A reformed neo-Nazi who was slated to run for the UK’s Conservative party in a local election has withdrawn his candidacy, after party leader Kemi Badenoch offered him an advisory role assisting counter-extremist efforts.

In a post to X, Joshua Bonehill-Paine wrote: “The last 24 hours have shown that a lot of people do not understand how terrible I feel about the things I did when I was much younger.”

“Rather than standing as a local council candidate, I believe that my experience is better used supporting Kemi Badenoch in her ongoing mission to combat the antisemitism and extremism that is dividing our nation,” he wrote.

The Tory leader confirmed she had offered the ex-candidate a place on the Culture and Integration commission, focusing on “tackling radicalization.”

British Jewish groups had fumed after Bonehill-Paine, 33, received the party’s endorsement, given his history of hate speech and antisemitic harassment, for which he served more than three years in prison.

Prior to his stint behind bars, Bonehill-Paine had described himself as a fascist and supporter of “white rights,” and led a far-right group called the National British Resistance, which opposed British democracy as a project by “cultural Marxist Judeo-backed capitalist vermin.”

Bonehill-Paine was jailed in 2015 after publishing antisemitic material ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally, a crime that he committed while on bail for harassing Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger, whom he called a “rodent” and an “evil money-grabber.”

He now works with schools, universities, police and probation officials to counter radicalization, and he has said his views changed after MP Jo Cox was murdered by a white supremacist in 2016. He also runs a YouTube channel that posts AI-generated political satire.

In his post Wednesday, Bonehill-Paine wrote: “I was 21 when antisemitism became my whole way of seeing the world. Because........

© The Times of Israel