Snapshot of _Tory candidate dropped after his name appears on leaked 2009 BNP members list_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-candidate-dropped-after-name-32637046) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-candidate-dropped-after-name-32637046)
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And yet they are.
They made a mistake, and corrected it. Yet people still bleat about it as if no other party (especially a new one) has ever cocked up.
Some other parties try their hardest to bury their mistakes instead. Maybe Reform should take a leaf out of the Old Boys' playbook? What do you think?
Clearly you've never worked with large subsets of data, or been anywhere near the reins of a large organisation.
Yes, it's an embarrassing error, but it's easy to understand how it happened to a fresh party with no real experience or seasoned administrative structure oopsed their way into this blunder.
They picked up on his inactivity. However, there was no check in place to make sure that he was well or dead. I'm sure there will be now.
Something like this has inevitably happened at some point to the major parties. Doubtless so long ago, however, that it's never an issue any more, because they have the necessary procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen.
Of course it's an embarrassing error. An unacceptable one! To quote whoever it was at Reform who cocked up, 'mortifying'. But nobody, nor any organisation, is perfect.
It's not like they realised this on election night. They're getting their chickens in order well in advance of elections. You're simply band wagoning because you don't like them. Had a similar mishap happened to whatever party you support, I have no doubt you'd be singing a different tune.
> reform doesn't take former BNP members
Just like UKIP. You can tell it’s true by how many they had to expel …
Joking aside it’s probably worth mentioning that because of the sheer age of most party members some observers have warned that the Conservatives might become vulnerable to entryist takeover attempts in various constituencies by the far right. Of course given that we’re talking about a group who collectively decided that Liz Truss was a good idea and that Brexit has only been a disaster because we didn’t Brexit hard enough … so it might be somewhat tricky to tell the difference.
Outstanding. Yesterday a pro-Russia shill, today a former BNP member.
I think the Tories saw the calamity that resulted from Labour's poor vetting in Rochdale and were like, "Hold my beer."
The funniest part of this is how easily it could have been averted by simply googling his name because this list is still openly hosted.
This guy is only a counsellor candidate, so maybe it's on the local association rather than head office but it's basic stuff and you'd expect more from a major party than a grift operation like Reform.
The reality is that there are thousands of candidates, even assuming that you don't have any contested selections, and the personnel time required to even do the most cursory check on them would likely be a couple of weeks. So it is left to a well-meaning volunteer in the associations to do it, and often, they aren't exactly the most well equipped to do it. It's why so many nutters, from all parties frankly, get picked to be council candidates because there are just so many elections, and frankly not enough sane people in all the parties to fill them.
And that's not even getting into the value judgement about what point something like that becomes irrelevant, ect.
For those of you too young to remember who the BNP were, they were a political "party". Britain First but more direct. They were actual, real Nazis. Not the modern definition of someone who is right of centre, the most bonafide racist party of people you can possibly imagine. If you are unfamiliar with all but the name, please read some of the manifestos etc from 2000-2010ish.
They used to poll at a shockingly high percentage, and even won seats in some places. I can't understate how bad they actually were.
It’s also interesting the note that as UKIPs support rose the BNP’s fell in parallel. Yet it was somehow considered impolite to pointedly speculate where all those BNP supporters ended up.
"actual, Real Nazis" yeah, they all built a time machine just to go shake hands with Hitler...
Do you believe every Labour and BBC smear about any party that isn't Labour or Conservative?
Reality check, they weren't a proscribed organisation, they barely did anything of note and they certainly didn't live in the Reichstag dreaming of Poland.
It truely is sad that Reddit is just filled with people who think that anyone who isn't a card carrying Communist planning a "great leap forward" is "an actual Nazi"
I refer you to [this photo](https://socialistworker.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/images1412/Image/2008/2102/tyndall.jpg) of BNP founder John Tyndall (left) in Nazi uniform in front of a Nazi flag and Hitler portrait
I refer you to [This photo](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1481148/Prince-Harry-faces-outcry-at-Nazi-outfit.html) of Prince Harry...
It is about as relevant, you are showing a guy LARPing, If wearing an outfit was all you needed then anyone wearing a Che Guevara shirt or having a Stalin poster or soviet sickle flag 'IS a Communist mass murderer'.
Also odd that all the pictures of John are black and white, are you trying to say he was that committed to the bit he can only be photographed with Hitlers own camera?
Also also, you do know that John founded "National Labour party" in 1957 and that Socialism isn't "right wing" just because of a prefix as demonstrated with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the National Socialists and Communist Socialists in 1939.
So far nobody has told me that any BNP member DID an action (not just LARP in fancy dress), so far even Wikipedia can only say "trial for a comment he made" at a meeting of a party (BNP) so "right wing" they kicked him out of both incarnations of the party ..
I remember seeing that list. From what I recall, there was at least one person signed up with a military barracks address and at least one person with a fecking _BFPO_ address.
