Zia Yusuf has been mocked over another former Tory MP joining Reform UK’s ranks.

Jane Stevenson, the former Conservative MP for Wolverhampton North East, announced that she was joining Reform yesterday.

In an X post on 17 January, Yusuf declared a “Huge announcement from Reform”

He said: “After May 7th 2026, Reform will accept NO MORE Tories.

“That means MPs. It means former MPs. It means councillors. Tick tock.”

This prompted the Labour Press account on X to post: “Zia, they’re ignoring you.”

Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty also wrote: “Sad to see @ZiaYusufUK so publicly undermined like this.”

Despite the four-month delay in Stevenson announcing her defection, Yusuf dismissed the claim, saying that she joined the party before the 7 May cutoff.

Yusuf wrote: “Wrong. She joined *before* the May 7th deadline. As she has already said on here.

“Literally the government’s press team and you can’t even get basic facts right.”

One X user questioned the delay in Stevenson announcing her defection, stating: “Jane Stevenson says she joined Reform before the May 7th cut-off. So why wait FOUR MONTHS to announce it?”.

Responding to a post by GB News presenter Christopher Hope, Stevenson said: “Chris, after a break from party politics, I quietly joined online before the deadline. Didn’t know if I’d get involved, but decided to go to Conference to see how I felt. My long Facebook post from yesterday says I joined months ago.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Kemi Badenoch’s day didn’t get off to a good start. This morning, she appeared on the BBC Today Programme for an interview she hoped would focus on the government’s early release scheme.

While Tory criminal justice policy did make up a portion of the interview, inevitably the BBC spent quite a bit of time on the fact that the Tories have selected Joshua Bonehill-Paine – a former neo-Nazi who has a number of convictions for his activities in the 2010s.

Bonehill-Paine has been selected as a Tory candidate in Somerset. His convictions – for which he was imprisoned – include inciting racial hatred against Jews and aggravated racial harassment. The latter conviction was for material he had written about the then Labour MP Luciana Berger.

In the BBC interview, the presenter Justin Webb asked her: “He was convicted, he went to prison, he is now apparently going to stand for your party as as councillor in Somerset – why?”

While Badenoch initially said that Bonehill-Paine’s previous actions were ‘appalling’ and ‘abhorrent’, she went on to defend him being selected as a candidate.

Badenoch told the BBC: “This is a man who is talking about how in his late teens and early twenties he was radicalised, he became a racist and an antisemite. And he is training – certified by the Home Office – training people on how to deal with that.”

Later in the interview, Badenoch justified his selection on the basis that the Tories weren’t giving him a ‘national platform’.

She told the BBC: “I’m not giving him a national platform. He is standing to be a councillor in Somerset”.

When pressed on the fact that selecting someone to be a council candidate is giving someone a platform, Badenoch conceded that she was giving him a ‘local platform’, before saying that she had ‘much higher thresholds for what it takes to be a Conservative MP’.

Badenoch – it appears – was referring to the new rules she has created which will prevent people who support the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) or the UK’s target to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 from becoming a Tory parliamentary candidate.

As if the interview wasn’t going bad enough, that’s when it hit rock bottom. Webb asked Badenoch simply: “What is it that allows you to be a representative of the Conservative Party in the public sphere – ie. being a former neo-Nazi doesn’t matter, not liking the ECHR is a must?”

Running out of road, Badenoch then went on to deflect from her candidate by attacking the Labour Party. She criticised the prime minister for appointing Louise Haigh to his cabinet, branding her a ‘convicted fraudster’, and argued that because Labour had – in 2012 – also selected a former neo-Nazi as a council candidate that Bonehill-Paine’s selection this year was justified.

Concluding the interview, she defended the decision once again, claiming that the former neo-Nazi was now ‘fighting for Jewish people’.

