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Kemi Badenoch has defended her party’s decision to allow a former neo-Nazi who was jailed for subjecting a prominent Labour politician to antisemitic abuse to stand as a councillor.
Badenoch said her party was not giving Joshua Bonehill-Paine, who is standing for election in Somerset, a “national platform”.
“This man is showing that he’s more than contrite, he’s actually working training Prevent officers, speaking in universities and schools,” Badenoch told BBC’s Radio 4 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?
“I’m someone who’s quite sceptical about rehabilitation and I see this man as somebody who has been rehabilitated.”
Luciana Berger, who was targeted by Bonehill-Paine in a campaign of antisemitic abusein 2016, said he fell short of the bar for standing for public office. She said she lived today with the “profound and deep impacts” of those events.
“There is a big difference between going back into society and teaching others possibly about what you did and why it was wrong, to making the leap to standing for public office,” she told the BBC. “I think there’s a massive distinction there.”
Badenoch suggested the convicted criminal would not be allowed to stand as an MP, but that his ambition to be a councillor was legitimate. “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.”
In response to criticism from Labour MPs, Badenoch pointed out that Louise Haigh, a member of Andy Burnham’s cabinet, had a fraud conviction.
Badenoch has previously criticised Haigh the Commons, saying: “The country needs conviction politicians, not politicians with convictions.”
Bonehill-Paine, the creator of the viral Crewkerne Gazette series of AI clips, is due to stand for election in a new Crewkerne South district next year.
He told the Guardian on Monday that he was an executive member of the Tories’ Yeovil branch, working as an events organiser, and has carried out counter-extremism work since he was released from prison.
Bonehill-Paine also has a conviction for assaulting a police officer and burglary of a police station, and was convicted in 2014 of malicious communications over an anti-Islam hoax that led to death threats against the owners of a pub in Leicester.
He was jailed in 2015 for more than three years after posting antisemitic material online before a planned neo-Nazi rally.
In 2016, he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for abuse directed at Berger, an MP at the time, which included posting messages to his blog calling her a “rodent” and an “evil money-grabber”. He was also the founder and leader of the National British Resistance, a far-right group.
Berger said it had been difficult to give evidence in court at the time as she was six months pregnant. She said she doesn’t believe Bonehill-Paine’s continued publication of AI videos are “commensurate with public life”.
Crewkerne Gazette’s recent AI videos include one of a half-naked Burnham titled “Another Speccy Twat” and another of a rap battle between Burnham and Badenoch.
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere physically adjacent to this person if he was to surface,” said Berger.
“I’m deeply concerned also about his misogyny, and about the pornographic images that he created, and I think when you look at that in the round that is not an acceptable person to be in public life.”
Crewkerne Gazette is a satirical online account that has gained a cult following. Its skits are critical of Labour and Reform UK, and have cast Badenoch in a favourable light.
This year, the Conservative chief whip, Rebecca Harris, was criticised for reposting one video in which Badenoch and the shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy, were depicted as characters in the gangster film Scarface.
