Stuart Prior was one of 53 Reform members elected to Essex County Council and earned a majority on the authority for Nigel Farage’s party.
A newly-elected Reform UK councillor has resigned from the council and been expelled from the party days after the Mirror exposed him for ‘racist bile’ on social media. Stuart Prior was one of 53 Reform members elected to Essex County Council last week as Nigel Farage’s party earned a majority. Prior also gained a seat on Rochford District Council.
Before the election, a joint Mirror investigation with Hope Not Hate exposed Prior for sharing racist bile online. Political opponents called on Reform UK to “drop” Prior as a candidate ahead of Thursday’s elections.
A Reform UK source said on Monday: “Stuart Prior informed us that he was resigning from his elected positions for personal reasons. We have also revoked his Reform UK membership.”
An Essex County Council spokesperson said: “We have had confirmation that the successful candidate for Rayleigh West has resigned from their position as a county councillor.
“We also understand they have resigned from their role as a councillor for Rochford District Council. Officers from both authorities will work together to co-ordinate by-elections, with arrangements communicated to residents as soon as possible.”
A spokesperson from Rochford District Council also confirmed this was the case.
It is thought Prior earlier this year deleted an X account named @essexpriory that had tweeted “Muslims are dirt” and “Muslims are awful, globally”. He was accused of posting that genocide could not be committed against them.
Prior told the Mirror: “That’s not what I would have put down,” and “this isn’t me”. He won the Essex County Council division of Rayleigh West with a majority of 796 votes, taking the seat from the Liberal Democrats. He also won Sweyne Park and the Grange on Rochford. Farage’s party won all 13 seats up for grabs on the district council – and no one party now has overall control there. Last month, Farage was asked if all of Reform’s candidates had been vetted in the county. “I know that our candidates will be held to a higher standard than any of the other parties,” he said. “That’s because we are the challengers. We are the ones taking on the establishment. Yet we have done a good, thorough professional job”.
Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate, accused Reform of “a systematic failure in the party’s vetting.”
When we confronted the 54-year-old at his home in an Essex village with our dossier of evidence, he denied being a racist. On his tweet about the “master race,” Prior claimed, “I don’t recall that at all, blimey.” And in reference to his comment about Black people’s brains, he said: “Goodness me, that is not me, 100% not.” And when read back his tweet saying “good” and “reap it” in reference to women being raped, Prior said: “No, this isn’t me.” In response to a tweet questioning whether white women should be allowed to wear braids, Prior wrote in December: “As the master race, they can do as they please.”
In October, Your Party MP Zarah Sultana tweeted referring to a woman of Punjabi heritage being raped in a racist attack and a Sikh woman suffering the same fate. Prior reposted the tweet, writing: “good. reap it”.
Meanwhile, in November he suggested white people had bigger brains than Black people. A user shared pictures of white athletes on the floor next to their standing Black counterparts, writing: “But how did they manage to colonize us?”
In response, Prior wrote: “Larger brains. Google which race has the smallest brain…. Then, once you have that answer, Google whether brain size dictates intelligence in humans.”
The same month, Prior declared: “There cannot be a genocide against Muslims. It’s only ever self-defence against those rats.”Reacting to a video of a Black man apparently being disruptive on a Tube train in October, Prior used a racial slur.In response to a tweet referencing the Huntingdon knife attack, Prior wrote in November: “If this was caused by another third world invader, then this country needs a purge.”When we read him a tweet in which he had referred to immigrants as a cancer, Prior said: “This looks likely something that’s been kind of created against me.”
Last month, we exposed a series of Reform candidates’ views, including one who said they were a fan of notorious fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
Local council candidates at the centre of racism claims faced calls to resign within hours of being elected for Reform.Daniel Devaney topped the poll in his Bradford ward despite a post in which he said that he would “blast [Muslims] off the face of the earth”, describing them as ‘pure scum.’He later apologised when confronted by the Mirror.