Reform UK has surged in the polls but the party harbours some unsavoury rogues

The party's surge in the polls has led to panic in Downing Street, and talk about a return to frontline politics for Nigel Farage.

Last night, Tory MP Jonathan Gullis said: 'Reform says its candidates have been vetted and given that all of this information was in the public domain, we can only assume this cast of characters passed Mr Tice's muster. We are clearly not just talking about a 'few rotten eggs' here.

The Reform UK candidates – who have to pay a vetting fee of £25 when they apply to stand – include Garry Sutherland, standing in the Exmouth and Exeter East constituency, who was found guilty in June last year of causing unnecessary suffering to a dog by kicking it in a Dorset country lane. In another post, he used a homophobic slur in an apparent reference to Phillip Schofield and shared a number of posts in support of Tommy Robinson, the far-Right founder of the English Defence League, stating on another occasion that 'what he says chimes with me'.

Jacqui Harris is the Reforme UK for the party in Kenilworth and Southam, in Warwickshire. She was suspended as a Tory councillor in 2019 over comments on Twitter in which she suggested that the anti-Semitism row within the Labour Party could be part of an Israeli conspiracy Richard Brown, the Harrogate and Knaresborough candidate, has made misogynistic remarks about Labour MP Jess Phillips, calling her a 'bitch' in 2022.

Ginny Heathcote Ball was abandoned as the party's choice for Rutland and Stamford after she called for British activist Femi Oluwole to be deported, and that British radio presenter Nihal Arthanayake, who has Sri Lankan heritage, should 'emigrate to a black-only country'. Last year she called Angela Rayner a 'slut' and in 2022 used the hashtag 'AcidAttack' directly after calling for 'a purge of the scum in the Labour Party'.

The party has also deselected its candidate for Milton Keynes Central, Ray Brady, over what Labour described as a 'misleading' and 'dangerous' video he shared concerning asylum seekers.

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