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A
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. Hello. So every so often in Westminster, some slightly weird, obviously AI generated videos of politicians doing weird things goes viral. It's like Kemi Badenok being a rapper at PMQs, or Nigel Farage being in Dad's army, or Andy Burnham and all sorts of weird guises that he would never normally be in. And they're posted by a man who calls himself Crew Kern man as part of a thing called the Crew Kern Gazette. Now, Crew Kern man is actually Joshua Bonehill Payne, who is a convicted neo Nazi who says he has completely changed his ways and he now educates people in the evils of anti Semitism. He's also been selected as a Conservative candidate for the English local elections next year. It's quite controversial, that decision to select him, but. But Kemi Badenok, the Tory party leader, is standing by him. So we'll discuss the whole story on this episode of Newscast, Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
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B
Humanity's next great voyage begins.
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A
You know, I like my buses. I'll come onto them.
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B
I see that he was, I guess,
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C
the mayor of a town.
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A
Ooh la. Thinking about it like a panto helped.
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B
Do we play music now or what do we do? And what will you do? Stare at a wall.
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A
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio. And let's dive straight into this story about Joshua Bonehill Payne, the. The Conservative activist, the Conservative candidate, the satirical video maker and the convicted neo Nazi who says he's changed his ways. Manning the fort for us during the summer holidays at Westminster is Joe Pike. Hi, Joe.
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B
Hi, Adam.
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A
Not a quiet recess. I mean, it's always that way, though, isn't it?
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B
Yeah, lots of. Lots of stories. And the fact that politicians are not in Parliament doesn't seem to change the fact that news still happens.
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A
Such is summer in politics now. And here in the studio with me is Daniel Sanford, our UK correspondent. Hello, Daniel.
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C
Hi, Adam.
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A
So, Joe, just explain to us how this story first emerged, what Joshua Bonehill Payne is potentially doing for the Conservatives.
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B
Yeah, it emerged yesterday, so Tuesday, when it was announced that Joshua Bonehill Payne would stand for a seat on Somerset Council and stand in some council elections next year. So it's not something imminent at all. But as Daniel will be able to explain better than me, that attracted some disbelief in some political circles because of the criminal record of Joshua Bonehill Payne. Now, what he has said is that he spent the last few years of his life changing his life. He has spent a lot of time training people in anti extremism measures, helping vulnerable people who are at danger of being radicalized change their views. And in fact, he said in an interview with BBC Somerset that while he was in prison, news of the death of the MP Jo Cox, murdered, of course by right wing extremists, was one key point, he argues, that has made him change course and change his life.
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A
And Daniel, you've actually got some court documents in front of you there, so just remind us how far back this goes and what he was convicted of.
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C
Yeah. Joshua Bonehill Payne wasn't involved a little bit in a little bit of anti Semitism in his past. He was an absolute poster boy for criminal anti Semitism in around 2014, 2015. His criminal career started actually in 2011, where he stole a police uniform from a police station in charge when he was on a drunken night out. He'd been a public school boy. He was expelled and ended up in actual social services care for a while. Then in 2014, he was sentenced to a suspended sentence for accusing people of being paedophiles who weren't. He'd also previously accused a Leicester pub of banning members of the armed services from the pub. But then his really, really serious offending came in 2014, 2015. He was competing with other people to be the leading figure in the kind of anti Semitic neo Naz far right. And he took on Luciana Berger, who was then a Jewish labor mp, now
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A
in the House of Lords, now in
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C
the House of Lords, and posted a series of extremely vile posts on his website and on social media, including, for example, an image of a rat with Luciana Burgess face superimposed on it, calling her an anti British pro genocide ratio rodents. I mean, really, really, really serious stuff. And then that was going on at the same time as him trying to organize anti deification marches, as he called them, in both Golda's Green and Stamford Hill in North London, two of the most Jewish areas in North London. And he was sentenced to more than three years for trying to organize one of those protests in Golders Green. And then on top of that was sentenced to a consecutive sentence of two years for the offences against Luciano Burger. So more than five years of prison sentences for these illegal. So bad they were illegal anti Semitic posts.
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A
And is it true that at one of these court hearings he actually did a Nazi salute?
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C
Yeah, I mean, during the Luciana Berger trial, which was at the Old Bailey, the judge, you know, comments in his sentencing remarks as how he'd sat smirking throughout the trial. But Luciana Burger remembers there was a moment when he had his Nazi supporters in the gallery, and he turned around and gave a Nazi salute to his supporters in the gallery, as Joe says. He says that while in prison, he had a bit of a Damascene conversion, realized the error of his ways, did one of these famous courses in prison, kind of counter extremes courses. In many ways, he's now a poster boy for how successful those counter extremes of courses can be, and then himself became a trainer. But I think the question is whether you're going to accept someone's rehabilitation. Fair enough. And you can say, well, that's great that he's reformed, and you can invite him to come and speak at your conferences and things like that. But whether you then still say, and I want him to be a frontman for my party, that's the thing that I think has caused so much upset, particularly in the Jewish community.
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A
And also he's written on Conservative Home, the conservative website, talking about some of the reasons he thinks he got into this ideology in the first place. He said he'd had no job, he'd suffered in his schooling. He says he's had friends who'd taken their own lives. And he said that he was kind of indoctrinated into not just some bad beliefs, but a whole belief system that he says just completely enveloped him and dragged him in, which is what he says he's now rejected after all these years.
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C
Yeah, and I think all of that's really, really important. And as I say, he's actually very interest on the topic of how people get radicalized and how to pull people out of that radicalization, which is exactly what happened to him. And I don't think that anything that's been said this week demeans his withdrawal from that very radical world. But there's no getting away from the fact that he was this central figure in that 2014, 2015 period on the edges of National Action, which was a group that then went on to be banned as a terrorist group. And whether you, as a political party, want to say, I'm happy for that person, even 10 years on, to be a frontman for our party, I think that is the question, as I say, which has caused real, real upset in lots of circles, but particularly in the Jewish community.
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A
And, Joe, we heard from Baroness Berger, Luciana Berger, on the Today program on Radio 4 on Wednesday morning, and she spoke in the strongest terms about what effect this has had on her, her family and her team at the time.
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B
Yeah. She said the abuse was deeply racist, misogynistic, pornographic, and that it had a profound impact on her life, partly because she was six months pregnant when she was in court, having to give evidence. This is the same court hearings where, as Daniel mentioned, that Joshua Burnhill Payne made a Nazi salute at his supporters. Luciana Berger has not discounted the whole debate around rehabilitation, but her argument seems to be that there are many things you can do, including educate other people, especially younger people, those at risk. You can tell your story and use it as a sort of cautionary tale. But she draws the line at public office in particular because of the level and type of sustained abuse she says that she was subjected to and that we know she was subjected to, as Daniel said from what the judge said in court. What Kemi Badenoch, though, has argued is that, yes, what he's done is appalling and abhorrent, but we should focus on what he's doing now. And interestingly enough, there's been a bit of a backlash to this point. She said, it's not as if I'm making him a national politician. This is a much more sort of junior, less high profile job. Part of her argument is that there is a difference between being a councillor and being an mp, ultimately making decisions over roads or bin collections and national policy. But the fact that he would be, if elected, being paid by taxpayers and making decisions that impact their lives is, to some, in particular to Luciana Berger, a step too far.
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A
And Joe, there is a whole thing going on at the moment in the Conservative Party about candidate selection. And it came up last week because Grant Shapps, the former, he's done lots of ministerial jobs, Home Office, transport, defense, you name it, he's done a lot of jobs. He wants to come back as a Conservative candidate for Parliament in the next election, but he was barred from standing because he wouldn't sign up to Kemi Beidok's full policy platform. And that is why Justin on the Today program was saying to Kemi Banok this morning, hang on, you won't let Grant Shaps into the party as a candidate, a pretty kind of centrist, decent guy, but you will let somebody with this anti Semitic background be a council candidate.
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B
And there are people because of that ongoing candidate selection process and difficult decisions that are being made, and clearly people who are being upset by being sort of banned or barred from selection or election. That means that those conversations are really ongoing in Conservative associations amongst former MPs within WhatsApp groups. That is such a live conversation this summer as the Conservatives are ultimately trying to be prepared for, ideally for them, an election a few years time but maybe something sooner. If Andy Burnham suddenly calls an election. I think you're right. That has added to the. I don't know if you'd necessarily call it the toxicity of this debate, but the frustration on the part of some Conservative activists that Kemi Badenoch has taken ultimately quite an obscure Conservative activist, not in his criminality, but in his profile within their. And taken him to a point where he is creating national headlines towards the top of broadcast bulletins on BBC radio and tv and on the second news story on the website, I think, earlier. Partly that's, of course, because we're in August and there aren't big international summits and Parliament's not sitting in courts, generally not sitting. But she has created, perhaps accidentally, a big story here. It is about her judgment, ultimately. And there are some within her party who privately don't think that judgment and that call was the right one.
