A former far-right activist, who has a string of convictions including harassing a Jewish MP, has stood down as a Conservative candidate in upcoming local elections after backlash.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine said he acknowledged that “my previous actions continue to cause pain in the Jewish community”.
He said “if I stand as a council candidate, other political parties will spend all their time focusing on my past rather than the work I'm doing today, or even fighting antisemitism in their own midst.
“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.
“I have therefore informed the Party of my decision to withdraw from next year’s council election and Kemi has instead offered that I become an adviser to the Conservative Party’s Culture and Integration Commission, specifically focusing on how young men become radicalised.”
Earlier, he had said he was “tremendously proud” to have been selected by the party to stand as a candidate for Crewkerne South in next year’s Somerset Council elections.
Mr Bonehill-Paine, who now runs a political satire account on social media posting AI videos, is a former neo-Nazi activist who has several convictions, including posting anti-Semitic material ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally.
In 2016 he was found guilty of harassing former MP Luciana Berger in a string of anti-Jewish rants, posting articles online calling her a "dominatrix" and "an evil money-grabber" with a "deep-rooted hatred of men".
He was previously jailed for producing an advert for a neo-Nazi rally illustrated with a picture of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz which promised “an absolute gas”.
Since then he has apologised for his past offending, and says he is dedicated to “challenging the wave of hatred British Jews continue to face”.
Hours before he stood down, Jewish leaders rejected Ms Badenoch’s offer of a meeting with him from as she defended his selection as a council candidate.
In a joint statement, the Board of Deputies and the JLC said they had declined an invitation to meet Mr Bonehill-Paine, describing him as “a former neo-Nazi with criminal convictions for antisemitic hatred”.
They said: “The severity of Joshua Bonehill-Paine’s crimes targeting Luciana Berger and others mean that he still faces ongoing legal restrictions.
“Whilst we do believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, this should not in this case entail selection as a candidate for a major political party, and the impact of this decision on the victims ought to be a central consideration.”
Mrs Badenoch defended his selection on Wednesday, saying she believed he had been rehabilitated.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I am extremely worried about antisemitism and what I feel is that if we can’t have the people who have previously been radicalised, who understand what went wrong and are part of the fight against antisemitism now. If we’re saying: ‘No, no, no, you’re untouchable,’ then how can we pretend that we believe in rehabilitation?”
But she suggested she would not allow him to stand for Parliament, and that as a councillor he would mainly be in charge of things like bins.
She said: “I’m not giving him a national platform, he is standing to be a councillor in Somerset… it is a local platform looking at parking, sorting out bins. I have much higher thresholds for what it takes to be a Conservative MP.”
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