She said: “At a local level, where someone is actively working on anti-radicalisation, fighting for Jewish people knowing the harm he caused – he did a lot of terrible things, I do not minimise that at all, this is a judgement call – and I think in this case I do think he should be allowed to stand.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

The post Kemi Badenoch squirms in car-crash interview over the former neo-Nazi who’s standing as a Tory candidate appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

Luciana Berger, the Jewish former Labour MP who was subjected to a campaign of abuse by a former neo-Nazi has condemned Badenoch’s decision to now allow him to stand as a Conservative candidate.

Joshua Bonehill-Paine was sentenced to three years and four months in prison in 2015 for harassing Berger.

He also has a conviction for assaulting a police officer and burglary of a police station and for malicious communications over an anti-Islam hoax that led to death threats against the owners of a pub in Leicester.

In a post on X yesterday, Berger said Badenoch had got the decision “very, very wrong”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4 this morning, Berger, who is now a Labour peer, argued that “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”.

Berger pointed out that Bonehill-Paine had engaged “in a sustained campaign not just against me, but many others”.

The Labour peer said: “I think that we need to have a bar when it comes to standing for public office and I strongly believe that today this individual falls very very short of that.”

Badenoch said she had listened to what Berger said and understood her position.

However, she said she had looked at Bonehill-Paine’s case “very carefully”, and defended her decision, stating that he had served his sentence and is “actively working on anti-radicalisation” now.

Badenoch also argued that it was fine for Bonehill-Paine to stand as a councillor in Somerset, but that there is a higher threshold for people to stand as Conservative parliamentary candidates.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Luciana Berger condemns Kemi Badenoch’s decision to allow former neo-Nazi to stand as Tory candidate appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

Kemi Badenoch has defended her party selecting a former neo-Nazi as a local election candidate, saying “the Conservative Party believes in second chances”. 

Joshua Bonehill-Paine has been selected as a Conservative candidate in the Somerset local elections next year despite having been jailed in 2015 for racially aggravated harassment.

Badenoch said that “I think people can look at me and know that I’m not a person who would be recruiting neo-Nazis”. She added that Bonehill-Paine had “shown contrition for his crimes”.

Bonehill-Paine was sentenced to three years and four months in prison for racially aggravated harassment of Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger.

He wrote a series of posts in support of his jailed former neo-Nazi friend, Garron Helm.

Helm was jailed for writing a tweet in which he attacked Berger for being Jewish, said Hitler was right, and doctored a picture of her to show a yellow Star of David on her forehead.

The blogs about Berger included one with a headline which read “Racist Anti-White Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger Exposed”.

There was an image in the article of Berger’s face superimposed on the body of a rat. In another article, Bonehill-Paine asked “Is the Labour Party a Jewish party?”, which featured the same image of Berger’s face attached to the body of a rat.

He founded far-right group the National British Resistance, and continues to run the ‘Crewkerne Gazette’ X account, which posts “AI slop”. 

Badenoch has defended Bonehill-Paine being given a “second chance”, stating that he has now been certified by the Home Office to train police officers on antisemitism and on countering extremism.

“This is not just someone that we’ve picked up who’s a convicted criminal; this is somebody who is actively working to help communities, especially Jewish communities, and this is what I want to see,” Badenoch said.

She added: “I want 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”. 

In a post on X, Nigel Farage reacted to Bonehill-Paine’s selection stating: “Is this part of the “new generation” of Conservative candidates @KemiBadenoch is promising?”.

Farage’s comment backfired when Bonehill-Paine pointed out that he was cleared to stand as a Reform candidate in November 2025, before deciding he would join the Tories instead.

Posting under his pseudonym ‘Crewkerne Man’ on X, Bonehill-Paine wrote: “Last year before I made the excellent decision to rejoin the Conservatives because@KemiBadenoch is great, I foolishly applied to become a Reform councillor and even passed vetting and security. 

“Last year Reform were more than happy to have me, I didn’t want them though.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post Kemi Badenoch defends selection of former neo-Nazi as Tory candidate appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

The Employment Rights Act – introduced by Labour in 2025 – is in the process of coming into force, with new protections for workers being implemented in stages up until 2027.

The changes include limitations on zero-hour contracts, restrictions on fire and rehire practices and giving workers paternity leave rights on the first day of employment.

