Nigel Farage threatens legal action against candidate vetting company

Reform UK has threatened to take legal action against a vetting company for failing to provide services, after the party was caught out having fielded candidates who previously praised Adolf Hitler’s leadership or endorsed the British National party.

The party paid £144,000 to Vetting.com in April to scrutinise more than 400 of its candidates ahead of the upcoming election.

But the work was never completed, leading the party to put forward its candidates without third-party vetting.

Vetting.com on Tuesday said it had not received basic personal data or co-operation from some candidates, and the early election had upset its “working assumption” that the vote would be in the autumn.

Reform on Tuesday said it is “exploring legal action as well as potentially involving the police”.

Nigel Farage, who took over as Reform’s leader after the election was called, said the whole episode was an “establishment stitch-up” and accused the owner of the vetting company of having ties to the Conservative party.

Colin Bloom, co-owner of Vetting.com, was the former head of Conservative Christian Fellowship and a government faith adviser under former prime minister Boris Johnson.

Vetting.com said: “We do not intend to litigate this in public, and we send Reform our best wishes as they shake up the UK political landscape. Mr Bloom has not had anything to do with the UK Conservative party since 2022 and remains politically neutral.

“Given the explicit need for candidate consent, as well as our systems needing basic personal data like dates of birth, our automated software was not able to process Reform’s candidates with the data that was provided when it was provided.”

Reform has faced a flurry of media reports surrounding the quality of candidates it has fielded in the contest, and the extent to which it has vetted them given their past affiliations.

Ian Gribbin, Reform UK’s candidate in Bexhill and Battle, posted on the right-leaning UnHerd website in July 2022 that Britain would have been in a “far better state” if it had taken up an offer of neutrality from Hitler in the 1930s. He apologised and withdrew the comments, though a Reform spokesperson said they were “probably true”.

Another, Jack Aaron standing in Welwyn Hatfield, had described Hitler on X as “brilliant in using [personality traits] to inspire people into action”.

Earlier this week Grant StClair-Armstrong, the Reform candidate standing against business secretary Kemi Badenoch, resigned from the party after it emerged he had previously urged people to vote for the far-right BNP. He apologised for the remarks.

Richard Tice, chair of Reform, previously told the Financial Times the media were well placed to scrutinise candidates, but that he had hired a vetting company after Reform faced criticism over the extent to which it had carried out due diligence.

On Tuesday, he said: “They [Vetting.com] promised a deep dive, particularly on social media, and adverse press checks, received our candidate data but then delivered absolutely nothing.

“Suddenly, a round of stories appear in The Times and elsewhere after nominations close, including some stories that are 15-years-old.”