A former neo-Nazi activist who was convicted of harassing a Jewish MP has withdrawn as a Conservative election candidate after Kemi Badenoch offered him a role as an advisor to the party.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine said on Wednesday he had withdrawn from next year’s local elections, and that Kemi Badenoch had instead offered him a role as an advisor to her party’s culture and integration commission, specifically focusing on how young men become radicalised.
The Tory leader, who has come under pressure in the last 48 hours from individuals and organisations, including the the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said she was “sad” that Bonehill-Paine felt he “won’t be given the space to explain his position and represent his community”.
“If we are going to stop extremism and antisemitism, we are going to need help from those people who were part of the problem, but have now changed and are being part of the solution,” she said in a post on X.
Both the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council had turned down the Tory party’s offer of a meeting with Bonehill-Paine, who previously described himself as a “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights” and re-emerged in recent years as the creator of the Crewkerne Gazette, a satirical online account that has gained a cult following.
He had been selected to stand for election to Somerset council next year in a new Crewkerne South district, but said in a post on X on Wednesday: “Rather than standing as a local council candidate, I believe that my experience is better used supporting Kemi Badenoch in her ongoing mission to combat the antisemitism and extremism that is dividing our nation.”
He was jailed in 2015 for more than three years after posting “vile” antisemitic material online before a planned neo-Nazi rally.
In 2016, he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for abuse directed at the then Labour MP Luciana Berger, who is Jewish, which included posting messages to his blog calling Berger a “rodent” and an “evil money-grabber”.
Berger, a member of the House of Lords who was the target of a campaign of abuse by Bonehill-Paine when he was a neo-Nazi, had intervened earlier this week, telling Badenoch directly: “For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t believe this man should have *any* role in public life – because of both his racism and his view of women.”
