Convicted hate offender quits UK election race

A British man who was convicted in 2016 of a campaign of racist abuse against a Jewish lawmaker withdrew his candidacy on Thursday as a Conservative Party candidate in a local election.Joshua Bonehill-Paine—who had served a three-year jail sentence for antisemitic hate speech online even before his 2016 conviction for harassing MP Luciana Berger—wrote in a Facebook post that he had decided to withdraw because the Conservatives’ rivals would “spend all their time focusing on my past rather than the work I’m doing today” if he stayed.Bonehill-Paine had been the Conservative Party candidate for the Somerset Council seat of Crewkerne South. He and Conservative Party representatives said he had abandoned his extremist positions and now worked to deradicalize others. His candidacy nonetheless drew sharp-worded rebuke from the Board of Deputies of British Jews.“The severity of Joshua Bonehill-Paine’s crimes targeting Luciana Berger and others mean that he still faces ongoing legal…

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