Why Tory defence of antisemitic candidate makes purge of moderates even more bizarre

So reads the caption on an AI-generated video from satirical website the Crewkerne Gazette, published last month.

All innocuous and amusing enough, until you know that the founder of that website is one Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a convicted far-right racist who was a “good egg” Conservative candidate until just days ago.

Weeks after Kemi Badenoch began barring wishy-washy moderates from being candidates for her party (complete with smug media briefing against the Ruth Davidsons and Grant Shapps of this world, “bad eggs” all), it has emerged that the Tory purge had a blind spot – for convicted antisemites.

Even with Mr Bonehill-Paine having stepped back as a candidate, the Conservative Party’s attempts to defend a man sentenced for antisemitic crimes just a few years ago make their ongoing purge of moderate voices all-the-more bizarre.

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The facts of this story speak for themselves: Joshua Bonehill-Paine was found guilty of racially harassing Jewish MP Luciana Berger ten years ago, while serving a separate jail sentence for sharing antisemitic posts – and yet was considered, in that full knowledge, to be an acceptable Conservative candidate for public office.

In fact it was Bonehill-Paine who took the step of withdrawing as a candidate after media scrutiny came to bear – rather than the Tory party. Kemi Badenoch pronounced herself “sad” that he was not going to continue on as a candidate. That Bonehill-Paine (eventually) did the right thing where his party would not speaks volumes. Instead he has now, apparently, been offered a position as an “anti-extremism adviser to the party” – a plot twist that would surely have been rejected from The Thick Of It for being too outlandish.

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Even the earlier defences of this fiasco made by the Tory leader and her colleagues should be eyebrow-raising for any moderates who remain within the party. Under media questioning it emerged that for Badenoch, Mr Bonehill-Paine might not have been an acceptable Conservative candidate to be a Member of Parliament, but as a councillor he was A-OK. It seems that neo-Nazi convictions are fine, just as long as you are only in charge of “looking at parking, sorting out bins”.

If I were a sitting Conservative councillor – many of whom, shockingly enough, have managed to go their entire lives without racially abusing someone – I am not sure I would appreciate my party leadership’s apparent contempt for the job that I do in local government. It might at least go some way towards explaining the Tories’ blithe indifference to having lost over a thousand council seats in the last two years – an almost unprecedented electoral disaster for a party that is not in government. If Joshua Bonehill-Paine is the vision that Kemi Badenoch has for her local councillors – and their values – who would want to be part of it?

None of this is to say that those who commit crimes should have no chance for genuine reintegration. I am a liberal to my core, and if being a liberal means anything it means believing as a matter of principle that people can change and do better and be better over time.

I also believe as a matter of practicality and pragmatism that if we ostracise people with no way of getting back into polite society and public life, we are likely to drive them further into the arms of extremists. For the good of society as a whole, as much as for any one individual, we need to have mechanisms by which, having done their time and made their amends, people can be rehabilitated.

It is more than a little ironic, however, to see this argument made by a Conservative Party that has gleefully weaponised hostility towards other people convicted of crimes, both inside and outside politics. If you take Badenoch at her own word, “the country needs conviction politicians, not politicians with convictions”’.

The trouble with the Tory defence of Bonehill-Paine, meanwhile, is that it is far from clear that he has made his amends in a meaningful way.

Yes, he served out his criminal sentence for his antisemitic actions, but if being outside of prison is your only metric for the validity and suitability of a candidate then something has gone badly wrong somewhere.

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Yes, he has said words of contrition about his antisemitic attacks, but one look at his output in the Crewkerne Gazette shows the work of someone who is clearly still quite comfortable with hard-edged personal attacks, and without much concern about accuracy. Bonehill-Paine’s sweeping use of AI deepfakes for his satirical content, putting invented words into the mouths of political opponents, should be enough to give us pause before declaring him to have truly learned his lesson and improved his character.

All of which leads to the question: what is going on within the Conservative Party that such a candidate is considered perfectly fit for office, even while they continue, gleefully, to block other would-be representatives for the high crimes of supporting reasonable climate and human rights policy? What sort of party do they intend to be by the end of this process?

If this is Kemi Badenoch’s “genius strategy” for vetting candidates, then those with any sense left in the Conservative Party will have to decide whether they can stand for it, both figuratively and literally – and if this is what the Tories consider to be separating the good eggs from the bad, they are going to end up entirely rotten.

William Deans is Chief of Staff to Alistair Carmichael MP, and holds an MSc in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict