “group of traditional Britain – a rescue boat” which is described as “a house of the disillusioned patriot”.

The group’s position said: “We import people with low IQs and when they commit odious crimes, they have more indulgent sentences by judges because they are” a low IQ and do not understand our “” way “.

He also referred to “the great replacement”, a conspiracy theory that the elites seek to replace the populations of the Western nations with immigrants.

This position was still visible this week, as well as other elements that Rimmer republished, including a graph entitled “How Islam colonizes non -Muslim countries”, something, according to the graph, was “known as the demographic jihad”

Several times in the past year, Rimmer has republished articles on the far -right activist Tommy Robinson, one of whom describes him as someone “vocal on the importance of celebrating the British identity, culture and values” and another saying “Batley needs these people”.

The BBC contacted the president of the Doncaster branch of Reform by e-mail and by phone several times, but has not yet received an answer.

Another candidate whose BBC has seen is Trevor Bridgwood, standing in Bardney and Cherry Willingham in Lincolnshire.

Bridgwood, who has previous links with the Conservatives and UKIP, shared an article on his Facebook page in 2015 entitled “The goal of Muslim immigration” which said that “a means of supplanting the indigenous population” of a country. He added his own comment “Now does that look like what’s going on in the news?”.

The BBC sent an email to Bridgwood for an answer last week but did not receive an answer.

Hope Not Hate, which is funded by individual donations and unions, says it is a non -partisan campaign that “focuses on the far right organized”, “something that Farage insisted on several occasions does not include Reform UK.

Reform UK is chaired by a Muslim, Zia Yusuf, and Farage said that he “never wanted to have anything to do” Tommy Robinson, rejecting the calls of certain members to allow him to join the reform.

In 2024, Reform UK abandoned a certain number of candidates he had selected for the general elections on offensive comments on social networks.

After that, Farage told the BBC “I did not know how bad it was. I did not know that half of these people had simply not been verified – it must change.”

During a party press conference in February, Yusuf said that the new system “although it is not perfect” was “the most in -depth verification process of a game, I think I can say that with confidence and conviction, certainly at the level of the council”.

In recent weeks, the comments of other candidates in the United Kingdom, apart from those identified by Hope Not Hate, have also been revealed.

Earlier this month, Reform UK was held with a council candidate in the Leicestershire on a racist position accusing black heel drivers.

Responding to resurfacing of this post Elliott Allman, a reform candidate for the council of the county of Leicestershire, said that he had “matured” from the post.

And, separately, the Council of the parish of East Hunsbury warned the candidate of the reform Ron Firman after old tweets with racist and sexist insults were revealed.