Badenoch defends decision to allow man jailed for antisemitism to stand as councillor

Tory leader praises Joshua Bonehill-Paine’s ‘contrition’ but says she has higher thresholds for MP candidates Kemi Badenoch has defended her party’s decision to allow a former neo-Nazi who was jailed for subjecting a prominent Labour politician to antisemitic abuse to stand as a councillor. Badenoch said her party was not giving Joshua Bonehill-Paine, who is standing for election in Somerset, a “national platform”. “This man is showing that he’s more than contrite, he’s actually working training Prevent officers, speaking in universities and schools,” Badenoch told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme. “I am extremely worried about antisemitism and what I feel is that if we can’t have the people who have previously been radicalised, who understand what went wrong and are part of the fight against antisemitism now, if we’re saying: ‘No, no, no, you’re untouchable,’ then how can we pretend that we believe in rehabilitation? “I’m someone who’s quite sceptical about rehabilitation and I see this man as somebody who has been rehabilitated.” Luciana Berger, who was targeted by Bonehill-Paine in a campaign of antisemitic abusein 2016, said he fell short of the bar for standing for public office.