Reform candidate's horrifying claim Britain would be 'better under the Nazis'

A Reform UK candidate has said Britain would be "far better" if Hitler had taken over, in comments picked up by the BBC. Ian Gribbin said the UK would be thriving had it "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis.

Mr Gribbin, standing as the party’s candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women are the “sponging gender” and should be “deprived of healthcare”.

The posts were made in 2022 on the right-wing comment website Unherd. The hopeful parliamentary candidate also wrote that Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A Reform spokesman said the comments were not "endorsements" but "written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths", while his remarks about women were "tongue in cheek”.

Mr Gribbin has now apologised for his old comments and said he "withdraws them unreservedly" for the "upset that they have caused".

He added: "I myself are upset at the way these comments were taken out of context especially when my mother was the daughter of Russian Jews fleeing persecution".

Questioned about the comments at their press conference today, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice said that the decision by Rishi Sunak to call a snap election had limited the amount of vetting each party was able to do of candidates, and pointed out that other parties are also involved in rows about controversial candidates.

Mr Farage insisted that Reform’s candidate problem is not “as big as the Green Party”, who have had to suspend 20 of their candidates for putting out “vile antisemitic tweets”.

He said: “Every party will suffer because it was a snap election. We had put in place a big vetting programme but we ran out of time.”

Mr Tice added that if any candidate has said “daft things” that the party “will look at it and investigate it”.

In July 2022, the Bexhill candidate wrote: “Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality…. but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people.”

The same month he wrote: "In Britain specifically we need to exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognize that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal."

The previous month he criticised women, writing on the site’s message board: "Do you think you could actually work and pay for it all too like good citizens?

"Men pay 80 percent of tax – women spend 80 percent of tax revenue. On aggregate as a group you only take from society.

"Less complaining please from the 'sponging gender'."

In December 2021 he wrote female soldiers "almost made me wretch (sic)" and were a "total liability".

A Reform UK spokesman said: "Through offence archaeology the BBC has found that Mr Gribbin has made a series of comments about a number of subjects.

"They were written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths. That doesn't make them endorsements, just arguing points in long distance debates.

"His historical perspective of what the UK could have done in the 30s was shared by the vast majority of the British establishment including the BBC of its day, and is probably true.

"Again no endorsement, just pointing out conveniently forgotten truths.

"As for the feminism point, his tongue is so firmly in his cheek one should be able to spot it from 100 yards."