Redemption or Rebrand?

Kemi Badenoch's defence of Joshua Bonehill-Paine (aka 'Crewkerne Man')

It’s one thing that Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives let a former Neo-Nazi slip through the cracks and stand as a councillor in Somerset. But what’s even more remarkable is that Badenoch herself – despite the terrible headlines – has come out to openly justify the decision.

Her defence of Joshua Bonehill-Paine (known online as ‘Crewkerne Man’) is not entirely coherent. On the one hand, she claims that he is “more than contrite” about his past and that people deserve second chances when they genuinely change. But at the same time, she says she wouldn’t give him a “national platform” and let him stand for Parliament. So has he changed or not then?

Looking at this fellow’s social media history, it seems like he simply swapped out one outmoded strain of far-right radicalism for a more acceptable online variant.

Bonehill-Paine founded the National British Resistance Party – a fringe fascist group looking to fill the niche of the BNP – in 2014. It didn’t perform particularly well. Describing himself as a “proud anti-semite” in 2015, he was charged with malicious communications offences relating to an online disinformation blog, The Daily Bale, which produced scare stories about migrants and high-profile left-wingers.

He was also convicted of inciting racial hatred after laying out plans to threaten the Jewish community in Golders Green with holocaust imagery and Nazi iconography. In perhaps his most high-profile scandal, he was charged for religiously aggravated harassment after targeting Jewish Labour peer Luciana Berger with antisemitic hate.

These are abhorrent acts and beliefs, but I do believe this kind of person can genuinely repent and change. I’m minded of high-ranking Ku Klux Klan Members in the States that have defected from and disavowed their organisation, morphing into impactful anti-racism campaigners. Or the reformed neo-Nazis that help groups like Hope Not Hate conduct crucial investigations into the British far-right.

This is precisely the sort of journey that Bonehill-Paine now claims to have undertaken. In fairness, he has rightly renounced his egregious anti-semitism. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s transitioned into a genuine advocate for a tolerant and open society. He seems to harbour little remorse for his disinformation campaigns or his nasty rhetoric about women, the gay community, Muslims and migrants.

Since his supposed ‘reformation’, he’s dedicated his time to churning out viral AI slop music videos under the moniker The Crewkerne Gazette. The most famous, ‘Take a Dump on No 10’ (which somehow made it to #3 on the UK charts in December 2025 – god that’s incredibly bleak) shows Nigel Farage climbing down Keir Starmer’s chimney on Christmas, pooping out a large snowball, and throwing it in the former Prime Minister’s face. His videos broadly push right-wing populist, xenophobic, nationalist and deportation-focused narratives. They’ve become increasingly anti-Farage and pro-Badenoch.

Rather than reforming, he seems to have resettled into the growing pro-Israel far-right – a cohort which rejects anti-semitism but champions Islamophobia and anti-migrant narratives about ‘Western civilisation’ being destroyed by migrants. It’s akin to the ‘MAGA’ philosophy, which is united with Israel’s own right-wing in its belief that multiculturalism doesn’t work and that militant mass deportations and enforced segregation are the only way forward.

The fact that this constitutes ‘contrition’ and redemption for Bonehill-Paine should concern us all. The Conservative leader claims to have a revamped new candidate selection process that led to the rejection of former Conservative ministers including Grant Shapps. What does it say that someone like this could not just slip in, but receive a full-fledged defensive intervention from the party leader?

“I don’t believe this man should have any role in public life – because of both his racism and his view of women”, Baroness Berger (who he targeted) said of his selection. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has said that the selection "beggars belief.”

Kemi Badenoch disagrees. She instead sees someone who is at least reformed enough to handle your bins and your parking (if not national lawmaking). A certain kind of bigotry – the type that Nigel Farage has spent the last few years incubating in British politics – is now seen as an electoral asset.

Farage tried to jump on the bandwagon and condemn the selection, missing the extremely critical fact that his own party also tried to recruit Bonehill-Paine for the very same election. It’s the latest in a string of embarrassments for the embattled Reform party.

But even if Farage is toast (which is no guarantee), Reform have clearly set the mood music for the right going forward. All past sins can be forgiven by the right-wing establishment if you attack Palestine protestors, Muslim Britons and migrants. Badenoch’s public defence of ‘Crewkerne Man’ is another sign that the boundaries of acceptable politics have been completely redrawn.

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