Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a former neo-Nazi activist with convictions including harassing a Jewish MP, has been selected as a Conservative candidate for Somerset council.
Bonehill-Paine, creator of the viral Crewkerne Gazette AI video series, is due to stand for the new Crewkerne South district next year. He’s an executive member of the Tories’ Yeovil branch, working as an events organiser. “The branch and indeed party are fully aware of my past,” he told the Guardian. “Our chairman has been a vocal advocate and has supported me since I became a member of the party. I am very grateful for the support.”
Who he actually is
Bonehill-Paine once described himself as a “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights.” He re-emerged in recent years as the person behind the Crewkerne Gazette, a satirical account with a genuine cult following, one that’s been sharply critical of Labour and Reform while consistently favourable to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
Rebecca Harris, the Tory chief whip, was criticised earlier this year for reposting one of the account’s videos, depicting Badenoch and shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy as characters from Scarface, after Bonehill-Paine had already been publicly identified as its creator.
His record: a conviction for assaulting a police officer and burgling a police station. A 2014 conviction for malicious communications over an anti-Islam hoax that led to death threats against a Leicester pub’s owners. In 2015, jailed for over three years for posting “vile” antisemitic material online ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally. In 2016, found guilty of racially aggravated harassment against then-Labour MP Luciana Berger, who is Jewish, for blog posts calling her a “rodent” and an “evil money-grabber.” He also founded and led the National British Resistance, a far-right group.
He told the Guardian his convictions are now spent, that he holds various Home Office counter-extremism certifications, and that he’s spoken alongside MPs about his past and about antisemitism facing British Jews.
The hypocrisy accusation
Reform, hardly a neutral party here, went straight for it. A spokesperson said: “Kemi claims the Tories have changed and they will have a new generation of candidates, it’s now clear what calibre of candidates they will be. Kemi claims to support the fight against antisemitism yet selects a convicted antisemite Nazi as a candidate. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.”
The wider Tory context
This lands as Badenoch faces accusations of freezing out centrist Conservatives. Last month it emerged that all prospective Tory MPs must now align with her pledges to scrap the 2050 net zero target and leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Over the weekend, Cody Butler resigned as chair of the One Nation Conservative Network, writing publicly that he no longer believes there’s a home for one-nation conservatism in the party. Former cabinet minister Grant Shapps was recently rejected as a Tory parliamentary candidate. Badenoch told the BBC last week that she leads “a brand new party full of new people.”
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