Last month, Farage claimed Reform was vetting candidates "to a standard that no other party has ever done before for local council elections"
Reform has suspended two more of its candidates just weeks before the local elections, one for racist social media posts, and the other for defending Jimmy Savile.
Despite countless Reform vetting scandals, Farage boasted about his party’s rigorous selection standards last month.
Farage proudly told GB News: “We’ve been vetting, I bet, to a standard that no other party has ever done before for local council elections.”
Yet, Farage’s confident claims haven’t held up. Reform suspended Oxfordshire candidate Steve Hartley for saying paedophile Jimmy Savile was an “innocent man” and a “working class hero”. He even referred to him as a “role model”.
In a post on X in 2022, Hartley said: “The established elite don’t like a self-made man, a working class hero. Saville was one, Putin is another. So they make up horrible lies about them and let the media do the rest.”
Speaking to the Oxford Mail last week, Hartley defended Savile again, stating: “I stand by my claims that Jimmy Savile was a working-class hero. These allegations were never proven and really how it came out after his death was the worst thing.”
The next day, Miriam Thomas, Reform’s Buckinghamshire candidate was suspended after the Mirror uncovered anti-Muslim posts on her Facebook.
Thomas had called Islam a ‘false religion’ and said that Muslims were trying to impose Sharia law in the UK.
Last year, Farage blamed a vetting company for his party’s failure to prevent candidates from standing who hold disgraceful views. A month ago, Reform put a candidate who had been suspended for praising Hitler and Assad in charge of vetting.
In other words, their vetting process is so thorough that they don’t check candidates’ abhorrent social media posts. Clearly ‘Reform will fix it’ doesn’t apply to their own vetting system.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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