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 restrictions,” the board said in a statement, adding it had declined the Conservative Party’s suggestion that board members meet with Bonehill-Paine. The board called Bonehill-Paine “a former neo-Nazi with criminal convictions for antisemitic hatred.”

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch defended the decision to select Bonehill-Paine as a candidate, saying he had been rehabilitated and her party “believes in second chances.” Bonehill-Paine will remain a part of the Conservative Party, she said, as an adviser to its Culture and Integration Commission. His work will focus on helping to prevent young men from being radicalized, she said.

“While I am sad that Joshua feels he won’t be given the space to explain his position and represent his community, I am glad he is going to work with me and the party on tackling radicalisation,” Bedanoch wrote on X.

She added, “If we are going to stop extremism and antisemitism we are going to need help from those people who were part of the problem, but have now changed and are being part of the solution.”

In December 2015, the Woolwich Crown Court sentenced Bonehill-Paine to 40 months in prison for stirring up racial hatred over plans for a neo-Nazi rally in London’s Golders Green neighborhood. A year later, the Central Criminal Court sentenced him to an additional two years for racially aggravated harassment of Berger. That sentence ran consecutively to the previous one. Bonehill-Paine spent about 29 months in prison. He was freed in May 2018 and was allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence under supervision.

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