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A
And, of course, Daniel, I mean, people in your world knew who Joshua Bonehill Payne was, both because of the convictions and then the work he'd done afterwards. The first time I became aware of him in the political world was not because he was wanting to become a counselor, it's because he posts these satirical videos AI generated. Actually quite at the better end of AI generated in terms of photorealism of politicians like Cami Badenok, Andy Burnham. There's one of Nigel Farage, as if he's in Dad's army, under the moniker the Crew Kern Gazette. And sometimes they are quite funny and actually they do go quite viral in the political world.
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C
And that might be part of the answer to the question as to why Cami Badenock thought he might have been a good candidate in the first place. Because Kruegern man, as he calls himself, and the Crew Kern Gazette, which is the source of these AI videos, has become something which has been a bit of a thing, sort of 12 months, and people do see the videos. They think they're well done. And the Reform had actually. They're now having a go at the Conservatives. But Reform had actually tried to recruit him as a candidate as well, because they can see that he can perhaps reach parts that others can't reach. So you can again, understand all the reasons why you might want to have him on your side. But would you want him to be a front man for you with his face on posters? You. All you have to do is look at the picture of him with his face on his poster that he's prepared for the local council elections, and then look at the pictures of him as a neo Nazi and it all starts to feel very, very uncomfortable. Yeah.
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A
And just for anyone who's not seen any of these videos and not been sent them, the one on X that's had a 421,000 views is that dad's army one with Nigel Farage and the. The Reform front bench marching up to the white cliffs of Dover. And it sounds a bit like this. And you'll hear that it sounds quite realistic, but also not realistic at the same time. Be on the lookout, men. You just never know.
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Yes, Captain Mainwaring.
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A
Halt.
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C
Halt.
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B
Immediate reverse. Men reversed.
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C
Yes, Captain.
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B
Manor. Wrong ring. Oh. I wonder if we will see any boats today so we can stop them under zia's big, strong plan.
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A
The plan is to call in the Royal Navy. Men.
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C
Men.
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I can see a boat.
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B
Shall I call in the navy, Captain?
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A
And Joe, I just wonder all the people that shared those videos six months ago, a year ago, if they had any idea who was behind them.
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B
I bet they didn't. And the number of views, I think 34 million views. When I checked on YouTube this morning, I think about 50,000 subscrib. So he does have a pretty significant political platform. I'm sure nobody made the link here. In terms of where this goes next, though. The Conservatives have offered various Jewish groups, including the Board of Deputies, a meeting with their candidate, with Joshua Bonehill Payne. Those groups have said, no, we don't want to meet with him, but we'd like to meet with you. There should be in the next few days a meeting between, for example, the Board of Deputies and the Conservatives, when those organisations certainly seem keen to continue to make their argument that he should not be a cand, and they want the Tories to ditch him. As of today, though, Kemi Badenoch doesn't seem persuaded that she'll change her mind.
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A
Okay, Daniel, I know you got a busy day, and I'll let you go and read some more court documents. Thank you very much.
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C
Thanks, Adam.
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A
Now, Joe, returning to our theme about politics not taking a summer break, I thought we could do a little roundup of some of the things that are on your radar.
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B
Let's do it.
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A
First of all, Zach Polanski, Green Party leader, has been doing a speech today. It was an interesting one because. So I'm doing p.m. on Radio 4 this afternoon, and you sit next to the team who are doing the World at One. And Zach Polanski was going to come on the World At One, but the Greens hadn't told the program what his speech was going to be about. So we all had to just sit and watch it on TV like in the olden days, rather than hearing the credits.
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B
I don't know. I spent some of my morning trying to get clarity from the Green Party press office. They wouldn't give me a steer either. Does it help to keep it a surprise or does it mean people are already onto something else? I'm not sure if necessarily it worked a hundred in terms of getting us engaged. I spent a lot of the morning talking about Joshua Bonehill Payne, not Zach Polanski. But it's certainly a technique that actually reform you sometimes having a sort of surprise press conference without a key topic to keep people excited and on edge.
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A
Anyway, that's all moot, though, because the press conference did happen and Zach Polanski said he wanted to talk about the risk posed by the wildfires and the hot temperatures, both to people's health, but also things like food security and national security. And then he was linking it, things like the ownership of the water companies.
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B
And I thought it's a really interesting choice to go on that topic, especially as there are some internal critics of Zach Polanski who say he speaks a lot about different issues that matter to us. Let's say it's about a wealth tax or it's about Gaza. But when is he actually going to speak about the issue that is sort of in our name, which is the environment? And he's clearly responding to that by going so big on this sort of issue and also I suppose, maybe echoing what reform have done in summer holidays before, which is trying to get in front of the cameras, reframe politics at a quieter period around your particular issue. Yes, he was talking about climate change. Yes, he was talking about food supplies at a time where we're all feeling the heat and we can all see the impact of the heat in terms of sort of green spaces and grass around us, Bringing four people on stage, a firefighter, a doctor, a former soldier, and Chris Packham, the environmentalist, to explain why they believe the impact of climate change is an emergency and that there is a sort of dereliction of duty on the part of people in positions of power, but also, I think, trying to frame and frame quite early this situation for Andy Burnham in particular, within reference to the North Sea, I think Zach Polanski wants to get in there first and make it clear that seeing more drilling of oil and gas in the North Sea, in particular Rosebank and Jack Door, would be problematic. And there has been a sort of suggestion, although in slightly vague terms, that Andy Burnham would change Keir Starman's position on this. And Labour have actually responded this lunchtime after the press conference, saying if Zach Polanski wants to tackle the climate crisis, he should start by telling his fellow Green Party politicians that actions speak louder than words. Up and down the country. The Greens have repeatedly opposed plans for new reservoirs and clean energy projects. They that makes it harder to achieve what they say they want. No mention, though, in the Labour response, Adam, about North Sea oil, because for some voters who might be swithering, swapping between backing the Greens and backing Labour, that might be an issue that matters to them. And Zach Polanski, I think he's trying to get in there and make his point of why changing a government policy would be bad for the environment.
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A
Excellent use of the Scottish word swithering there. It's almost like you're preparing to join me in the Edinburgh Festival next week.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Not to just go and see some shows, but to actually do. Oh, good. I need some tips. I've got a couple of gaps left in my show schedule.
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B
Right.
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A
Another story that's on your radar that you were chasing up today, the fact that the government is not going to have a statutory inquiry into the activities of Jeffrey Epstein in the uk. Just remind newscasters why briefly on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, it looked like maybe the government were going to have one.
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B
Well, because the victims minister said on record on television that it was possibly being considered. That was Alex Davis Jones. A slightly odd series of events which suggests really that the government aren't quite clear what their position is, because our colleagues at Newsnight1 interviewed Alex Davis Jones, but also checked with various sources within government whether it was right. Didn't get any pushback, had nobody saying it was wrong until this morning. Senior figures in government have contacted us to distance themselves from those claims, but not really slapped down Alex Davis Jones. They don't want to look like they're sort of criticizing somebody who Andy Byrne was clearly spent some time, one on one, trying to persuade to come back into government. Of course, she quit as victims minister under Keir Starmer among that flurry of resignations around West Streeting. And she came back and she's seen as pretty skilled at a pretty difficult. Pretty difficult and grueling job. People close to who have described it as. To me, but. But certainly what the Ministry of Justice have said today is that their thoughts are with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. But as Minister Davis Jones said, we are reviewing what is possible and we'll look at all options to support victims and survivors. But here's the key sentence, Adam. The Prime Minister is committed to meeting with victims, but a public inquiry is not being actively considered. One argument of course, against not that has been articulated today, but newscasters will be aware of this, is that is the cost of public inquiries, which can be. Well, the COVID inquiry has now cost more than 200 million pounds.
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A
And also Alex Davis Jones original quotation, she was being quite sort of open minded about what the government were considering. It wasn't just that she said, oh yes, we're considering an inquiry. She was talking about considering a range of things that you could do to provide some accountability.
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B
Absolutely. But I suppose the lack of the
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C
news is the news.
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B
If you say to me on camera, and there's no correction from government if they think it's wrong, I mean, it gets published there. And I think it is a bit of an awkward change in position considering how prominent this story was this morning from government. Some internally argue it speaks to the fact that the team number 10 are pretty new in place, as are the advisors and some of the politicians across government. I'm not talking about Alex Davis Jones,
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A
but she's a retreader. She's done this job twice.
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B
She's pretty experienced and respected. But I'm talking about really advisors. And of course, Adam, the other point is a lot of them are on holiday, so the people more experienced at dealing with these knotty issues, I don't think were necessarily there when key questions were being asked. And it's led to a bit of a sort of embarrassing series of unfortunate events for the government.
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A
Now, the fourth item on our Catch up today, I'm including the Joshua Bonehill pain stories. Item one is I broke the habit of a lifetime because I normally like to listen to podcasts at normal speeds because I think that's just when you get the nuance and you really get to feel like you're spending time with the people. But because I'm quite busy today, I listened to Elizabeth Day's how to Fail on 1 1/2 speed.
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B
How was that?
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A
Quick, quicker than normal, but slightly less nuanced. And it was because Andy Burnham was on how to Fail. And as Elizabeth Day was saying, that's the first time a Prime Minister has been on how to Fail, a podcast famous for having the word fail in the title, which is not something that politicians normally want to associate themselves with.
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B
And I think that's partly because she. I mean, I'm not saying it's sort of therapy as a podcast, but there's an authenticity and an Honesty to the sort of topics and the way her interviews are constructed often with celebrities that I think would make some politicians loathe to engage too much. But of course, Andy Burnham, and we've seen this in recent weeks, has often done, used different sort of media formats. Of course, he spoke to Gary Lineker's football podcast. He did that. Jimmy's jobs podcast, aimed at business people, sort of alternatives to sort of, quote, mainstream media. And there seems to be some interesting light. Well, you'll have heard them, Adam. There seems to be some interesting lines from that interview, including Andy Burnham saying he had imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome. And also speaking about his wife's approach to his political ambitions. Marie France Van Heels saying when he said he wants to stand again for the third time, of course, after standing in 2010 and 15. Stood again in 2026. Not again. They've told you twice. They don't want you is how Andy Burnham relayed that to Elizabeth Day. And also he talked about her support. Would you even call it support? Her critique of his media appearances when he was in his 30s, in his early days. Yeah, yeah. She sent him a text message in all caps saying, answer the blank question.
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A
And yeah, the three failures that he picks, because that's the format for the long running podcast series, how to Fail are. Yeah, failing to be elected Labour leader the first two times, although he was elected unopposed the third time, so it wasn't really a contest. The second one was a failure to be able to get a job back home after he'd graduated from Cambridge. And the fact that he had to come back down south to get a job, which obviously has informed his view of the national economy, even though that was in 1991 and we're now in 2026. And then thirdly, his efforts the first time around to reform social care. And then he tells a very moving story where he actually starts to cry, basically about his dad, who's in a care home, and the staff in the care home parking a TV in front of his dad at the moment. Burnham was walking up Downing street so that his dad could witness in some way his son becoming Prime Minister, which is something that they haven't been able to talk about.
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B
There is one example, Adam, that I can remember in the corner of my mind of a politician, a former party leader, appearing on this podcast and being equally open about their difficult times. And that's Ed Miliband. About five years ago, he appeared on How To Fail with Elizabeth Day. And what was interesting about that, and this is in the context of him being Labour Leader and in 2015, basically being rejected by the British public in a pretty sort of, well, a public, significant way. He spoke to her about having therapy and how talking to somebody about that really difficult, exhausting experience. And of course, there's the sort of difficulties around him standing in the first place against his brother, how that was a big part of the journey to where he was in 2021, but I suppose where he is today. So certainly this type of interview does draw out different types of answers which are revealing for politicians, which is why some MPs jump at the chance and others stay away.
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A
And as we speak at 1:57 on Wednesday afternoon, the journey Ed Miliband is currently making is in Washington D.C. because he's meeting his counterpart in the US, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, because, of course, he's now Foreign Secretary. Right, Joe, that is the situation at 1:57 on Wednesday. Thank you very much for bringing us up to date on very many stories that you've been working on.
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B
My pleasure, Adam. Thank you.
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A
See you in Edinburgh.
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B
See you then.
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A
And let's get an Update on your 100 days, where we were collecting your challenges and things you want to achieve in Andy Burnham's first hundred days as Prime Minister. We had a message from Dennis from Portsmouth, who's 18. He says, I've got two entries for your latest gimmick. Thanks, Dennis. The first is to complete 100 hours in the gym, which I started at the start of July. The gym is where I have been listening to newscasts most of the time recently. So my second entry is to listen to every episode of Newscast and old Newscast over Burnham's first hundred days. I hope these entries are good for you and please keep the episodes coming so I have something both exciting and intriguing to listen to. Don't worry, Dennis, we can keep our side of the bar again if you can keep yours. Speaking of which, if I check my Andy Burnham 500k in 100 days jogging spreadsheet, I'm currently up to, oh, this is a bit disappointing. I've only done 66.79km, which means I've got to do 433.21km in the next 83 days. I'm also learning that running to a target is not as fun as just going for a run. But you know what is fun? Making episodes of Newscast, which I'll continue to do for the next 10,000 days, hopefully. See you for the next one very soon.
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B
Bye. Bye. Newscast. Newscast from the BBC. You've come to the end of newscast. Some people, and you know who I mean, might say you ooze stamina. Can I encourage you to subscribe on BBC Sounds and you can get in touch with us anytime. Email us@newscastbc.co.uk, you can WhatsApp us on 033-01-2390. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now all summer long I'm going to be celebrating by playing on finquest.com which
- [28:49]
A
is an American owned social casino.
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B
It obviously features over a thousand in slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to spinquest.
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A
Com, get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more detail.