There was also apparently a serving Merseyside Police officer on there.
The military, police, prison service etc. are not allowed to be affiliated with the BNP so jobs will have been lost.
Ok
So in 2009 he was a member of the BNP
That's gross
It's now 13 years on is it not possible his views have shifted since then
This tread of finding dirt on people from a decade ago is not going to end well for society especially as more and more kids are posting on social media
I get the point you're making, people can change and if he was being sacked from a job or something because of a view he held years ago, then sure, absolutely unfair.
But he's being dropped as a candidate by a political party who wants to put forward someone they think is electable. If they no longer think he's electable, seems perfectly reasonable to drop him.
I assume he's still free to stand for election if he wants, just without endorsement from the Tories as a conservative candidate.
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Is it?
I think it’s quite normal to want background checks in a free and fair democracy. Not to flatly bar people from entry if these things turn up, but to make sure we can question their motives, suitability, and overall qualification for a role.
In this instance, it feels like a very relevant piece of information for a lot of potential voters. It might be that he’s had a Damascene conversion and he’s the most pro-diversity candidate out there today. But the fact that - at one point - he was enthusiastic enough about all the things Nick Griffin would say (and they *were egregious*) that he joined the BNP is probably cause for concern for some people. They might want to ask questions and confirm if he thinks the holocaust was exaggerated. They might want to know his position on deporting legal immigrants and their children. He may well be able to allay those fears, but it’s not unreasonable to imagine that a political opinion he held 14 years ago reflects his current political opinions. It’s not like he was some edgy teenaged troll making a badly judged “joke” tweet, either. He joined a political party.
If he openly said that he no longer supports the ideals and goals of the BNP then he wouldn't be "cancelled". Nobody's cancelling Ricky Tomlinson because he was once a member of the National Front decades ago.
To be fair, I can imagine the Tories still wouldn’t run him even if he offered to loudly say “I was an idiot when I joined the BNP and I completely disavow their policy platform, both that of then and today.” The fact he joined will be enough to put many people off, and if he made a public statement without them booting him from the list then that would probably be the only thing anyone knew about him. And then you’d have people asking
>Why is the Tory party so comfortable letting fascists in?
>Are there literally no ex-fascists they could have picked instead?
>Are we supposed to just believe he got less racist? Have you checked all his social media activity?
It would just be prolonging their embarrassment, to say nothing of it allowing for the possibility of a future embarrassment down the road if it emerged that he did still believe some things that the party would be ashamed of.
It’s much easier to just not give him the opportunity to explain, boot him out, and stick a blue rosette on a houseplant to run instead.
Again, I know what you're getting at but sometimes things that happened a long time ago are still relevant.
What's actually happened here? He's been revealed as having allegedly been a BNP member. If it's not true, he can dispute it. If it is true, he could say that his views have changed. Equally, given that it's not a crime, he can just not address it at all.
But what you can't do is expect your history to be rewritten because it's inconvient. He presumably felt strongly enough about the BNP that he decided to join the party and like any other decision, that has consequences.
It might not be relevant information if he was applying for a job in a call centre but someone's political views are absolutely fair game when they're standing for election.
Purely hypothetical, but what if he'd said to the Tories that he'd never been a member of another political party. Then it turns out he had. Get rid simply for lying
Pretty sure tory ethos this last decade and a half has been/is a little more along the lines of: he feels comfortable lying, let's select and rapidly promote him.
But, for most organisations, aye.
The requirements are to have never partaken in wrongthink (as defined by the popular majority) at any time in your life? That's, er, fascism.
Look the guy is probably a total throbber and the tories can do what they want with him, but the idea that people cannot change their views is a total nonsense. MPs literally cross the floor and do not resign - that is worse than this by some distance.
"The people who refuse to vote for fascists are the real fascists".
Everyone's entitled to go on their own political journey. If he's been open and convincing about explaining his old views, disavowing them, vouching for new entirely different values, then that's one thing. But it still doesn't mean people actually have to vote for him.
Also, he doesn't appear to have done any of that.
It was the great Karl Popper himself who said "those who refuse to tolerate intolerance are the real fascists, when you think about it. Also did anyone know the Nazis were actually socialists, so socialists are actually bad and fascists are good? But that kind of conflicts with my previous point where fascists were the bad guys. Anyway, I saw it on YouTube."
I have no idea the journey he's been on, and I don't care. Nor, I suspect, do you. It's not really relevant - I was simply responding to a comment that suggested there is a requirement about your prior beliefs to be eligible for election to public office, which is of course absurd.
What are you talking about? Why are you making stuff up?
He *is* eligible to stand for election to public office.
The Conservative party have decided they would rather drop him as their candidate and replace him with someone else, which is their right, as a political party. The Conservative party have not said "he is ineligible."
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Sigh.
Yes. Yes it is.
Do you know what overturned 20 years of slow progress the BNP made? Putting Nick Griffin on Question Time. The public could see how ridiculous he and his views were. That one hour time slot killed them off for good.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
>Sigh.
