What was Kemi Badenoch thinking defending a convicted neo-Nazi?

0:02This is a global production. Kemi Beynak forcing to defend this morning her party's decision to allow a former neo-Nazi who was jailed for subjecting a prominent Labour politician to anti-Semitic abuse to stand as a councillor. Kemi's argument, which is that rehabilitation is a really important part of public political life, would be a really strong one to make if it wasn't that his transgressions go on and on and on. The signal that it sends that basically maybe this isn't so bad, Maybe that stalking and harassment wasn't so bad. And maybe that anti-Semitism wasn't so bad. That's what you've got to balance.

0:47Now you've got an actual convicted neo-Nazi who wants to stand under the party name. What the fuck's going on? This is a man who was talking about how in his late teens and early 20s, he was radicalised. He became a racist and an anti-Semite. But I'm not giving him a national platform. He is standing to be a councillor in Somerset. You are giving him a platform there. It is a local platform looking at parking, sorting out bins. That's what councillors do. It's not a national platform. That is Kemi Badenock on the BBC trying to defend why she's allowing a former neo-Nazi who was convicted and imprisoned to stand as a conservative councillor and minimising his role by saying it's just about parking in bins.

1:36Today's question is a simple one. Why is Kemi Badenock allowing a former neo-Nazi to stand for election for her party? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:52It's Lewis. It's Maitlis. And Kemi Badenock, leader of the Conservative Party. This is never a sentence you really want to find yourself or find yourself being described as if you're the leader of a political party. forcing to defend this morning her party's decision to allow a former neo-Nazi who was jailed for subjecting a prominent Labour politician to anti-Semitic abuse to stand as a councillor. This is a man called Joshua Bonehill Payne, standing for election in Somerset for the Conservative Party. This is a man who, in his early 20s, he decided to, among other things, target the then Labour MP, now Baroness Luciana Berger, in a campaign of anti-Semitic abuse.

2:34This was about 10 years ago. Luciana Berger has been speaking this morning about her experience, saying that she is still living today with the profound and deep impact of those events. That wasn't the only thing that this particular gentleman has been guilty of. He was also jailed in 2015 for more than three years after posting anti-Semitic material online before a planned neo-Nazi rally. Some of the messages which were posted in his blog about Ms Berger included calling her a rodent and an evil money grabber. He also said that there were too many Jewish Labour MPs and was also the founder and leader of the National British Resistance Group, a far right organisation.

3:22This is a man that Kemi Beidnok is allowing to stand for the Conservative Party for local government. Yeah, we could go on. In fact, let's go on. He'd been previously imprisoned for producing an advert featuring an image of Auschwitz that promised his words an absolute gas. This was at a rally in Golders Green, North London. He had targeted not only Luciana Berger, but also John Mann, the independent advisor on anti-Semitism, also a Labour MP between 2001 and 2019. I do think that Kemi's argument, which is that rehabilitation is a really important part of public political life, would be a really strong one to make if it wasn't that his transgressions go on and on and on.

4:19and that they are so deeply personal to people who are still around today and still calling out his actions today. Kemi Baden-Ock essentially has argued that he's now seen the error of his ways, he's been to prison, he's come out, damaging conversion and is starting to work in sort of, you know, educating others about the dangers of anti-Semitism, which sounds great, you know, And naturally, I would want to be on the side of the belief that prison works and rehabilitation is great and you can change and transform. Except that you've got people who are still in our public life, like Luciana Berger, like John Mann, like John Mann's office staff, who are all terrified as well, saying this man is creepy and scary and intimidating.

5:09and it wasn't so long ago that the Tories were calling out Angela Rayner. Do you remember that? Yeah. When she called a Tory scum, right? Not a particularly nice word. She was forced to apologise. She had to backtrack. But she called the Conservative Party as a whole scum and Kemmy Baden-Ock said that was absolutely, or I think at the time it was Johnson, it was absolutely unpalatable. It was an awful thing to hear a senior Labour minister minister or potential minister using that word. Now you've got an actual convicted neo-Nazi who wants to stand under the party name. What the fuck's going on?

5:50And of course, this is actually, I think, part of the problem that Colme Badenock is going to find herself in because she is not a politician, I think it's fair to say, who usually puts nuance, subtlety, redemption, contrition at the top of the list of the political characteristics she likes best. That's not her thing. Her thing is, as she herself says, to be consistent and clear and hard edged. That's how she sees the strength of her politics. And so her previous comments are littered with whether it's a political issue like Gaza. We see the Gaza protest. The Conservative Party has been way out there condemning people who've turned up to those protests.

