Labour Peer Urges Badenoch to Reverse Advisory Role for Former Neo-Nazi Activist
Labour peer Luciana Berger has called on Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to reverse her decision to give former neo-Nazi activist Joshua Bonehill-Paine a national advisory role, urging Badenoch to "listen to victims." Berger, who was personally targeted by Bonehill-Paine in a campaign of racially aggravated harassment when she served as an MP, wrote that she was one of his victims and questioned whether his new position could bring him onto the Westminster parliamentary estate — the complex of buildings where MPs and peers work. The Guardian
Bonehill-Paine's path from far-right extremist to Conservative party adviser traces back more than a decade. He founded and led the National British Resistance, a far-right group. In 2015, he was jailed for more than three years after posting antisemitic material online ahead of a planned neo-Nazi rally. The following year, he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for abuse he directed at Berger during her time as a sitting MP. He is also the creator of the satirical Crewkerne Gazette. The Guardian
The controversy over Bonehill-Paine's involvement with the Conservative party escalated through the first week of August 2026. He was initially selected as a Conservative council candidate in Somerset for an election scheduled for the following year. After backlash over his past, he withdrew his candidacy on August 5. Rather than severing ties, Badenoch then appointed him as an adviser to the Conservative party's culture and integration commission — a body set up to address questions of social cohesion and community relations. The Guardian Channel 4 News
Badenoch had already publicly defended Bonehill-Paine before the advisory appointment. In a piece published in the Times on August 5, she described questions over his suitability to stand as a councillor in Somerset as a "pile-on" and praised what she called his "contrition," while noting that she applies higher thresholds for MP candidates than for councillor candidates. The Guardian
A spokesperson for Badenoch addressed the security concerns that Berger's intervention raised, stating that Bonehill-Paine would not have a parliamentary pass and would not be on the parliamentary estate. The spokesperson also said that Bonehill-Paine had served his time, completed Home Office Prevent counter-terrorism courses — a government programme designed to stop people being drawn into extremism — and had gone into schools to teach about combatting antisemitism and extremism. The Guardian
Badenoch framed her stance as a matter of principle. She said the Conservative party under her leadership was "the party of personal responsibility and law and order" and defended standing by beliefs "even when politically inconvenient." The Guardian
Berger rejected that framing. She said Bonehill-Paine should have no role in public life because of "his racism and his view of women." Her earlier appeal, made on August 4, called on the Conservatives to drop him as a candidate, and her latest intervention extends that demand to the advisory appointment itself. The Guardian
The broader context here is that the dispute turns on a question Badenoch's defence does not fully resolve. Her spokesperson's account of rehabilitation, Prevent course completion, and school outreach describes steps Bonehill-Paine has taken. Berger's counterargument is that no amount of rehabilitation, even if accepted at face value, erases the gravity of a conviction for harassing a sitting parliamentarian on racial grounds, or warrants proximity to the institutions of national governance. The culture and integration commission, by its mandate, addresses precisely the social cohesion questions on which Bonehill-Paine's criminal record bears directly.
For Badenoch, the calculation is double-edged. Defending Bonehill-Paine allows her to project consistency on her stated themes of personal responsibility and second chances. It also risks associating the Conservative brand with a figure whose convictions include antisemitic abuse directed at a Jewish MP, a fact that Berger's intervention keeps at the center of the story. Whether other Conservative parliamentarians, peers, or party members will join Berger's call has not yet been tested. The advisory role does not carry parliamentary access, but it does carry the party's endorsement, and Berger's demand is that this endorsement itself be withdrawn.