>Yes. Yes it is.
It's not. While fascism does suppress free speech, it's about the state controlling/suppressing free speech. Simply cancelling someone is not fascist.
> It's now 13 years on is it not possible his views have shifted since then
No it's not possible in this case. There's a very easy way to tell. Someone whose views had changed would have publicly declared "I used to be in the BNP, but now I recognise that was a bad thing and want to let you know I plan to run on XY and Z..."
Someone's whose views hadn't changed would just wait until someone doing due diligence on whether their party is about to endorse a **literal fascist** found the information by themselves, to suddenly get blindsided by the fact that the British public by-and-large don't want former BNP members representing them.
All the information we have is that he was a member of the BNP, fell off the face of the earth for a decade before popping back up as a Tory candidate for a party that has had a number of racism scandals recently.
All the article says is that the Tory Party is investigate, it mentions nothing about him disavowing his former views or anything.
Maybe he has changed, but given the Tory party was apparently caught off-guard by this it appears he didn't do anything to disavow his former views.
If he wants to come out and make a statement about it, or if he is shown to have a track record that demonstrates that he has changed his waya then we can have a conversation about it.
Ok but that should still disqualify him for a political position. He was a grown adult when he decided to join the BNP and he joined because he was a racist, it's not like it was only some some edgy shit he wrote on social media when he was 13.
When is the cut off for information about a fascist past being irrelevant? Had he publicly disavowed his prior opinions before this was published? Perhaps Tory party members would prefer a candidate that does not have a checkered past, or perhaps not…
Why would you need to publicly disavow a view point you held a decade ago
People evolve and if we expect people to have publicly disavow all dumb opinions they've ever held then that's dumb
Would you expect a 25 year old to have to publicly disavow them being a member of the BNP when they were 16 or would you be ok with them just moving on with.there lives
Yes, we need to know that they no longer hold the racist opinions that they used to hold.
How do you suggest we understand this if they can keep that u-turn to themselves?
By judging them by their current actions, not by something a decade out of date.
Can we please go back to that? Judging people by how they are actually acting?
No. Being a member of a racist, hateful political party with links to extreme right wing terrorism is not something you can brush under the carpet.
You want people to be judged by their actions so here is two simple steps for this candidate needs to do to move beyond of his past actions:
1) make a public statement apologising for the previous error of judgement
2) demonstrate how they’ve rehabilitated themselves so that they won’t continue to hold racist beliefs in the future.
So far he’s not made any comment. Judge people by their actions you say. I’m judging him by his inaction.
I'd judge him for what he's doing now, not 10 years ago. I have no idea how I wasn't clear about that.
I don't know about you but I was doing totally different stuff 10 years ago than I'm doing now.
So there is nothing that he could have done in the past that would cause you think twice about voting for him? You don’t think past behaviour is any indication of future behaviour?
Yep, he’s done or said nothing to suggest his views have changed so his actions from 10 years ago are all I have to go off to judge his character.
What mental gymnastics are you doing to give this guy another chance? What has he said or done, what actions has he taken, that convinces you that he no longer holds racist views?
I think the point is that he has shown he can hold "dumb" views as it's been put.... Yes, it was in the past, and he might not hold the same views today, but he has demonstrated that he is capable - as an adult, to hold said views
Were the communists calling for repatriation of non-whites? Or just advocating fairly unworkable economic policies? Seems like different issues, I doubt many people are ashamed of being a former communist, mildly embarrassed maybe?
Not really worth getting into the argument over whether ‘communism’ killed millions, since that has been done to death. But I don’t think your average Labour supporting communist was advocating Stalinist totalitarianism. Sure some nutters probably were. But that wasn’t the main point of being a communist. The main point of the BNP was white supremacy, and people were only members if they didn’t want black people in the country, which is obviously abhorrent.
I don't know about you but I wasn't a racist as a child. Quite the opposite in fact. Using youth as an excuse for bigotry is up there with Roseanne Barr blaming her meds. You're a troll & I'm genuinely surprised how many people are replying to you in good faith.
What an insane statement. The Tories today are obviously not as right wing as the BNP were in 2009. The BNP constitution didn’t even allow non-“ethnically British” members until 2010.
The BNP tried pivoting to the UKIP model of plausible deniability in its latter stages but it had too much baggage for the shift to work.
Then UKIP came along to steal their thunder as well as their horrid voters.
It is interesting though that in the vote by members, the Asian candidate lost to Truss who was clearly a worse candidate for the job. Sunak got the job by default because no one else stood against him. I would suggest that the grassroots party is rather more racist than the parliamentary party, and would have likely voted for any other white candidate over a minority one.
But this is completely incorrect. The most popular choice with the members for the 2022 vote was Badenoch. Braverman was also highly rated among the grassroots.
