The Conservative Party has offered Jewish community leaders a meeting with a local election candidate who spent three years in prison for neo-Nazi activism, after his selection prompted demands that he be dropped.

Joshua Bonehill-Paine was chosen to stand as the Conservative candidate for Crewkerne South, a seat on the new Somerset Council, in local elections due in 2027, according to BBC News. Local councils run services like bins, planning and social care, and their members are elected by residents. Bonehill-Paine previously left Reform UK to join the Conservatives, saying Kemi Badenoch's leadership was the reason for the switch, the Telegraph reported.

The party offered a meeting with Bonehill-Paine to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis so they could discuss their concerns directly, BBC News reported. The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council are major organisations representing Jewish people in Britain.

The Board of Deputies called on the Conservatives to drop Bonehill-Paine, describing his selection as one that 'beggars belief'. Karen Newman, vice president of the Board of Deputies, said the organisation had contacted the Conservatives to set out its concerns, call for the selection to be reversed and ask the party to review its vetting processes. Vetting is the system parties use to check the background of people who want to stand for them.

Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, said she is standing by Bonehill-Paine because she wants to give him a second chance. She said he is 'spending every day working to solve the problem he previously caused' and that the party 'believes in second chances', BBC News reported.

Bonehill-Paine said he reformed his views after learning of the murder of MP Jo Cox. He said he then completed a de-radicalisation programme — a course designed to help people leave extremist beliefs behind — and now delivers counter-extremism sessions around the UK.

He was jailed in 2015 after posting antisemitic remarks ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally, BBC News reported, and spent three years in prison. A year after his imprisonment, he was convicted of racially aggravated harassment of then-Labour MP Luciana Berger, who is now a member of the House of Lords. The Times reported that the harassment conviction came in 2016. He also holds previous convictions for assaulting a police officer, burglary of a police station, and malicious communications.

Berger, reacting on X, said Bonehill-Paine had published 'reams' of deeply racist, misogynistic and pornographic material about her, that the case still haunts her, and that he should have no role in public life.

Liberal Democrat MP Adam Dance, whose Yeovil constituency includes Crewkerne, said the Conservative Party needed to explain why it believes Bonehill-Paine is fit to serve. A Labour Party spokesperson described the selection as 'a total disgrace'.

The situation puts Badenoch in a difficult position. Standing by a candidate with a neo-Nazi conviction invites sustained attack from political opponents on vetting standards and judgment. Withdrawing him risks inviting the charge that the party leadership's public commitment to second chances is conditional, and that local decisions can be swiftly overridden when the political pressure mounts. Badenoch has so far chosen to stand by him, framing the decision in the language of redemption rather than political calculation.

For Jewish community organisations, the offer of a meeting has not tempered their response. The Board of Deputies' call for a review of vetting processes goes beyond the question of one candidate in one Somerset ward. It raises questions about how local party branches conduct background checks on prospective candidates and what level of criminal conviction, however long ago, the national party considers serious enough to disqualify someone. The involvement of the Chief Rabbi in the party's proposed discussions signals the seriousness of the concerns.

For the Conservatives locally, the timing is uncomfortable. The new Somerset Council seat will be contested in 2027, giving the party more than a year of sustained scrutiny. Bonehill-Paine's defection from Reform UK adds a further dimension. Reform has been the principal challenger to Conservative council seats across parts of the West Country, and opponents will make political use of the fact that a former Reform member with a neo-Nazi past now carries the Conservative rosette.

Berger's intervention carries particular weight. Her experience of targeted racist harassment while serving as an MP is one of the most severe cases of abuse directed at a parliamentarian in recent years, and her assertion that the case 'still haunts' her will resonate with MPs who have faced similar, if less extreme, threats. Her insistence that Bonehill-Paine 'should have no role in public life' sets a direct test for Badenoch's framing of second chances.

The broader question for the Conservative Party is whether its vetting systems work at the local government level, where the number of candidates is far greater than at a general election and central oversight is necessarily thinner. Badenoch's defence rests on a story of genuine de-radicalisation and public service. Whether that story holds up under sustained scrutiny from the Board of Deputies, the Chief Rabbi and political opponents, in a seat the party will need to defend for well over a year, is the open question.