Reform drops parliamentary candidate running against Kemi Badenoch after it emerged he once urged people to vote for the British National Party

Reform have dropped a parliamentary candidate running against Kemi Badenoch after it emerged he once urged people to vote for the hard-right British National Party (BNP).

Grant St Clair-Armstrong will no longer stand in the North West Essex constituency under the Reform banner after party officials condemned his 'unacceptable historic social media comments'.

In blog posts unearthed by the Daily Mail, the businessman, who was living in Turkey at the time, said he 'wept' at the state of the UK ahead of the 2010 election.

'No doubt, Enoch Powell would be doing the same if he was alive,' he added.

'My solution…vote BNP!'

In another post, he said: 'Get this shower of s**t out of parliament and vote BNP, since they are the only party that seem to have any interest in protecting 'British' interests.'

Although now greatly diminished, the BNP ran 339 candidates in the 2010 election and picked up over half a million votes. It was only in February of that year that the traditionally hard-right party allowed ethnic minorities to join.

Mr St Clair-Armstrong has now said he deeply regrets the posts and that they were written during a 'very angry period' of his life.

He had removed the posts from the website before being contacted by the Mail, who accessed them through internet archives. The blog is now mainly dedicated to selling art collectibles and books.

Other controversial posts included backing extraditing Tony Blair, his wife Cherie and Alistair Campbell to 'a country that routinely indulges in torture and execution, then hopefully we will never hear about them again.'

In another highly offensive post, he said: 'Once more the bloody chinks are causing problems.. A lot of us have known for years that the Chinese Yuan is undervalued. It's just another cynical ploy by the vile regime there to get their crap shoddy s**t into the Western markets cheaply.'

Mr St Clair-Armstrong said: 'This was on my website many years ago, when I was going through a very angry period. It was not put on in 2010 but a long time before. I didn't take any interest in the site for a very long time and had practically forgotten about it. 

'When I did decide to take an interest again, I took all the garbage off, made it a lot nicer and looked at life a bit differently.

'As for the BNP and EDL, I think they are vile organisations and you'll never find anything positive from me about them since.

'Naturally, I regret all of this, especially my ludicrous support for the BNP and the EDL. People change their views.'

A Reform spokesman said: 'Mr St Clair-Armstrong has tendered his resignation as a member of Reform UK due to the revelation of unacceptable historic social media comments and we have accepted his resignation.'