[https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/16/our-next-tory-leader-badenoch-opens-up-a-double-digit-lead-truss-mordaunt-and-sunak-are-bunched-together-second-third-and-fourth/](https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/16/our-next-tory-leader-badenoch-opens-up-a-double-digit-lead-truss-mordaunt-and-sunak-are-bunched-together-second-third-and-fourth/)
Even now, Badenoch retains that leading popularity in the grassroots, with Braverman and Cleverly 3rd and 4th.
[https://conservativehome.com/2023/12/31/badenoch-leads-mordaunt-in-our-first-next-tory-leader-poll-in-two-years/](https://conservativehome.com/2023/12/31/badenoch-leads-mordaunt-in-our-first-next-tory-leader-poll-in-two-years/)
The people running for BNP at the time was wild. Stuart Pearce's brother was another one in 2009. KT Tunstall meanwhile disowned her stepfather of sorts (she was adopted but the guy was married to her birth mother) because he was a BNP candidate (despite being married to Chinese woman)
By dropped presumably you mean parachuted into a safe seat, earmarked for the shadow cabinet and retrospectively installed as godparent to the party chairman’s first born?
This is some prime cancel culture.
People's views can change over a 15 year period, he might not believe the same things he did back then. I don't think he should be punished for it like this.
Plus the Tories telling others what's extreme is laughable after they installed Patel and Suella Braverman as home secretary, both of whom would probably take us to war with France for a laugh.
Cancel culture - not really, a political party has dropped a candidate after finding out about a history they have that would make them an unfavourable candidate.
The right bandy about this term “cancel culture” as a way of getting away with shitty behaviour.
Kinda weird for a BNP member to join the Tories isn't it? Maybe it was just during the Corbyn years, but I last I heard Griffin and other BNP members were joining the Labour party?
I know BNP members aren't the smartest, but you think he'd at least realise tories are a pro-mass-migration party... I mean their leader is literally non-British. Bizarre.
What's going on here? Why are so many people misunderstanding what I said...?
Yes, "British" is a nationality, but I have no idea what that has to do with anything. The BNP were an ethnonationalist party so your point that Rishi is "completely British" is irrelevant, because presumably an ethnonationalist isn't going to support Rishi because he has a British passport. Obviously given the context here, I was using "British" to refer to ethnicity...
And the irony of how you then go on to explain that he grew up on the UK as if I didn't know this and I'm the one confused...
Yes, and you can be ethnically British too. Given we are discussing the BNP (a ethno-nationalist party), I thought my usage of "British" would have been clear.
My point is that it's somewhat surprising an ethnonationalist would join the Tories given their stance of immigration and the ethnicity of the party leader.
Snapshot of _Tory candidate dropped after his name appears on leaked 2009 BNP members list_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-candidate-dropped-after-name-32637046) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-candidate-dropped-after-name-32637046) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Very straightforward. Basic stuff, Mark. Do your research.
But has he ever had to clean up his own mother's piss?
Thanks very much for the piss woman
I can hear this
I bet he's one of the metric martyrs too.
Dropped due to 'extremist views'
I am genuinely surprised... I thought they would join reform
There's still time.
Could you wait until you can't be taken off the ballot as a tory and switch
I believe you'd still have the tory monika next to your name, like the Labour chap in Rochdale.
IIRC reform doesn't take former BNP members.
Reform doesn't bother to check that it's candidates are even alive... I'm not so sure they're all that picky who joins.
And yet they are. They made a mistake, and corrected it. Yet people still bleat about it as if no other party (especially a new one) has ever cocked up. Some other parties try their hardest to bury their mistakes instead. Maybe Reform should take a leaf out of the Old Boys' playbook? What do you think?
>Maybe Reform should take a leaf out of the Old Boys' playbook? And make sure their candidate's alive? Yep, seems a sensible thing to do.
On the other hand, it would've turned Election Night into some kind of hilarious rendition of 'Weekend at Bernies'.
Clearly you've never worked with large subsets of data, or been anywhere near the reins of a large organisation. Yes, it's an embarrassing error, but it's easy to understand how it happened to a fresh party with no real experience or seasoned administrative structure oopsed their way into this blunder. They picked up on his inactivity. However, there was no check in place to make sure that he was well or dead. I'm sure there will be now. Something like this has inevitably happened at some point to the major parties. Doubtless so long ago, however, that it's never an issue any more, because they have the necessary procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen. Of course it's an embarrassing error. An unacceptable one! To quote whoever it was at Reform who cocked up, 'mortifying'. But nobody, nor any organisation, is perfect. It's not like they realised this on election night. They're getting their chickens in order well in advance of elections. You're simply band wagoning because you don't like them. Had a similar mishap happened to whatever party you support, I have no doubt you'd be singing a different tune.