The legislation also unpicks some anti-union rules in the UK’s employment law framework. One of these is the introduction of online ballots for industrial action.

Presently, trade unions are required to hold postal ballots for industrial action, including for strikes. This can make balloting for industrial action slow, lengthy and reliant on the postal service effectively delivering ballots in a timely manner. As such, it significantly diminishes the ability of trade unions to take effective industrial action and exercise leverage over employers.

The introduction of online ballots – which will happen on August 25 – has long been a demand of the British trade union movement.

However, the Tory shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith isn’t happy about it. In a lengthy article for the Daily Mail, Griffith has called for Labour to scrap four parts of the Employment Rights Act – including online ballots for trade unions.

In the article, Griffith acknowledges that online ballots will “increase the power of the unions” and that it will make it “quicker and easier for unions to stage industrial action”. But instead of seeing this as a positive step towards ending Britain’s aggressively anti-union laws, Griffith unsurprisingly thinks rebalancing power in favour of workers is bad thing.

Griffith goes on to say that the real problem with online ballots though is that there is a risk of cyber attacks and that workers may feel intimidated by their colleagues into voting a certain way, arguing “I do not believe that an electronic system, with workers voting in staff rooms or on lunch breaks at their place of work, can ever be a truly secret ballot. In the worst-case scenario this could involve workers feeling obliged to share screenshots from their phones that reveal how they voted.”

Here, Griffith reveals his blatant hypocrisy. The majority of democratic organisations in the UK don’t hold postal ballots for their internal elections and decisions. It’s much cheaper, quicker and easier to hold ballots digitally.

Among those organisations that hold their ballots online are all major political parties. That includes – you guessed it – the Conservative Party of which Griffith is a member and frontbench spokesperson.

Why can Conservative Party members be trusted to participate in a free and fair ballot held online but trade union members can’t? Why are workers more likely to be intimidated by their colleagues than Conservative members would be by their peers? Why is the risk of a cyber attack too high for workers deciding whether to withdraw their Labour but not for Tory members determining a potential future prime minister?

A cynic might conclude that Griffith isn’t actually that concerned about the security of ballots, but more with restricting the ability of workers to collectively organise for better pay and conditions…

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Reform has tried to whip up outrage over Andy Burnham becoming prime minister yesterday, with Nigel Farage claiming it is “deeply troubling” and “a coup”.

In an opinion piece in The Daily Mail, Farage wrote: “What we witnessed yesterday on the Downing Street step was deeply troubling to those who care about our democracy.”

Farage, who isn’t currently an MP, claimed Burnham had “arrived there unelected, unopposed and with no mandate from the public”. 

“Make no mistake, this is a coup, plain and simple. There must be a General Election immediately,” he added.

Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice also called Burnham becoming prime minister “a coup” and said “we need a general election”. 

Online, Reform was reminded that voters don’t directly elect prime ministers. They vote for a party and the leader of the political party that wins the most seats in the House of Commons after a general election becomes the prime minister.

In line with this rule, between 2010 and 2024, the Conservatives changed prime minister four times without holding an election.

David Cameron became prime minister at the 2010 general election, while Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak all took over the premiership without an election.

Reform’s Robert Jenrick, who a Conservative MP during that time, has also called for an election, despite not demanding one during the multiple changes of prime minister under his former party’s government.

As one X user commented: “Even for us on the centre right who oppose Labour in policy – it’s hilarious to see Reform publicly advertise their stupidity!

“We don’t elect PMs in the UK – which part of this aren’t you understanding @TiceRichard?”.

Farage was also reminded that Labour has a 156 seat majority, and that Burnham became Labour leader after 379 Labour MPs nominated him.

One X user said: “You are free to demand an election. You are not free to invent a constitutional crisis only when the other side benefits. The rules do not change with the colour of the rosette.”

Another said: “No it isn’t. Your rhetoric ain’t landing anymore. You’re not even an MP anymore. You’re in a fight for your career with a bin. And you brought it on yourself. To distract from your corruption. These are not the actions of a sensible and reliable leader.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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