Kemi Badenoch defended the decision to allow a former antisemitic internet troll to stand as a Conservative council candidate after a Labour peer he harassed warned he should not “have any role in public life”.
The Conservative leader said she believed Joshua Bonehill-Paine, who has been selected to fight the Crewkerne South ward in Somerset next May, had been rehabilitated.
Mr Bonehill-Paine was jailed in 2016, after he was convicted of racially aggravated harassment against Baroness Luciana Berger, who is Jewish.
He wrote several blog posts about the peer, who was the MP for Liverpool Wavertree at the time, in which he described her as “an evil money-grabber” with a “deep-rooted hatred of men”.
In one post, he claimed the number of Jewish Labour MPs was a “problem”.
He was previously jailed for producing an advert for a neo-Nazi rally illustrated with a picture of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz which promised “an absolute gas”.
Lady Berger told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “There’s a big difference between going back into society and teaching others possibly about what you did and why it was wrong, to making the leap to standing for public office.
“I think there’s a massive distinction there and this is not just one-off hurty words. This is a man that engaged and indulged in a sustained campaign, not just against me, but many others.”
In a statement on X she said: “I don’t believe this man should have any role in public life – because of both his racism and his view of women.”
Mrs Badenoch told Today she understood Lady Berger’s position but added: “I think what Luciana is talking about is not rehabilitation but forgiveness.
“I can understand that she does not want to forgive this man. I might not if I had been his victim.”
The Tory leader said Mr Bonehill-Paine had done “a lot of terrible things” but he had been rehabilitated and now worked to tackle racism and antisemitism.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “I’m not giving him a national platform, he is standing to be a councillor in Somerset… it is a local platform looking at parking, sorting out bins… I have much higher thresholds for what it takes to be a Conservative MP.”
Mrs Badenoch added: “I am extremely worried about antisemitism and what I feel is that if we can’t have the people who have previously been radicalised, who understand what went wrong and are part of the fight against antisemitism now, if we’re saying: ‘No, no, no, you’re untouchable’, then how can we pretend that we believe in rehabilitation?
“I’m someone who’s quite sceptical about rehabilitation and I see this man as somebody who has been rehabilitated.”
Mr Bonehill-Paine said on Tuesday he had “no excuses” for his past offending and added he has since dedicated himself to “challenging the wave of hatred British Jews continue to face”.
Karen Newman, vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, criticised the selection, saying “it beggars belief”.
She added: “We have contacted the Conservative Party to set out our concerns and call on them to rescind his selection and review their vetting processes.”
Mr Bonehill-Paine is the man behind the viral satirical website the Crewkerne Gazette.
The page, which has more than 40,000 followers on X and more than 50,000 on YouTube, features AI-generated videos depicting various real-life politicians, including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, Mrs Badenoch, shadow home secretary Chris Philp and Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