6:30of course there has been anti-Semitism on those protests and there have been anti-Semites on those protests but they had their threshold for anti-Semitism and for declaring anti-Semitism has been some might say pretty low sometimes just chance sometimes things that people say which at the very least contested as to whether they are anti-Semitic or not. Kemi Bainok has been at the forefront of condemning those people there can be no contestation about whether this guy was an anti-Semite or not or whether he was putting anti-Semitic things out there or or not I think I think it's an open and shut case, as indeed was proven in the courtroom.

7:04Right. And that is her approach. That kind of dogmatism is her approach to almost all aspects of politics and almost all other politicians. In fact, she even said in that interview, I'm not normally a big one for rehabilitation myself. And yet in this case, with this particular gentleman, that is a line she's taking. And we've seen her take that slightly less generous view, even with other politicians. She has been in the absolute forefront of attacking, for example, Lou Haig, the now de facto deputy prime minister, the first secretary of state, for, of course, her spent conviction over that mobile phone incident that took place when she was in her early 20s.

7:40Just listen to Kami Bey not speaking about Lou Haig in 2024. But the public are watching. He owes them an explanation. The country needs conviction politicians, not politicians with convictions. And that's a nice line, but it's one that will rebound on you. i think it's fair the other um look she she's right in one sense right which is to say that we we definitely want a place in our society for um rehabilitation for contrition for redemption for forgiveness we want those things our political culture and our national culture in lots of ways has become more censorious more difficult to have a nuanced conversation about things and more difficult for people to move on from bad things they've done in their past that's absolutely true and totally fair enough there are two problems with the way though that she's justified it one is that um there is a difference as as luciana berger has said there is a difference between allowing someone to be redeemed to be rehabilitated to use the benefit of their experience to prevent others from being radicalized that's really important there's a difference between being let back into society and being allowed to stand for public office like those are two different things.

8:51I mean, frankly, it's, you know, if you're a convicted paedophile who served his sentence, you wouldn't then make them a teacher again in an elementary school. I think it's as simple as that. And you'd be unlikely, frankly, they would be unlikely to be able to stand for public office, right? There are lots of things where we might bring someone back into society, we accept they've done their time, but there is a difference. What you're doing there in allowing them to stand for your party, what you're balancing is, yes, the right of that man to be redeemed but you've got to balance that with the signal that it sends to the groups including in this case for example british jury who have reacted very negatively to this you know uh the board of the board of deputies of british jews saying they don't want to meet with him you know rejecting kemi bade nock's offer to meet with him and so on they don't want to do that luciana berger as well the signal that it sends that basically maybe this isn't so bad maybe that stalking and harassment wasn't so bad and maybe that anti-semitism wasn't so bad that's what you've got to balance and that's what i think kemi badenock is not reckoning with and as well built into that frankly um one of her sort of justifications for it is is genuinely risible i mean she said look it's not like he's standing for parliament here he's just going to be sorting the bins out right i mean say what you want about the nazis they made the trains run on time and the bins were always sorted right i mean this is this is lamentable the message that sends to local government to conservative councillors is to be honest it doesn't really matter who it is It doesn't matter if you've been a former neo-Nazi.

10:14You're just doing completely unimportant, trivial stuff. And the point is, in saying that, in saying that she would not allow him to stand for national office, but she would for local office, she is therefore herself accepting that there is a threshold at which you do not allow someone to stand for certain political office, in which case, why is he allowed to stand for local and not national? Yeah, and I think it's denigrating, actually, to all your councillors to say, oh, don't worry. Don't worry about them. They just do parking in bins, right? I mean, it actually... You could have any old fruit that's doing it.

10:46Yeah, anyone. It doesn't matter. Come on in, it's fine. I think it's very hard politically, you know, for her to get any messaging right on her criticism of Labour or anti-Semitism or reform when you are basically condoning the potential election of a former neo-Nazi. I think it's frankly as simple as that. And I think it's also awkward for the voters of Somerset, right? Because if you want to vote for a Tory councillor, but you're like you're not a big fan of neo-Nazis, then you're kind of stuck with a choice that your own leader has imposed upon you. And I think one of the funniest things of this whole thing is we always talk about how terrible reform are vetting.

