The ten candidates dropped by Reform

Reform UK’s election campaign hasn’t got off to the best start. Richard Tice’s party has already had to drop ten prospective parliamentary candidates after some rather unsavoury social media posts were highlighted by media organisations and campaign groups. The Reform leader has since said that his party had published its candidate list early so that outside organisations could help vet them and that he welcomes the ‘extra scrutiny’. It does, however, raise rather serious questions about the quality of his own vetting processes…

Here is the full list of the candidates ditched so far:

Ian Harris

Harris, a self-proclaimed ‘pastafarian’, is a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He fell out with the DVLA in 2015 after he insisted he should be allowed to wear a colander on his head in his driving licence photo, comparing it to Muslim women wearing a hijab. An account run by Harris was found to have liked tweets by former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson and former British National Party leader Nick Griffin.