Weirdest Reform UK candidates from Hitler fan to Covid conspiracy theorist

One described Hitler as “brilliant”, another said that the Covid vaccine was a “crime against humanity” and another discussed a racist conspiracy theory that there’s a plot to replace white Europeans with other races. Meet some of the would-be MPs, who are standing for Reform UK on July 4.

Nigel Farage’s party is fielding hundreds of candidates at the General Election – and he claims that the right-wing outfit could overtake the Tories to be the next opposition. He told a rally in Clacton last night: “We will, I’m quite confident, by early next week clearly be in second place in the opinion polls. And this matters – and it matters because for democracy to function, you need to have opposition.”

But Reform UK has been dogged by issues with its candidates, some of whom have promoted dangerous and divisive views. Mr Farage was grilled on Good Morning Britain this week about 41 Reform candidates found to be social media friends with British Neo-fascist leader Gary Raikes, founder of the New British Union, who has called for a “fascist revolution” and wants to replace parliament with a dictatorship.

He blamed a vetting company that the party paid “a very large sum of money” but which “didn’t do the work.” He added: “Most of our candidates are not political sophisticates. Having said that, like the Green Party, and like other parties, we’ve had one or two slip through the net that shouldn’t have done.”

But Mr Farage defended the candidates, saying: “people like each other on Facebook without knowing who they are liking… people befriend people on Facebook after five seconds.” Reform has said it is consulting lawyers over the vetting company that looked at its candidates.

George Laming, from the anti-extremism charity HOPE not Hate, said: “Time and time again, Reform UK candidates have been exposed for extreme racism and hateful ideology. It is clear they are not a credible party.”

Here we look at some of the Reform candidates hoping to get into Parliament next month…

Jack Aaron – Welwyn Hatfield

Jack Aaron described Adolf Hitler as “brilliant”, said Syrian dictator President Assad was “gentle by nature” and that President Putin’s use of force in Ukraine was “legitimate,” according to The Times.

The Reform candidate, who is standing against defence secretary Grant Shapps in Welwyn Hatfield, founded the World Socionics Society, a group promoting a pseudoscientific personalities theory.

Mr Aaron, a psychologist, posted on X in 2002 that Hitler was “brilliant in using Fe+Ni [socionics personality traits] to inspire people into action” while criticising his “basically incoherent […] writing and rationale”.

On February 27, 2022, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, he said that those who called Putin insane “do not understand him and limit their ability to oppose him”.

And last year, on the forum Reddit, he said that Assad was “gentle by nature” and not “some bloodthirsty tyrant who exercises control over his people with an iron fist”, adding that the dictator had been “led astray” by social stereotyping.

Mr Aaron later doubled down and defended his claims, saying: Yes, Hitler was as brilliant as he was utter evil. How is that controversial to say, given that he was able to turn the Germans to such destructive acts, including killing many members of my own family?

“I strongly believe, as a psychologist, in separating intelligence and talent from morality, so that we can adequately diagnose problems and help people. By no means am I saying Hitler or Putin or al-Assad are good people that we should admire. They range from the absolutely ingenious evil to wannabe warlord to weak man born into a brutal regime of death and destruction.”

Garry Sutherland – Exmouth & Exeter East

Mr Sutherland describes himself as a “Husband, father and patriot” but leaves out the part about him being banned from keeping animals as pets.

Reform’s man for Exmouth & Exeter East was was found guilty in June last year of causing unnecessary suffering to a dog by kicking it in a Dorset country lane.

He was banned from owning a dog for two years and told to pay £1,964 in compensation after Weymouth Magistrates’ Court heard he had kicked the animal in the Dorset village of Chideock, contrary to the Animal Welfare Act.

Mr Sutherland has also promoted anti-Semitic theories, endorsing a video from conspiracy theorist David Icke in which he said: “Zionism is not about Jewish people. It is a political system, at its core it is a secret society putting its agents in places of power.”

In a retweet of this video, Mr Sutherland said about Icke: “Remember when they used to mock him? We’re not laughing now.”

In another post, he used a homophobic slur in an apparent reference to Phillip Schofield and shared a number of posts in support of Tommy Robinson, the far-Right founder of the English Defence League, stating on another occasion that “what he says chimes with me”.