11:37Right. You know, why don't they vet properly? Why don't they look properly? Or any of them, you know, the Greens, Labour, all the parties. Why don't they vet their candidates properly? Here, you have got a vetting system that has clearly shown up all the problems of this man's past. And yet the response has been, oh, well, yeah, never mind. It's fine. It's just bins. It's kind of, you know, let's get on with it. I think you are in danger if you are trying to recreate a sort of middle ground conservative party in the southwest of England. This is not a great start to your comeback tour. And I do wonder whether Camille Baignock has spent the time to actually just look at the sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Spencer, who oversaw the trial in December 2016 of Joshua Bonehill Payne.

12:31I mean, it's only eight pages long. I was just looking through it before we started recording. It's searing stuff. I mean, it's actually way worse than the press reports if you actually go into the paragraphs of it. And, you know, it's brief remarks, But among other things, just to summarise, it goes through in painstaking detail virtually all of the posts and content that he was putting out overwhelmingly about Luciana Berger. Among other things, we've said, you know, basically he says that it's a series of racist rants. He talks about it. This is the judge's words being an odious campaign. he talks about the fact that he boasts that he he boasts that he has conducted a and coordinated a fantastically successful campaign against the jewess and labor party mp luciana berger the judge says it demonstrates his contents his willingness to pursue this far-right cause at all costs he said that he was prepared to die in order to defend his race and his nation from the tyrannical claw of the Judeo-Marxist enemy.

13:41On the 24th of January, he posted another article, the fifth and final one before he was arrested, headed the legacy of Operation Filthy Jew Bitch. You know, it goes on and it goes on and it goes on. And I have to say, just on a personal level, if you're Luciana Berger, I just do not know. This must have been deeply traumatising for her, deeply difficult for her, not the only abuse that she's received over the years, far from it. She has been a lightning rod for some of the most extremist, disgusting, bilious racism that we've seen over the last decade in British politics. But if you're hurt today, remembering all of this is all being forced to come back to you and having to relive it.

14:21What is the message that the Conservative Party is sending about how it treats this sort of hateful extremism? Yeah, I mean, it is, in Luciana's words, not just anti-Semitic or racist, but misogynist and pornographic as well. And if there's one thing we've learned, it's you cannot ignore the gateway drugs, right? In other words, if you start to look at upskirting or if you start to look at flashing, you tend to find something deeply, deeply worrying that recurs if it's not stopped in its tracks. Now, look, he says he's reformed. He says he's going out. He says he's he's a sort of new man who's seen the light.

15:05I don't know. The jury's out on whether you want to believe that somebody can alter their character so radically from sort of black to white. I don't know. But I do think it suggests that the Tories are really desperate for candidates if they're still arguing about this guy once they know everything about him. Well, I think what it says, and I think this is something I think about Bade Nock's leadership style as well, though. You know, we've talked to her before about one online politician she is, you know, in so many ways. And I think that part of this, I suspect that part of this is her... Wanting to have a row?

15:47I don't know if it's even that. I think that the, you know, let's just think about all of the things that have happened recently, where the Conservative Party has said things or it's had, you know, front benches say things way out there, you know, that would not have been tolerated. Like the Nick Timothy stuff about the... The Nick Timothy stuff about public prayer. You know, I mean, Kimmy Badenock herself, after Gorton and Denton by-election, basically talking, she didn't use this phrase exactly, but, you know, sort of talking the language of the kind of, you know, the block vote and talking about, you know, basically the idea almost of sort of people within society working against.

16:20But these are sort of once quite fringe ideas that have come to the fore. And I think that, you know, the bounds of acceptability, the parameters of what's acceptable in terms of discourse that would once have been considered extreme or racist within the Conservative Party has moved a long way. And I think she thinks, she thinks, they have become, I think some Conservatives, including Badenock, have become so suspicious about the idea of cancellation, of cancel culture, so wanting and desperate to prove, sort of stick it to the lips. The anti-woke. Yeah, yes. It's so desperate to sort of stick it to the libs the whole time that they have become completely oblivious, even to the most extreme cases where, frankly, it's not about cancelling this guy, but it would be a matter of saying, you know what, I'm afraid your history is just simply too extreme to allow us to for you to stand as a candidate.

17:09I mean, again, just one final thing from that judge's remark. I mean, he may be expressing contrition now. He didn't express contrition at the time. The judge noted that he didn't make a guilty plea. He didn't have the mitigation of expressing any remorse. On the contrary, the judge said, you sat in a dock smirking throughout the trial. And I noted your demeanour whilst Miss Berger was having to give evidence. You plainly enjoyed her discomfort. The message needs to go out loud and clear that racial hate crime, where the intention is to harass the victim will be dealt with very severely and deterrence must be an important element of this sentence.

