These Tories have backed Reclaim's four commitments, in exchange for campaign donation
Four Conservative candidates have backed pledges by Laurence Fox’s right-wing Reclaim Party, in exchange for £5,000 each in campaign donations.
Causing even more headache for Rishi Sunak, four politicians running in the general election for the Tories have put their support behind four pledges that are not Conservative Party policy, symbolic of a faction of the party leaning further to the right.
Reclaim’s “four commitments to culture” include; leaving the European Court of Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act and bringing in a British Bill of Rights, banning all forms of gender reassignment for children and reforming the Equality Act with the aim to eliminate sex and race-based discrimination.
The party was founded by Laurence Fox, who was suspended from GB News for making misogynistic comments about a journalist last year, with the populist party leaning strongly on its “anti-woke” messaging and playing into the ‘culture wars’.
Fox was also forced to pay £180,000 in libel damages to two people in April for defaming them by calling them ‘peadophiles’, after they had labelled Fox a racist.
But four Tory candidates have thrown their support behind Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party policies, which they have promised to uphold if elected. They are Dame Andrea Jenkyns, Brendan Clarke-Smith, Karl McCartney and Marco Longhi.
Speaking on her X account, Andrea Jenkyns said “since being elected in 2015 “I’ve always supported campaigns that I truly believe in,” as she explained why the Reclaim pledges were getting her support.
One social media user commented: “Presumably the Conservative Party now suspends these four candidates? Or are they happy to be bounced into a virtual coalition with overt bigotry?”
(Image credit: Creative Commons / David Woolfall and Chris McAndrew)
Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward
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