In a March 31 post shared on X, formerly Twitter, Sutherland addressed his conviction that was covered in the media. He said: “A more accurate headline would be ‘former bomb disposal officer saves family from dog attack.’ But we mustn’t let the truth get in the way of electioneering. Eh?”

Ian Gribbin – Bexhill & Battle

Reform’s candidate for Bexhill and Battle posted comments online in 2022 claiming that Britain would be “in a far better state today” if the country had “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality” instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two.

Mr Gribbin also wrote on the Unherd magazine website that Winston Churchill was “abysmal” and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And he claimed women were the “sponging gender” and should be “deprived of health care until their life expectancies are the same as men, Fair’s fair.”

A year earlier he wrote that female soldiers “almost made me wretch (sic)” and were a “total liability”.

Mr Gribbin later said: “I apologise for these old comments and withdraw them unreservedly and the upset that they have caused.” But a Reform spokesperson told the Jewish Chronicle the party would not sack their candidate and he had “done nothing wrong.”

Amelia Randall – Herne Bay & Sandwich

Ms Randall is a self-proclaimed psychic fortune teller who sold tarot card readings on porn website OnlyFans before deciding to run for Parliament with Reform, reports The Mail on Sunday.

The single mum who says she “almost became homeless” sold spells for up to £200 on Facebook in 2019 while offering “mystic psychic readings” for £14.99 on her now-deleted OnlyFans page.

Claiming that “my psychic abilities have grown as the years have gone by” she says on her website that she also does “candle magic”, “numerology forecasts” and “angel harmony readings”.

“I have been a part of an international psychic line for years, but it is now time that I focus on my own psychic and spiritual business,” she adds. On a gofundme page, she wrote: “Our current government has destroyed our country and it is time, to not just think about ourselves, but also the future for our children and grandchildren.”

David Burgess-Joyce – Wallasey

A Tory councillor for eight years, Mr Burgess-Joyce suggests on his Reform web page that he left the party because he “lost faith that my country is in safe hands”.

In fact he was kicked out of the Conservatives after claiming that Labour MP and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy had done “more damage to community cohesion than any KKK member”.

The tweet in 2019 in which he quoted a tweet from Mr Lammy about Donald Trump and also appeared to accuse him of racism and “virtue signalling” attracted more than 1,000 comments before being deleted.

Burgess-Joyce, now standing for Reform in Wallasey, later apologised on Twitter to those he had “inadvertently offended”. He later admitted to the BBC that he had used “words that were crass and inappropriate.”

Mark Butcher – Blackpool South

Reform’s candidate for Blackpool South – where he also stood at the by-election in April following a Tory lobbying scandal – has previously engaged with a host of conspiracy theories on his YouTube account.

In a video posted on his YouTube account in 2018, Mr Butcher ranted on about a string of conspiracy theories and urged his followers to “get real people, wakey wakey, red pill time”.

He warned listeners to “do your research folks” about issues such as Agenda 21, a UN sustainability resolution that conspiracy theorists believe is trying to create an eco-totalitarian regime, and the Kalergi Agreement, a debunked far right theory about a plot to replace white Europeans with other races.

Mr Butcher also claimed the CIA made TVs to put people to sleep so they wouldn’t be alert to these conspiracies, suggested the Government gets a person’s weight in gold, which it can then trade on the NASDAQ stock exchange every time they sign a document, and labelled the DVLA an “evil entity”.

A Reform UK spokesman said: “This is clearly some very late night philosophical ramblings about the state of the nation 5 1/2 years ago. He raises questions about a number of matters, while accepting that they are all questionable and conspiracy theories, dismisses voting for the main parties and UKIP, but pledges to fight against division and that he isn’t going to give up on the country.”

Andrew Husband – North Durham

Reform’s candidate in North Durham says he is “only interested in common sense policies, not waffle” but has endorsed wild conspiracy theories, as reported in the Byline Times.

Mr Husband suggested that the Covid vaccine was the “greatest crime against humanity” and has retweeted posts from Wide Awake Media, a conspiracy platform, which call climate change a “scam”.

He has also retweeted a video clip of US President Joe Biden talking about building regulations in relation to wildfire resilience and claimed that he had been referencing the roofs of houses that survived wildfires as evidence of the use of “direct energy weapons” to cause wildfires in Texas and Brazil. When last checked on 19 June it appeared Mr Husband’s account on X had been removed.

Reform UK were contacted for a comment.