Reform UK has suspended one of its Scottish candidates after it emerged he had been struck off as a company director, and the party faces growing attacks for fielding candidates making Islamophobic remarks. Reform confirmed on Friday morning it had suspended Stuart Niven, its candidate for Dundee West, after the Herald revealed he had been struck off after diverting tens of thousands of pounds of Covid grants into his personal account.
Only hours after Nigel Farage unveiled the 73 Reform UK candidates for May’s Scottish parliament election, the party faced a succession of attacks from across the political spectrum on the conduct of several other hopefuls. Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said the disclosures in several newspapers about “divisive tweets” raised challenging questions about the party’s screening process, which Farage earlier this year claimed was now far more rigorous than before.
After Farage’s speech on Thursday, it emerged that Reform’s candidate for North East Fife, Linda Holt, had described Humza Yousaf, the UK’s first Muslim first minister, as “not British” and a “grandstanding Islamist moron” in social media posts. Its candidate for Stirling, Rachael Wright, shared a petition that wrongly claimed a former private school in Perthshire was being “turned into migrant accommodation”.
The school’s owners said that was “wholly unfounded”, but Reform asserted that the denial was a result of its intervention. Meanwhile, Senga Beresford, its candidate for Galloway and West Dumfries, endorsed social media posts by Tommy Robinson and Britain First, including tweets calling for mass deportations and a ban on burqas.
Sarwar described Malcolm Offord, Reform’s Scottish leader, as “spineless” for defending their remarks. Offord said they may have been intemperate but were “real”, and made before they became party candidates.