17:46The judge understood that the message had to go out loud and clear that this sort of crime is not acceptable and must be deterred. And I think that the most potent political charge against Badenock is that she is undermining that imperative from that judge by allowing him to stand. Yeah, I mean, I guess she'd argue that it was a decade ago. I mean, can you change, can you completely rehabilitate a decade on? Would she allow a rapist to 10 years ago, a paedophile? You know, we wouldn't, would we? I think we are understanding a little bit better now why the Conservatives only got, what, 7 % in the Manchester mayoral race.

18:26They're probably not going to be a big political force in many Jewish communities if they carry on backing this guy. Well, just as a bit of political management, but let's leave aside the morals and the ethics of it and the philosophy of it. Like just a bit of political management. Normally the August is a good time for the opposition party to, you know, get a few messages out there, a few good news stories, you know, try and craft a message ahead of the party conference season. I mean, when this is what you're having to talk about, I am just surprised that no one in central office just thought, you know what, it's just like, what a hill to die on.

18:57You know, is this, is this, is this the line in the sand for us? Does it matter that much or this much? You know, When a senior frontbencher says something that's over the line, you know, you dig in sometimes. You don't want to lose them. You want to let it blow over. But in this case, some no mark for neo-Nazi in Somerset, you know, that's the hill for Bader Ginsburg. That's the sort of great political skill that all the conservative press keep talking about her demonstrating, really. On the newsagency USA Today, we are talking about a Republican candidate who Trump has sort of up to this point backed, who is accused by three different women of severe violence, you know, domestic violence.

19:35And he is kind of saying, I'm just going to double down. If Trump can do it, I can. If Trump can do it, I will not drop out the race. And you sort of have to wonder whether there's a bit of her that's saying, oh, you know, we're now in the Roy Cohn playbook. You know, never apologise, never explain, just double down and see if it works. Well, look, good luck to them. You know, let's see if it works. Let's see what it does to your political fortunes. But I agree with you, Lewis. I think it is a very strange hill to die on this one. Not least because Andy Burnham, new prime minister, might be on the verge of his first big political problem in office.

20:14And that is about the early release scheme. Stay with us.

20:32They feel let down, and certainly the police officers in Temphali feel let down too. And lastly, your point of contact, presumably, is the Home Secretary, automatically as a Chief Constable, is it? Have you sought direct contact with Shabana Mahmood? I have. I've written to the Justice Secretary and the Prime Minister. And I'll be doing that again today. And you've had responses? I haven't had a response yet, no. When did you send your letter to the Prime Minister and Justice Secretary? I think it was when this first came to light about 11, 12 days ago. And you've not had a response from either of them?

21:00Not yet. That is Jason Hogg. He's the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police. And he has now threatened to take the government to court over the early release of the killers of PC Andrew Harper. Andy Burnham is starting to feel the political heat, really for the first time since he became Prime Minister. And it is over this question of whether he would go along with Keir Starmer's policy of the early release of prisoners, even killers who had served some of their sentence, but not the full amount, or whether he was prepared to step in and relook at it. And essentially, he has reopened the question of whether it's fair or not.

21:47And he's made some changes to rapists in particular, to those who have been domestic abusers. But in this particular case, the death of PC Andrew Harper, who was a young man, a police officer who was essentially dragged to his death by three joyriders, one of whom will serve his full sentence, two of whom will be available for early release. he has essentially just kind of dug down yeah um this was back in 2019 when pc harper was dragged by a car down a country road as three teenagers fled the scene of a quad bike theft in berkshire and as i mean so the two prisoners passengers in the car jesse cole and albert boers were sentenced in 2020 to 13 years for manslaughter and could apply for early release after serving half of their sentence um and this is as terms of this is a this is i think exactly what i think number 10 feared and could see sort of coming down the track and why that review was was put into place which is there are going to be so many cases like this i mean this is this is obviously an edge case it involves the police but when you've got a situation where that where you know the police chief of thames valley is taking to the radio and urging the home secretary and urging the government to reconsider its position then you just know that you are rapidly descending into descending into some political quicksand right because as soon as you they make the exception here and as soon as you make that exception after the public pressure you just know there's going to be scores of similar cases maybe not involving police officers but you know we know that prisoners convicted of murder rape and serious child sex offenders will be excluded from the from the scheme, sure.

