Oh dear. Just two days to go until polling day and Reform is once again in the limelight after yet more controversial comments by a candidate have come to light. It transpires that the party’s Orkney and Shetland choice, Robert Smith, is responsible for a series of damning social media posts – in which he takes aim at JK Rowling, Nicola Sturgeon and Ursula von Der Leyen amongst others.
Between 2016 and 2023, Smith took to social media to post about a number of political and public figures using rather derogatory language. The Times reports that Smith targeted journalist and broadcaster Andrew Marr, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan using vulgar sexual language. He called Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, ‘head bitch of the globalists’. And, after persistently using the word ‘bitch’ in reference to Rowling, journalist Kay Burley and Sturgeon, Reform’s Scottish candidate also shared an article about Scotland’s former first minister, writing: ‘Since the great David Attenborough legitimised calls for political leaders to be shot, why not start with this bitch?’ Good heavens…
Party leader Nigel Farage has already apologised for candidate choices who ‘should never, ever have been there’, adding he plans to put the party under ‘much, much stricter control’. Party spokesperson Ann Widdecombe has said that sexist language is ‘unacceptable’, telling Radio 4 that: ‘It’s perfectly true that in all parties, you sometimes get bad apples. And it’s also true that some slipped through the vetting processes.’ A fortnight ago, Farage slammed the vetting firm he had used for ‘stitching up’ Reform UK after the party signed a £144,000 contract with Vetting.com. However the company site says that instead of being an ‘outsourced background screening company’, it provides clients ‘with the ability to complete your own background screening in house’. How curious…
While the gap between the Tories and Reform narrowed significantly after Farage announced he would become party leader and stand as a candidate – with his self-described ‘start-up’ even overtaking Sunak’s boys in blue in one poll – more recently support for the right-wing group has fallen. A BMG Research survey for the i newspaper carried out between 24-26 June saw Reform UK slide down three points to 16 per cent from its record high of 19 per cent the week before. It followed Farage’s ‘Putin ally’ row, where the Reform leader said he ‘admired [Putin] as a political operator’ and suggested the West had provoked the war in Ukraine by giving the Russian leader an excuse to invade. So will this latest candidate scandal further dent the party’s support? All will be revealed come 5 July…
