09-05-2025
Reform candidate calls for ‘gunfire' at migrant boats
Reform UK council candidates have been found defending Southport rioters and allegedly advocating shooting at migrant boats, despite Nigel Farage claiming that the party has done a 'damn good job' at vetting for offensive remarks.
Farage has said his party's use of artificial intelligence techniques to vet potential councillors meant that there would be no one 'who persistently has said things that we would find fundamentally offensive'.
However, The Times has uncovered comments from several candidates that rival parties have called 'disturbing' and 'loony'.
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John Birch, a candidate in Warwickshire, reposted a message on the seventh day of last summer's far-right-led riots that described the violence as Britons insisting that 'we have had enough'. It read: 'Now our patience