23:30But those convicted of manslaughter remain eligible. As we see with this case, the line with what the public might think is sort of acceptable is not necessarily going to be anywhere close to where we see a manslaughter case being. It's so interesting, isn't it? Because what Jason Hogg has gone on to say is that public opinion is overwhelming in this matter. If you ask the general public whether they think prisoners should be released early. You know, we're kind of all of a mind, which is like not for serious crimes. Now, I guess the question is, these two men were pretty young and they were passengers in the car.

24:09The driver of the actual car is not getting released early. So to your point, they were essentially accomplices. They were part of the manslaughter of this police officer, but they weren't in charge of the vehicle at the time. And I do think it's a sort of interesting place for Burnham now because he essentially came to power. I mean, partly from sort of, you know, good political kind of sense, actually, but also from being the person that seemed to champion, you know, the underdog. He understood people's causes. He understood the Hillsborough crowds when they booed him when he was the culture minister all those years ago.

24:58He understood the importance of listening to those in the infected blood scandal. He understood the importance of hearing the victims of the nuclear testing. He understood, in other words, real people talk about real issues that directly affected them, that they felt was fundamentally unfair, that destroyed trust in politics. And now he's the prime minister. He's basically got to decide, am I still the campaigner or am I the person that sets the policy? Right. Because in the same way, it's the it's the microcosm of Manchester to the rest of the UK. You can't just fight for Manchester now. You have to fight for the rest of the UK.

25:41You can't just fight for the individual campaigners. You have to fight for the whole prison system. And he, you know, I've heard his advisers today say he's more worried about the collapse of the prison system if this becomes a thing. So it's a really sticky one. And in a way, I guess he has to he has to harden up on this one. Right. He has to because otherwise, if if I was the widow of that police officer, I'd be doing exactly the same. But if I was the widow of the next person who, you know, was getting released early, then I'd be on his back as well. Well, as Jake Richards, the Justice Minister, has said, the government says that it would be wrong to sort of pick out individuals within the overall cohort.

26:25In fact, as he points out, it would actually be unlawful to do so in response of political pressure. So it seems like they're going to stick to the policy with regards to this and not unpick it for individual cases. but of course that will mean inevitably that you know we see more more and more sort of edge cases like this even though Burnham has excluded some of the most serious offenders I mean Burnham wrote a piece for the Telegraph where you could sort of just sense that his sort of deep frustration in almost every sentence and he basically says that he well he says exactly I can look people in the eye and say to them there is nothing more I could have asked for without risking the prison system collapsing within months.

27:09So this is a good early example, I think, of, you know, Burnham's had a great first fortnight. I don't think it could have gone much better. The messaging has been spot on. The sort of content they've been doing has been spot on. They've had the crisps in the pub. They've done the crisps in the pub. Very effective. Lots of effective commas, but also lots of kind of good micro measures on cost of living that clearly have translated to the public, hasn't cost them a fortune. Translated to the polls. Yeah. Translated to the polls, exactly. Like, you know, and now he's gone on holiday for a couple of weeks to regroup before the start of the new political year in September.

27:37But I think this is one of those early glimmers of a very simple fact and political reality, which is that, you know, Starmer faced huge constraints, huge structural constraints. The prison story was one of them. It was one of the sort of early things that they had to do, quite very well managed by Shibana Mahmood as Justice Secretary then in terms of getting the message out to the public as to why. Nonetheless, prisons, big early thing that Starmer had to do, it's still going to be a problem for Burnham. By the way, it's a problem that will likely recur because as we know, despite the efforts to expand prison capacity, they're getting it down.

28:11But of course, the more people get, you basically are just refilling the jar each time. So it's a problem that could well end up recurring. And there are other things like this, right, which are where Burnham, he tried to defuse this by deferring it for a while and he could defer it no longer. And there are going to be other political problems that when he returns after his holiday in late August, September, are also, he won't be able to defer any longer. Whether it's about welfare, whether it's obviously about foreign policy, whether it's about North Sea oil and gas, you know, there are just lots of decisions coming down the track where he won't be able, as you say, Emily, to do the thing that he most likes to do, which is to have that.

28:49Side with the campaigner and the individual, right? And just be and please everyone, you know, and that's and I think that is something that is at the heart of his politics because he's a more emotive politician in a lot of ways. That is exactly how he likes to articulate. But there are big decisions coming down the tracks where he will just not be able to please everybody or in many cases, many people at all. Yeah, and I think with the prisons one, you know, if you ask people whether they like early release, they say no. If you ask people if they would prefer new prisoners not to be convicted and given custodial sentences, they say no.