The Conservatives have offered Jewish groups a meeting with their council election candidate, Joshua Bonehill-Paine, who spent time in prison for neo-Nazi activism.
The party has been criticised over the decision to select him to stand for a seat on Somerset Council next year, but Kemi Badenoch has said she is standing by Bonehill-Paine because she wants to give him a second chance.
He has described his past views as “indefensible” and now speaks out against extremism.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has called on the Conservatives to ditch him as a candidate, saying the selection “beggars belief”.
It is understood the party has now offered the Board, as well as the Jewish Leadership Council and the Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, a meeting with Bonehill-Paine so they can discuss their concerns directly.
When Bonehill-Paine’s selection was announced, Karen Newman, vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews – the largest body representing Jews in the UK – said that the board had contacted the Conservatives to “set out our concerns and call on them to rescind his selection and review their vetting processes.”
Bonehill-Paine spent three years in prison for posting antisemitic material ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally. A year later he was convicted of racially harassing then-Labour MP Luciana Berger. Berger is now a member of the House of Lords.
Berger, reacting to the news of his selection on X, said he had, “published *reams* of deeply racist, misogynistic and pornographic material about me.”
In an interview with the Today programme, she told the BBC: “I still live today with the profound and deep impacts of those events”.
She suggested his “sustained campaign” against her should rule him out of the candidacy for a council seat.
“I think that we need to have a bar when it comes to standing for public office,” she explained.
“I strongly believe that this individual today falls very, very short of that.”
Bonehill-Paine also holds previous convictions for assaulting a police officer, burglary of a police station and malicious communications.
On Tuesday he was selected to stand as the Tory candidate in the new Somerset Council seat of Crewkerne South in 2027. He said he wanted to “give back” to a community which had supported him.
Bonehill-Paine said he reformed his previous views when he learned of the murder of MP Jo Cox, and subsequently undertook a de-radicalisation programme. He now delivers counter-extremism sessions around the UK.
He said: “When I was first released from prison in 2018, I was supported by many of the people in my local community who understood that I had made some awful mistakes but was wanting to change my life around.”
Speaking on Tuesday, Tory leader Badenoch said Bonehill-Paine “is spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew he had caused previously.
“He’s going up and down the country training people and the Conservative Party believes in second chances.
“This is not just someone that we’ve picked up who is a convicted criminal – this is somebody who is actively working to help communities, especially Jewish communities.”
The decision to field Bonehill-Paine as a candidate has also been criticised by other political parties.
Liberal Democrat MP Adam Dance, whose Yeovil constituency includes Crewkerne, said the Conservative Party needed to explain “why it believes this candidate is fit to serve”, while a Labour Party spokesperson said his selection was “a total disgrace”.
