Reform drops three more candidates as Farage rails at BBC and Channel 4 ‘bias'

Reform UK has dropped three more candidates and said it has reported Channel 4 to the Electoral Commission after the broadcaster released footage of an activist campaigning for Nigel Farage using a racial slur to describe Rishi Sunak.

- JOE MIDDLETON

Edward Oakenfull, Robert Lomas and Leslie Lilley will still appear on the ballot paper as Reform candidates because it is too late for them to be removed, but they are no longer being backed by the party. Mr Oakenfull posted offensive comments about the IQ of sub-Saharan Africans on social media last year. He told the BBC the remarks were “taken out of context”.

Mr Lilley reportedly posted on social media that people arriving on small boats were “scum”. Meanwhile, Mr Lomas allegedly said Black people should “get off [their] lazy arses” and stop acting “like savages”.

The party dropping its candidates comes after an undercover report on activists involved in Nigel Farage’s bid to win a parliamentary seat in Clacton, Essex. One activist, Andrew Parker, used a racist term about Mr Sunak and suggested migrants should be used as “target practice”.

Another canvasser described the Pride flag as “degenerate” and suggested members of the LGBT+ community are paedophiles. Reform has claimed that Mr Parker, who is a part-time actor, was used as a “plant”. Channel 4 News has denied that Mr Parker was paid by or known to the broadcaster prior to the report.

In a letter to the Electoral Commission, the Reform secretary Adam Richardson claimed that it was “entirely evident that Mr