Tories Pick Former Neo-Nazi With Antisemitic Harassment Conviction as Council Candidate, Badenoch Defends Choice

A convicted antisemite is now a Tory candidate

Joshua Bonehill-Paine, 33, will stand for the Conservative Party in the newly created Crewkerne South ward of Somerset Council in the 2027 local elections. He's not a random walk-in. He's a man with a rap sheet that includes prison time for posting antisemitic material ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally, and a separate conviction for racially harassing then-Labour MP Luciana Berger, according to the BBC and The Guardian.

The facts aren't in dispute. Bonehill-Paine was jailed in 2015 for more than three years after posting what courts called "vile" antisemitic material online ahead of a planned rally in Golders Green, an area with a large Jewish population, which he described as an "anti-Jewification event" that would be "an absolute gas," according to the Jewish Chronicle. In 2016 he was convicted of racially aggravated harassment against Berger, who is Jewish, after calling her a "rodent" and an "evil money-grabber" on his blog. He also has convictions for assaulting a police officer, burgling a police station, and malicious communications tied to a 2014 anti-Islam hoax that led to death threats against pub owners in Leicester. He founded and led a far-right group called the National British Resistance.

Badenoch's defense

Kemi Badenoch isn't hiding from this. She's defending it directly. "He has shown contrition for his crimes," she said, according to the BBC. "He's going up and down the country training people and the Conservative Party believes in second chances. This is not just someone that we've picked up who is a convicted criminal, this is somebody who is actively working to help communities, especially Jewish communities."

Bonehill-Paine holds Home Office counter-extremism certifications and is certified to train police officers on antisemitism, according to the Jewish Chronicle. He says he underwent a de-radicalisation programme and now delivers counter-extremism sessions nationwide. He told the BBC his previous views were "indefensible," and told the Jewish Chronicle he now feels "shame" and is "dedicated to challenging the hatred faced by British Jews."

He says the moment that turned him was the 2016 murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by a far-right extremist, which happened during his prison sentence. "I felt an enormous sense of emotion, of grief and of anger that this lady had been murdered by a far-right extremist," he told the BBC. "I started to question why it was that I was supporting a right-wing ideology."

His criminal convictions are also legally spent under UK law, meaning they don't have to be disclosed in most contexts, he told The Guardian. He also said the local Yeovil Tory branch and its chairman were fully aware of his history and have backed him regardless. So this wasn't a vetting failure where nobody knew. People knew, and picked him anyway.

The problem

Rehabilitation is real and second chances matter. Someone who genuinely reforms and spends years doing counter-extremism work deserves credit for that, not permanent exile. Badenoch is right to make this case.

But running for elected office representing a major political party is a different bar than simply being allowed to rebuild a life. The Board of Deputies of British Jews isn't a fringe group screaming into the void. It's the main representative body for British Jewry, and its vice president Karen Newman called the selection something that "beggars belief," adding the Board has "contacted the Conservative Party to set out our concerns and call on them to rescind his selection and review their vetting processes."

Lord Mann, the government's own independent adviser on antisemitism, went further, posting on X that Bonehill-Paine "should have no platform from a Parliamentary Party" and that "his antisemitism is as extreme as anyone I have ever seen," according to HuffPost.

The Jewish Labour Movement called the selection "truly appalling." Reform UK, sniffing an opening, accused Badenoch of hypocrisy: "Kemi claims to support the fight against antisemitism yet selects a convicted antisemite Nazi as a candidate. The hypocrisy is breathtaking," a party spokesperson said. Labour piled on too, with a spokesperson calling it "a total disgrace" and tying it to Badenoch's recent move barring former Tory MPs who backed net zero from standing as candidates. HuffPost was quick to highlight the contrast: purging moderates on climate policy while welcoming a man who ran a neo-Nazi group.

Local Liberal Democrat MP Adam Dance, whose Yeovil constituency covers Crewkerne, said "residents deserve to feel confident in those seeking to represent them," per the BBC.

What's unresolved

The Conservative Party has not said whether it will revisit the selection despite the Board of Deputies' direct request to rescind it. Bonehill-Paine also gained recent notoriety as the anonymous creator of the satirical Crewkerne Gazette AI video series, which has been favorable to Badenoch and critical of Labour and Reform, according to The Guardian, which reported that Tory chief whip Rebecca Harris was criticized earlier this year for reposting one of his videos before his identity was public. Whether that overlap played any role in his selection, and whether Somerset Conservatives will face pressure to reverse course before 2027, remains an open question.