Outcry after Reform election candidate contesting key Scots seat branded the Royal Family 'benefits scroungers' in sickening online rant

A candidate for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK posted a vile online rant branding the Royals ‘benefit scroungers’.

The party is facing calls to axe Jo Hart after her 2022 Facebook post about the late Queen and other Royals which included messages such as ‘f*** the Royals’ and ‘make Lizzy the last’.

The comments, made during the 2022 Platinum Jubilee celebrations, are at odds with Mr Farage, who is a staunch monarchist.

But Reform UK last night refused to condemn the comments or take any action against its candidate.

She is standing in the same key Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat where Labour has had to suspend its candidate for sharing pro-Russian material online.

Her Facebook post from June 2022, during the four-day bank holiday weekend to mark the Queen becoming the first British monarch to reign for 70 years, claimed millions around the UK are struggling to eat, keep warm and keep the lights on.

The rant, which Ms Hart claimed was a shared post, said: ‘But then the Jubilee comes along, for our “glorious monarch” who has never experienced the kind of hardship having to choose between heating or food, she doesn’t have to worry about keeping the lights on or not, in fact, the many MANY millions that have been p***ed away on the jubilee celebrations haven’t even come from her pocket, but from the public purse.

‘This HUGELY WASTEFUL light show at the palace is nothing but a slap in the face to all of us common folk who are struggling with energy bills right now!’

It went on to make a series of legally dubious allegations about the Royal Family’s support for people involved in abuse and claiming people have been paying the price for decades. It concluded: ‘So this weekend when you’re cracking out the bunting and celebrating the jubilee, just use that massively washed brain of yours and think instead, at just how much of a p***-take this all really is.

‘All the while I hear people banging on about people on benefits scrounging.... THE SINGLE BIGGEST BENEFITS SCROUNGERS ARE THE MONARCHY IT’S TIME IT WAS SCRAPPED! F*** THE ROYALS! #makelizzythelast.’

The comments are embarrassing for Mr Farage, who last year questioned why rising numbers of people are opposed to the monarchy.

He said: ‘Why would so many young people not think having a monarch was a benefit to this country, would not think having a constitutional monarchy – which I think has served us incredibly well over the last few centuries – why would they not want that to be there?’

Following the Queen’s death in 2022, Mr Farage described her as ‘the most respected human being in the world’.

A Scottish Conservative spokesman said: ‘This disgusting attack on the late Queen Elizabeth must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

‘Reform must suspend this candidate for holding such vile anti-monarchy, anti-Britain views.

‘At a time when the whole country came together to celebrate the Jubilee, Reform’s candidate was branding the late Queen a benefit scrounger.

‘This candidate even had the raw nerve to claim people who put up Union Jack bunting and celebrated the Jubilee were brainwashed.

‘We already knew some Reform candidates are pro-independence, now it emerges they hold the same shameful views as the most bitter republicans in the SNP and the extreme Greens.’

Ms Hart is standing in a seat which is set to be a close battle between the SNP’s Seamus Logan and the current Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross.

It comes after the Mail revealed details of a leaked Tory report which warned the SNP could win nine out of 12 key battleground seats if Reform UK wins just five per cent of the vote.

It is the latest in a series of controversies about Reform UK candidates.

Angela Carter-Begbie, who is standing in Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, called King Charles ‘weak’ and claimed he was under the control of global financial elites.

She also questioned the King’s loyalty to Britain and said she was ‘not a fan’ of the monarch.

A social media account in the name of Lee Bunker, the party’s candidate for Exeter, asked in a post in 2018 when will they ‘be deporting Diane Abbott’, in response to an online post by Jeremy Corbyn about immigration deportation targets.

In response to the social media comments, a Reform UK spokesman said the party’s candidates were ‘not party-political zombies’ and ‘have views of their own and are as free to express them as anyone else, even if they are not shared by all their party colleagues’.

Asked if his party would condemn the comments Ms Hart shared on Facebook, David Kirkwood, deputy chairman of Reform UK Scotland, said: ‘We are not going to comment.’

Speaking at her Highland home last night Ms Hart said: ‘We all have a right to make a comment. It wasn’t actually my comment, it was a share.’

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