Somerset council candidate faces calls to be dropped
It's after peer he was jailed for harassing said he should have "no role in public life"
A Labour peer has said a blogger who previously harassed her should not “have any role in public life” after he was selected by the Conservatives to stand in a council election.
Baroness Luciana Berger criticised the decision to select Joshua Bonehill-Paine to fight the Crewkerne South division of Somerset next May.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch previously defended her party’s decision, saying the candidate was “spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew that he had caused previously”.
Mr Bonehill-Paine was jailed in 2016, after he was convicted of racially aggravated harassment against Lady Berger, who is Jewish.
He wrote several blog posts about the peer, who was the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, in which he described her as “an evil money-grabber” with a “deep-rooted hatred of men”.
In one post, he claimed the number of Jewish Labour MPs was a “problem”.
He was previously jailed for producing an advert illustrated with a picture of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz which promised “an absolute gas” at a rally in Golders Green, north London.
Mr Bonehill-Paine said earlier on Tuesday he had “no excuses” for his past offending and added he has since dedicated himself to “challenging the wave of hatred British Jews continue to face”.
Writing on X, Lady Berger said she was six months pregnant when she gave evidence in Mr Bonehill-Paine’s trial at the Old Bailey.
She wrote: “It was two days of hell.”
She also said: “This case still haunts me. I feel a bit sick reading well-known commentators debate his selection today and say that ‘these are precisely the people we need in public office’.
“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.
“Kemi Badenoch you’ve got this very, very wrong.”
Karen Newman, vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, criticised the selection, saying “it beggars belief”.
She added: “We have contacted the Conservative Party to set out our concerns and call on them to rescind his selection and review their vetting processes.”
Mrs Badenoch earlier told reporters: “I want to be very clear – and I think people can look at me and know that I’m not a person who would be recruiting neo-Nazis.
“Josh is someone who actually has been certified by the Home Office to train police officers on antisemitism and on countering extremism.
“Yes, he is somebody who had been previously convicted but he is someone who has shown contrition for his crimes, has been rehabilitated and is spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew that he had caused previously.
Mrs Badenoch added “the Conservative Party believes in second chances”.
She continued: “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.
“And this is what I want to see – I want to see second chances for good people, for people who’ve learned their lessons, for people who are showing that they know what they did was wrong.”
Earlier this year, Channel 4 News unmasked Mr Bonehill-Paine as the anonymous man behind the viral satirical X page the Crewkerne Gazette.
The page, which has more than 40,000 followers on the social media platform, features AI-generated videos depicting various real-life politicians, including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, Mrs Badenoch, shadow home secretary Chris Philp and Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
In a statement, seen by the Press Association, Mr Bonehill-Paine said: “Eight years ago, I made the decision to confront and combat antisemitism.
“I felt enormous grief and shame over the way I had treated Jewish people in this country.
“What I did was utterly indefensible and there can be no excuses for it.
“Since then, I have come to know many people within the Jewish community and have dedicated myself to challenging the wave of hatred British Jews continue to face.
“That is a commitment I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”