Badenoch says ex-neo-Nazi candidate will advise Conservatives on extremism

Kemi Badenoch says Joshua Bonehill-Paine will now advise the Conservatives on tackling extremism, even after the party selected the former neo-Nazi activist as a council candidate in Somerset and faced backlash from Jewish leaders and opposition figures.

Bonehill-Paine was chosen to stand for Crewkerne South ward in the May 2027 Somerset Council elections. His selection reignited scrutiny of how the Conservatives screen candidates, because he was previously jailed for posting antisemitic material and for racially aggravated harassment of the former Labour MP Luciana Berger.

The row sharpened when the Conservatives offered Jewish groups a meeting with Bonehill-Paine after the backlash. The Board of Deputies of British Jews responded through vice-president Karen Newman, while Berger urged the party to drop him and said Badenoch had got it “very, very wrong.”

Badenoch defended the selection by saying the party believes in “second chances.” One report said she described Bonehill-Paine as “somebody who has been rehabilitated” and said he now helps counter antisemitism. The decision to keep him in view as an adviser on extremism has deepened questions about how a party can present him as evidence of rehabilitation while still asking Jewish groups to accept him as part of its public face.

Bonehill-Paine’s background has made the controversy especially acute in Crewkerne, where he is also identified as the creator of the Crewkerne Gazette. That local profile has added another layer to the dispute, since the party’s candidate in a Somerset ward is now also being positioned as someone to help shape Conservative thinking on extremism.

Reporting has said Bonehill-Paine spent three years in prison for neo-Nazi activity. The Conservatives have not only kept him in the process but have elevated him into a role tied directly to extremism, a move that leaves the party’s candidate vetting and internal judgment under sustained public challenge.