Luciana Berger condemns Kemi Badenoch’s decision to allow former neo-Nazi to stand as Tory candidate

Luciana Berger, the Jewish former Labour MP who was subjected to a campaign of abuse by a former neo-Nazi has condemned Badenoch’s decision to now allow him to stand as a Conservative candidate.

Joshua Bonehill-Paine was sentenced to three years and four months in prison in 2015 for harassing Berger.

He also has a conviction for assaulting a police officer and burglary of a police station and for malicious communications over an anti-Islam hoax that led to death threats against the owners of a pub in Leicester.

In a post on X yesterday, Berger said Badenoch had got the decision “very, very wrong”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4 this morning, Berger, who is now a Labour peer, argued that “there is a big difference between going back into society and teaching others possibly about what you did and why it was wrong to making the leap to standing for public office”.

Berger pointed out that Bonehill-Paine had engaged “in a sustained campaign not just against me, but many others”.

The Labour peer said: “I think that we need to have a bar when it comes to standing for public office and I strongly believe that today this individual falls very very short of that.”

Badenoch said she had listened to what Berger said and understood her position.

However, she said she had looked at Bonehill-Paine’s case “very carefully”, and defended her decision, stating that he had served his sentence and is “actively working on anti-radicalisation” now.

Badenoch also argued that it was fine for Bonehill-Paine to stand as a councillor in Somerset, but that there is a higher threshold for people to stand as Conservative parliamentary candidates.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward