Corey Edwards, a Reform UK candidate for the Welsh Senedd elections, has stepped down citing mental health issues after a photograph emerged showing him apparently making a Nazi salute. The image, published by Nation.Cymru, depicts Edwards raising his right arm with a finger of his left hand under his nose, mimicking Adolf Hitler.
Reform UK announced Edwards' decision on Friday, a day after party leader Nigel Farage defended him, suggesting he was impersonating Basil Fawlty from the BBC sitcom 'Fawlty Towers'. Farage said: 'It was a Fawlty Towers impression. Maybe we should ban the BBC, I don’t know.' He added that Edwards would not be suspended, stating: 'No, he’s a human being.'
Edwards, a former adviser to Conservative Welsh secretary David TC Davies, initially said he was imitating Welsh goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey, who made a similar gesture in 2019. Hennessey claimed he did not know what a Nazi salute was.
The incident adds to Reform UK's candidate selection woes. In Scotland, four candidates for the May elections stood down or were suspended within a week of being announced. Last week, Stuart Niven, candidate for Dundee City West, was suspended after being struck off as a company director. Three other Scottish candidates shared offensive or far-right content on social media, including one who called former First Minister Humza Yousaf 'not British' and another who endorsed posts by Tommy Robinson and Britain First.
In Wales, Reform's sole Senedd member, Laura Anne Jones, was suspended from parliament for two weeks in November after using an offensive Chinese slur in a WhatsApp group.
