Nearly one in 10 candidates standing for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in England are Facebook “friends” with British fascist leader Gary Raikes, according to a news report on Wednesday.
Raikes, a former organiser for the British National Party, is the leader of the New British Union which reflects the views of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.
The group’s website claims “never in our history has the British population lacked spirit as it does now”, adding that young people are engaging in “levels of hedonism that would bring the aristocrats of the Roman Empire to shame”.
The New British Union has called for a “fascist revolution” and wants to replace parliament with a dictatorship, the Times writes.
An analysis by the newspaper found at least 41 of Reform’s parliamentary candidates in the general election are friends with Raikes on Facebook, despite his account being active for only about a year.
It comes after Reform UK candidate Ian Gribbin claimed the country would be “far better” if it had “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality” instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two.
YouGov polling has projected that seven of the 41 Reform candidates who are friends with Raikes will finish second in their constituency, with 27 others forecast to finish third.
The polling took place before Farage returned to lead Reform and Rishi Sunak’s D-day blunder.
Last week Reform UK withdrew support for two candidates after The Times revealed in a separate report that its candidate list included someone who referred to a group of black people as “baboons” and another who suggested Ghislaine Maxwell did her teenage victims “a favour”.
More than 110 Reform UK candidates were dropped or swapped between January and June this year, the Guardian reported.
A Reform UK spokesman told the Standard its efforts to vet candidates were “truncated” by the snap election.
He said: “Millions of people who are struggling want journalists to discuss policy and ideas, not juvenile gotcha identity politics.
“We take all allegations very seriously and will take appropriate action after a thorough internal investigation.”
The party said it was “no crime to follow people with whom one has profound disagreements”.
In response, Raikes said his group calls for a “quiet revolution” that is “completely legal and peaceful”, and that his “friends on Facebook” are “normal people who share some views and concerns over the way our country is heading”.
