A Reform UK candidate has been suspended from his party after tweeting support for the prolific rapist and sexual predator Jimmy Savile.
Stephen Hartley, who was standing in the Banbury Hadrwick ward ahead of local elections next month, was revealed to have posted on X that Savile was a ‘working class hero’.
He made the tweet in 2022 and told the BBC that he may have ‘forgotten’ to disclose his X account to Reform UK.
Mr Hartley added that he had doubts that allegations against the TV personality were true.
It is believed that Savile preyed on roughly 500 victims, aged from five to 75 years old, who were assaulted in hospitals, schools, children’s homes and even on BBC premises.
Reform UK confirmed that Mr Hartley was suspended after being made aware of the posts and the party had ‘withdrawn all support for his candidacy’.
However, Mr Hartley will still appear on Oxfordshire County Council’s ballot paper since his suspension was announced after the candidate lists were published.
The former candidate said it was ‘fair enough’ that he had been suspended and revealed he used his X account ‘sporadically when I just want to vent’.
‘I understand Reform have got to be careful,’ he added.
Nigel Farage, the party’s leader, has previously said that local election candidates would be vetted better than the Labour or Tory party after Reform UK were rocked by scandals last year.
Reform UK candidates had posted antisemitic content ahead of the general election but the MP for Clacton had insisted similiar cases would not be repeated.
Mr Farage said ‘at the last election, Reform was an embryonic organisation’ and ‘it didn’t have any vetting at all’.
‘In fact, it just said ‘Oh come all ye faithful. Anyone who wants to stand for us, just come and stand’,’ he added, insisting it was ‘very, very different now’ at a press event last week.
‘We’ve applied much, much stricter vetting criteria for local election candidates than under the Conservatives and Labour Party.
‘And will you find someone who tweeted something at some point? You will. But will you find somebody who persistently has said things that you find fundamentally offensive? No, you won’t you absolutely.’
When alive, Savile was one of the BBC’s most popular presenters and figureheads, using his charitable image and political influence to to legitimise himself and go undetected while sexually abusing hundreds of children and young people.
When the scandal unfolded in 2012, the BBC was slammed for allowing a culture of sexual abuse during the ‘Savile years’.
A leaked draft of an internal BBC report from 2016 read: ‘Given the hierarchical structure, the impracticability of complaining to anyone other than a line manager and the weakness of the personnel department, the only option for a victim of inappropriate behaviour during the Savile years was to put up with it or leave.’