United Kingdom: Badenoch Adviser Joshua Bonehill-paine Was Found Guilty in 2016 of Racially Aggravated Harassment of Then MP Luciana Berger

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 2015 for more than three years after posting antisemitic material online before a planned neo-Nazi rally. In 2016, 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?