Reform UK candidate dropped for possessing indecent images of children

A Reform UK candidate is one of four more election candidates to be dropped ahead of the next general election.

Jack Denny, 26, had been selected as a parliamentary candidate, despite being on the Sex Offenders Register and despite only having walked out of jail on fraud charges three years ago.

According to a Mail on Sunday investigation published this weekend, Denny – a former prison officer and police special sergeant in Leicestershire – was running for the Leeds Central and Headingley seat and boasted that he had “a background in policing and prisons” in his campaign literature.

Denny was found guilty in February 2019 of having two images, one of a boy aged 15-17, and a girl aged 10-12, on a USB memory stick at his home in Hinckley.

He was given a 12-month community order and placed on the Sex Offenders Register for five years.

Reform UK has now dropped him as a parliamentary candidate alongside three others, including the party’s candidate for Kingston upon Hull East, who was found to have called for Vladimir Putin to “take out” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps and Ukraine’s President Zelensky – as well as saying that Sunak and Suella Braverman were “all foreigners running the government”.

He has also claimed that London is a “third world s***hole” because there are “no whites running” the city and that mayor Sadiq Khan is “busy building his Muslim army”.

Guy Lachlan, 58, who was standing for the St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire seat, has also shared offensive material, including liking a tweet by the far-Right Britain First party campaigning against Muslims and a tweet saying that the anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson “isn’t entirely wrong”/

In one bizarre post, the car lubricant company owner claimed that there were “too many people” on the planet, described humanity as “bacteria” and said that “policies would have to include one-child limits, sterilisation and euthanasia”.

The revelations come after Reform UK was forced to drop an inactive candidate after it emerged he had died, and dropped two more candidates over racist comments.

The party has also drawn criticism over some of its other candidates, including a convicted animal abuser and a fortune-teller who sold spells for £200 on the OnlyFans website.

TLE