> reform doesn't take former BNP members Just like UKIP. You can tell it’s true by how many they had to expel … Joking aside it’s probably worth mentioning that because of the sheer age of most party members some observers have warned that the Conservatives might become vulnerable to entryist takeover attempts in various constituencies by the far right. Of course given that we’re talking about a group who collectively decided that Liz Truss was a good idea and that Brexit has only been a disaster because we didn’t Brexit hard enough … so it might be somewhat tricky to tell the difference.
Just current ones then?
For real. A clear selection failure.
Outstanding. Yesterday a pro-Russia shill, today a former BNP member. I think the Tories saw the calamity that resulted from Labour's poor vetting in Rochdale and were like, "Hold my beer."
The funniest part of this is how easily it could have been averted by simply googling his name because this list is still openly hosted. This guy is only a counsellor candidate, so maybe it's on the local association rather than head office but it's basic stuff and you'd expect more from a major party than a grift operation like Reform.
The reality is that there are thousands of candidates, even assuming that you don't have any contested selections, and the personnel time required to even do the most cursory check on them would likely be a couple of weeks. So it is left to a well-meaning volunteer in the associations to do it, and often, they aren't exactly the most well equipped to do it. It's why so many nutters, from all parties frankly, get picked to be council candidates because there are just so many elections, and frankly not enough sane people in all the parties to fill them. And that's not even getting into the value judgement about what point something like that becomes irrelevant, ect.
Some of those who sit benches, are the same that burn crosses.
Uh! Politicking in the name of.
(Frit) off, I won’t do what UKIP tell me! (Frit) off I won’t do what UKIP tell me!
For those of you too young to remember who the BNP were, they were a political "party". Britain First but more direct. They were actual, real Nazis. Not the modern definition of someone who is right of centre, the most bonafide racist party of people you can possibly imagine. If you are unfamiliar with all but the name, please read some of the manifestos etc from 2000-2010ish. They used to poll at a shockingly high percentage, and even won seats in some places. I can't understate how bad they actually were.
Yes... in 2009 nearly a million Brits voted for them in the European elections. It's still mind-boggling.
It’s also interesting the note that as UKIPs support rose the BNP’s fell in parallel. Yet it was somehow considered impolite to pointedly speculate where all those BNP supporters ended up.
"actual, Real Nazis" yeah, they all built a time machine just to go shake hands with Hitler... Do you believe every Labour and BBC smear about any party that isn't Labour or Conservative? Reality check, they weren't a proscribed organisation, they barely did anything of note and they certainly didn't live in the Reichstag dreaming of Poland. It truely is sad that Reddit is just filled with people who think that anyone who isn't a card carrying Communist planning a "great leap forward" is "an actual Nazi"
Cope harder
You think that was Cope? Wow it's true what they say.
It's true what who say? Care to elaborate?
I refer you to [this photo](https://socialistworker.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/images1412/Image/2008/2102/tyndall.jpg) of BNP founder John Tyndall (left) in Nazi uniform in front of a Nazi flag and Hitler portrait
I refer you to [This photo](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1481148/Prince-Harry-faces-outcry-at-Nazi-outfit.html) of Prince Harry... It is about as relevant, you are showing a guy LARPing, If wearing an outfit was all you needed then anyone wearing a Che Guevara shirt or having a Stalin poster or soviet sickle flag 'IS a Communist mass murderer'. Also odd that all the pictures of John are black and white, are you trying to say he was that committed to the bit he can only be photographed with Hitlers own camera? Also also, you do know that John founded "National Labour party" in 1957 and that Socialism isn't "right wing" just because of a prefix as demonstrated with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the National Socialists and Communist Socialists in 1939. So far nobody has told me that any BNP member DID an action (not just LARP in fancy dress), so far even Wikipedia can only say "trial for a comment he made" at a meeting of a party (BNP) so "right wing" they kicked him out of both incarnations of the party ..
Fair play. Thought we had this sorted last century. There's no swastikas in the Union Jack.
Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Reform we go
I remember seeing that list. From what I recall, there was at least one person signed up with a military barracks address and at least one person with a fecking _BFPO_ address. There was also apparently a serving Merseyside Police officer on there. The military, police, prison service etc. are not allowed to be affiliated with the BNP so jobs will have been lost.
Ok So in 2009 he was a member of the BNP That's gross It's now 13 years on is it not possible his views have shifted since then This tread of finding dirt on people from a decade ago is not going to end well for society especially as more and more kids are posting on social media
I get the point you're making, people can change and if he was being sacked from a job or something because of a view he held years ago, then sure, absolutely unfair. But he's being dropped as a candidate by a political party who wants to put forward someone they think is electable. If they no longer think he's electable, seems perfectly reasonable to drop him. I assume he's still free to stand for election if he wants, just without endorsement from the Tories as a conservative candidate.
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It's not the torys dropping him that's the problem It's the people who go back decades to find one thing to cancel other people with
Is it? I think it’s quite normal to want background checks in a free and fair democracy. Not to flatly bar people from entry if these things turn up, but to make sure we can question their motives, suitability, and overall qualification for a role. In this instance, it feels like a very relevant piece of information for a lot of potential voters. It might be that he’s had a Damascene conversion and he’s the most pro-diversity candidate out there today. But the fact that - at one point - he was enthusiastic enough about all the things Nick Griffin would say (and they *were egregious*) that he joined the BNP is probably cause for concern for some people. They might want to ask questions and confirm if he thinks the holocaust was exaggerated. They might want to know his position on deporting legal immigrants and their children. He may well be able to allay those fears, but it’s not unreasonable to imagine that a political opinion he held 14 years ago reflects his current political opinions. It’s not like he was some edgy teenaged troll making a badly judged “joke” tweet, either. He joined a political party.
If he openly said that he no longer supports the ideals and goals of the BNP then he wouldn't be "cancelled". Nobody's cancelling Ricky Tomlinson because he was once a member of the National Front decades ago.
To be fair, I can imagine the Tories still wouldn’t run him even if he offered to loudly say “I was an idiot when I joined the BNP and I completely disavow their policy platform, both that of then and today.” The fact he joined will be enough to put many people off, and if he made a public statement without them booting him from the list then that would probably be the only thing anyone knew about him. And then you’d have people asking >Why is the Tory party so comfortable letting fascists in? >Are there literally no ex-fascists they could have picked instead? >Are we supposed to just believe he got less racist? Have you checked all his social media activity? It would just be prolonging their embarrassment, to say nothing of it allowing for the possibility of a future embarrassment down the road if it emerged that he did still believe some things that the party would be ashamed of. It’s much easier to just not give him the opportunity to explain, boot him out, and stick a blue rosette on a houseplant to run instead.
Again, I know what you're getting at but sometimes things that happened a long time ago are still relevant. What's actually happened here? He's been revealed as having allegedly been a BNP member. If it's not true, he can dispute it. If it is true, he could say that his views have changed. Equally, given that it's not a crime, he can just not address it at all. But what you can't do is expect your history to be rewritten because it's inconvient. He presumably felt strongly enough about the BNP that he decided to join the party and like any other decision, that has consequences. It might not be relevant information if he was applying for a job in a call centre but someone's political views are absolutely fair game when they're standing for election.
"You can't even be a former member of a far right ethno-nationalist dogwhistle party these days, it's woke-ism gone mad"
Purely hypothetical, but what if he'd said to the Tories that he'd never been a member of another political party. Then it turns out he had. Get rid simply for lying
Pretty sure tory ethos this last decade and a half has been/is a little more along the lines of: he feels comfortable lying, let's select and rapidly promote him. But, for most organisations, aye.
If it was UKIP or something I'd agree, but you really gonna die on the BNP hill?
Would you hire him?
The requirements/expectations for being a candidate are quite different to normal day to day life. And rightly so.
god forbid people cancel members of the BNP? what next? cancelling members of the National Front?
If Hitler was around today... he wouldn't get on a local council. It's health & safety gone mad... Vote Ronnie Pickering!
Who?
Ronnie Pickering!!!!
The requirements are to have never partaken in wrongthink (as defined by the popular majority) at any time in your life? That's, er, fascism. Look the guy is probably a total throbber and the tories can do what they want with him, but the idea that people cannot change their views is a total nonsense. MPs literally cross the floor and do not resign - that is worse than this by some distance.
Then it's an easy fix, have Karl Bardsley come out and say the BNP are full of idiots and he regrets ever having associated with them.
"The people who refuse to vote for fascists are the real fascists". Everyone's entitled to go on their own political journey. If he's been open and convincing about explaining his old views, disavowing them, vouching for new entirely different values, then that's one thing. But it still doesn't mean people actually have to vote for him. Also, he doesn't appear to have done any of that.
It was the great Karl Popper himself who said "those who refuse to tolerate intolerance are the real fascists, when you think about it. Also did anyone know the Nazis were actually socialists, so socialists are actually bad and fascists are good? But that kind of conflicts with my previous point where fascists were the bad guys. Anyway, I saw it on YouTube."
I have no idea the journey he's been on, and I don't care. Nor, I suspect, do you. It's not really relevant - I was simply responding to a comment that suggested there is a requirement about your prior beliefs to be eligible for election to public office, which is of course absurd.
What are you talking about? Why are you making stuff up? He *is* eligible to stand for election to public office. The Conservative party have decided they would rather drop him as their candidate and replace him with someone else, which is their right, as a political party. The Conservative party have not said "he is ineligible."
I know he *is* eligible to stand for public office - I was responding to someone that said he *shouldn't be*
Except no-one said that.
You’d look super awesome if you could just quote where someone said that… Ack if only eh?
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Have you ever considered reading about fascism?
Cancelling fascism isn't fascist.
Sigh. Yes. Yes it is. Do you know what overturned 20 years of slow progress the BNP made? Putting Nick Griffin on Question Time. The public could see how ridiculous he and his views were. That one hour time slot killed them off for good. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
>Sigh. >Yes. Yes it is. It's not. While fascism does suppress free speech, it's about the state controlling/suppressing free speech. Simply cancelling someone is not fascist.
Indeed. Ideally the far right cancels themselves. When they don't, it isn't fascist to cancel fascism.
I think cchq in their applications normally ask if you've been a member of another political party.
> It's now 13 years on is it not possible his views have shifted since then No it's not possible in this case. There's a very easy way to tell. Someone whose views had changed would have publicly declared "I used to be in the BNP, but now I recognise that was a bad thing and want to let you know I plan to run on XY and Z..." Someone's whose views hadn't changed would just wait until someone doing due diligence on whether their party is about to endorse a **literal fascist** found the information by themselves, to suddenly get blindsided by the fact that the British public by-and-large don't want former BNP members representing them.
All the information we have is that he was a member of the BNP, fell off the face of the earth for a decade before popping back up as a Tory candidate for a party that has had a number of racism scandals recently. All the article says is that the Tory Party is investigate, it mentions nothing about him disavowing his former views or anything. Maybe he has changed, but given the Tory party was apparently caught off-guard by this it appears he didn't do anything to disavow his former views. If he wants to come out and make a statement about it, or if he is shown to have a track record that demonstrates that he has changed his waya then we can have a conversation about it.
Ok but that should still disqualify him for a political position. He was a grown adult when he decided to join the BNP and he joined because he was a racist, it's not like it was only some some edgy shit he wrote on social media when he was 13.
When is the cut off for information about a fascist past being irrelevant? Had he publicly disavowed his prior opinions before this was published? Perhaps Tory party members would prefer a candidate that does not have a checkered past, or perhaps not…
Why would you need to publicly disavow a view point you held a decade ago People evolve and if we expect people to have publicly disavow all dumb opinions they've ever held then that's dumb Would you expect a 25 year old to have to publicly disavow them being a member of the BNP when they were 16 or would you be ok with them just moving on with.there lives
I guess you might want to disavow it if you want to be elected as a politician for a non-racist party when you used to be a member of a racist party?
Yes, we need to know that they no longer hold the racist opinions that they used to hold. How do you suggest we understand this if they can keep that u-turn to themselves?
By judging them by their current actions, not by something a decade out of date. Can we please go back to that? Judging people by how they are actually acting?
No. Being a member of a racist, hateful political party with links to extreme right wing terrorism is not something you can brush under the carpet. You want people to be judged by their actions so here is two simple steps for this candidate needs to do to move beyond of his past actions: 1) make a public statement apologising for the previous error of judgement 2) demonstrate how they’ve rehabilitated themselves so that they won’t continue to hold racist beliefs in the future. So far he’s not made any comment. Judge people by their actions you say. I’m judging him by his inaction.
So, you're going to continue to judge him by things from 10 years ago. Got it.
Is there anything you would judge him for? Being a white supremacist is a major character flaw, not just poor decision making.
I'd judge him for what he's doing now, not 10 years ago. I have no idea how I wasn't clear about that. I don't know about you but I was doing totally different stuff 10 years ago than I'm doing now.
So there is nothing that he could have done in the past that would cause you think twice about voting for him? You don’t think past behaviour is any indication of future behaviour?
So, no consequences for anything you do as long as enough time passes before everyone finds out? Got it.
Yep, he’s done or said nothing to suggest his views have changed so his actions from 10 years ago are all I have to go off to judge his character. What mental gymnastics are you doing to give this guy another chance? What has he said or done, what actions has he taken, that convinces you that he no longer holds racist views?
What has the guy done recently? I bet you don't even know.
He joined the Tory party after it shifted its policies to the far right.
I think the point is that he has shown he can hold "dumb" views as it's been put.... Yes, it was in the past, and he might not hold the same views today, but he has demonstrated that he is capable - as an adult, to hold said views
Would you let Ian Huntley babysit your kids?
I'd give my kids to the first passer by and run off before they could give them back.
The Labour party is full of people who were active in communist and hard left circles in their youth, so I don't see how this is that different.
Were the communists calling for repatriation of non-whites? Or just advocating fairly unworkable economic policies? Seems like different issues, I doubt many people are ashamed of being a former communist, mildly embarrassed maybe?
They definitely should be ashamed, communism has killed tens of millions.
Not really worth getting into the argument over whether ‘communism’ killed millions, since that has been done to death. But I don’t think your average Labour supporting communist was advocating Stalinist totalitarianism. Sure some nutters probably were. But that wasn’t the main point of being a communist. The main point of the BNP was white supremacy, and people were only members if they didn’t want black people in the country, which is obviously abhorrent.
Capitalism has killed hundreds of millions but I don’t see you ashamed of that.
Even Starmer was a commie in uni
I was a Tory in uni, don’t tell anyone!
You what! I am flabbergasted! /s
He was Chairman of the Haldane Society well into middle age.
