Reform drops more candidates as Channel 4 reports to Electoral Commission

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Reform UK has excluded three more candidates and said it had reported Channel 4 to the Electoral Commission, after the channel broadcast footage of an activist campaigning for Nigel Farage using a racist slur to describe Rishi Sunak.

Edward Oakenfull, Robert Lomas and Leslie Lilley will still appear on the ballot as Reform candidates because it is too late for them to be impeached, but they are no longer supported by the party. gone.

Mr. Oakenfull posted offensive comments about the IQs of sub-Saharan Africans on social media last year. He told the BBC that the remarks had been “taken out of context”.

Mr. Lilley allegedly posted on social media that people arriving on small boats were “scum.” Meanwhile, Mr Lomas reportedly said black people should "go wild" and stop acting "like savages".

Party abandoning candidates follows undercover report on Activists involved in Nigel Farage's candidacy. to win a parliamentary seat in Clacton, Essex.

British Reform leader Nigel Farage speaking on a Question Time Leaders special BBC (Peter Byrne/PA) (PA Wire)

One campaigner, Andrew Parker, used the racist term about Mr Sunak and suggested migrants should be used as a “target practice

Another canvasser called the Pride flag “degenerate” and suggested that members of the LGBT community were pedophiles.

The Reform Party claimed that Mr Parker, who is a part-time actor, had been used as a "plant". Channel 4 News denied that Mr Parker was paid by or known to the channel before the report was broadcast.

In a letter to the Electoral Commission, Reform Secretary Adam Richardson said that it was "quite obvious that Mr Parker was a plant within Channel 4's reporting."

He added: "Channel 4's broadcast was clearly designed to harm Reform UK during an election period and this can only be described as election interference. . »