The Labour peer Luciana Berger has urged Kemi Badenoch to “listen to victims” and reverse her decision to give a national advisory role to a former neo-Nazi.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine was jailed in ۲۰۱۵ for more than three years after posting antisemitic material online before a planned neo-Nazi rally. In ۲۰۱۶, he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for abuse directed at Berger, an MP at the time. He was also the founder and leader of the National British Resistance, a far-right group.
Berger said she was still affected by his crimes more than nine years later, and questioned what safeguarding checks Badenoch and the Conservative party had carried out in relation to his appointment to the party’s culture and integration commission.
Berger, who is Jewish, asked whether Bonehill-Paine’s new role could bring him to Westminster. She wrote on X: “Can I expect to come face to face with him on the parliamentary estate?”
Badenoch’s spokesperson said Bonehill-Paine would not have a parliamentary pass and would not be on the estate.
Berger’s intervention came after the Conservative party leader published a lengthy defence of Bonehill-Paine in the Times, describing questions over his suitability to stand as a councillor in Somerset as a “pile-on”.
Bonehill-Paine was set to stand as a Tory local councillor but announced last week that he had withdrawn from next year’s local elections after Badenoch offered him the advisory role.
Badenoch said: “People need to understand that the Conservative party under my leadership is now the party of personal responsibility and law and order. That means insisting on consequences by punishing wrongdoing and protecting the public, especially victims.
“We need fewer double standards and instead higher standards in a system that is repeatedly failing to protect the public. We should be tough enough to stand by our beliefs even when politically inconvenient, wise enough to recognise rehabilitation and consistent enough to apply the same principles to friend and foe.”
Berger said she had seen the piece late on Saturday night and “tried to ignore it” but after Badenoch shared the article on Monday, the former MP for Liverpool Wavertree accused her of giving insufficient consideration to Bonehill-Paine’s victims.
“Badenoch makes one passing reference to the ‘victims’,” Berger wrote. “There were many. And I was one of them. Did Badenoch read the judge’s sentencing remarks? In court we heard the victim impact statements from people unable to testify, whose lives he had destroyed.
“His appointment as an adviser to the Conservative party’s culture and integration commission could conceivably bring him to Westminster. Can I expect to come face to face with him on the parliamentary estate?
“It’s still not too late for Badenoch to listen to victims and reverse her decision.”
A spokesperson for Badenoch said Bonehill-Paine had served his time, completed Home Office Prevent (counter-terrorism) courses, and had gone into schools to teach about combatting antisemitism and extremism. But the party did not answer questions about what safeguarding checks it had carried out in relation to his appointment as an adviser, or why Badenoch had not contacted Berger.
The abuse Bonehill-Paine directed at Berger included calling her a “rodent” and an “evil money-grabber”. He also has a conviction for assaulting a police officer and burglary of a police station, and was convicted in ۲۰۱۴ of malicious communications over an anti-Islam hoax that led to death threats against the owners of a pub in Leicester.
Berger challenged Badenoch over what consideration had been given to safeguarding: “Badenoch’s article says she wants to safeguard the public and victims, but what safeguarding checks have she and the Conservative party carried out?”
If Badenoch or her team had reached out to her, Berger said, “I would say, I don’t think it is ‘harder politics’ for this man to be part of Kemi’s operation. I think it’s the wrong politics.”
She added: “I’m all for rehabilitation. But someone convicted of neo-Nazi misogynistic crimes is not suitable for public office less than a decade after his conviction. And neither should he be gifted a national advisory role, even closer to power.”