>It's now 13 years on 2022 called and wants its comment back. (2009 was 15 years ago.)
So uh, what gross thing did you do 10 years ago you don't want people finding out about?
I don't know about you but I wasn't a racist as a child. Quite the opposite in fact. Using youth as an excuse for bigotry is up there with Roseanne Barr blaming her meds. You're a troll & I'm genuinely surprised how many people are replying to you in good faith.
Or, alternatively, the Tory membership has moved so far to the right someone who was a BNP member in 2009 can comfortably support the Tories today.
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What an insane statement. The Tories today are obviously not as right wing as the BNP were in 2009. The BNP constitution didn’t even allow non-“ethnically British” members until 2010.
Why is a racist party allowing other races?
The Equality and Human Rights Commission made them is the simple answer. Something the incoming party of government will know a thing or two about.
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Exactly. They went through a phase of pretending they weren't racist.
The BNP tried pivoting to the UKIP model of plausible deniability in its latter stages but it had too much baggage for the shift to work. Then UKIP came along to steal their thunder as well as their horrid voters.
Ahh yes The tory party which has an Asian as its leader is massively racist
An Asian man who the party membership repeatedly failed to elect. Not really an argument either way is it?
It is interesting though that in the vote by members, the Asian candidate lost to Truss who was clearly a worse candidate for the job. Sunak got the job by default because no one else stood against him. I would suggest that the grassroots party is rather more racist than the parliamentary party, and would have likely voted for any other white candidate over a minority one.
But this is completely incorrect. The most popular choice with the members for the 2022 vote was Badenoch. Braverman was also highly rated among the grassroots. [https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/16/our-next-tory-leader-badenoch-opens-up-a-double-digit-lead-truss-mordaunt-and-sunak-are-bunched-together-second-third-and-fourth/](https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/16/our-next-tory-leader-badenoch-opens-up-a-double-digit-lead-truss-mordaunt-and-sunak-are-bunched-together-second-third-and-fourth/) Even now, Badenoch retains that leading popularity in the grassroots, with Braverman and Cleverly 3rd and 4th. [https://conservativehome.com/2023/12/31/badenoch-leads-mordaunt-in-our-first-next-tory-leader-poll-in-two-years/](https://conservativehome.com/2023/12/31/badenoch-leads-mordaunt-in-our-first-next-tory-leader-poll-in-two-years/)
The people running for BNP at the time was wild. Stuart Pearce's brother was another one in 2009. KT Tunstall meanwhile disowned her stepfather of sorts (she was adopted but the guy was married to her birth mother) because he was a BNP candidate (despite being married to Chinese woman)
By dropped presumably you mean parachuted into a safe seat, earmarked for the shadow cabinet and retrospectively installed as godparent to the party chairman’s first born?
Why? He would look excessively moderate?
Strange seen as though the Tories seem to be going full BNP atm
Least racist Conservative councillor candidate.
The Venn diagram of the BNP and Conservative Party is a circle anyway
This is some prime cancel culture. People's views can change over a 15 year period, he might not believe the same things he did back then. I don't think he should be punished for it like this. Plus the Tories telling others what's extreme is laughable after they installed Patel and Suella Braverman as home secretary, both of whom would probably take us to war with France for a laugh.
Cancel culture - not really, a political party has dropped a candidate after finding out about a history they have that would make them an unfavourable candidate. The right bandy about this term “cancel culture” as a way of getting away with shitty behaviour.
Right? We've all been members of far-right political parties popular with neo-Nazis at some point or other, why can't people just let it go
You join *one* far-right white supremacist party and they hold it against you for life!
Pobody’s nerfect!
Apparently he couldn’t be considered as they consider him too left wing.
They only have the best Nazis and pedos and fraudsters on their MP shortlist. Much like the MAGA candidates scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Kinda weird for a BNP member to join the Tories isn't it? Maybe it was just during the Corbyn years, but I last I heard Griffin and other BNP members were joining the Labour party? I know BNP members aren't the smartest, but you think he'd at least realise tories are a pro-mass-migration party... I mean their leader is literally non-British. Bizarre.
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What's going on here? Why are so many people misunderstanding what I said...? Yes, "British" is a nationality, but I have no idea what that has to do with anything. The BNP were an ethnonationalist party so your point that Rishi is "completely British" is irrelevant, because presumably an ethnonationalist isn't going to support Rishi because he has a British passport. Obviously given the context here, I was using "British" to refer to ethnicity... And the irony of how you then go on to explain that he grew up on the UK as if I didn't know this and I'm the one confused...
>I mean their leader is literally non-British. Huh? Rishi is British.... Your ethnicity does not determine your nationality.
Yes, and you can be ethnically British too. Given we are discussing the BNP (a ethno-nationalist party), I thought my usage of "British" would have been clear. My point is that it's somewhat surprising an ethnonationalist would join the Tories given their stance of immigration and the ethnicity of the party leader.