String of Reform candidates said Britain's Covid response was 'like the Holocaust', with some comparing treatment of unvaccinated to persecution of Jews

A string of Reform candidates likened Britain to Nazi Germany during the pandemic, it can be revealed.

Some claimed the treatment of the unvaccinated was similar to the persecution of the Jews, while others said UK political leaders were like Hitler.

One woman standing for the insurgent party even criticised new leader Nigel Farage after he said no-one should compare the Covid era to the genocide in the Second World War.

The revelations will prompt fresh questions over its vetting of candidates, with Mr Farage blaming a 'stitch-up' by the firm paid £144,000 to weed out those with extreme views. 

It has already emerged in recent days that one candidate said Britain 'should have accepted Hitler's offer of neutrality' while another described the Nazi dictator as 'brilliant'.

And Surrey Heath candidate Samantha Goggin appeared to blame Margaret Thatcher for the Falklands, telling a meeting 'we've already been put through… the Falklands War by the Conservative Party'.

Tom Tugendhat, Tory security minister, wrote on X: 'First a Reform candidate says we should have done a deal with Hitler... now [another] is blaming Margaret Thatcher for the Falklands War. These people aren't patriots. They're an embarrassment.'

The far-Right party's candidate for Widnes and Halewood, Jake Fraser wrote on Facebook in July 2021 soon after vaccine certificates for travel were introduced: 'We're on the precipice of a Health Holocaust.

'The same methodology the Nazis used to rise to power with minimal opposition by appealing to both sides of the political spectrum... is unfolding before our eyes.' 

He claimed his 'rhetoric was a tip of the hat to parallels of totalitarianism employed by National Socialists during the rise of Hitler prior to (not during) the Holocaust'.

After Tory MP Andrew Bridgen was suspended from the party last year for likening the Covid vaccination programme to the Holocaust, Angela Carter-Begbie, Reform's Queen's Park and Maida Vale candidate, wrote on Twitter: 'It's true. The behaviour of the jabbed towards the un-jabbed was boarder line [sic] the Holocaust.'

Pete Durnell, standing in Smethwick, West Midlands, wrote on social media during lockdown in 2020: 'Idea that elderly and/or infirm should be forcibly isolated, virtually indefinitely, is one which fits better with 1940s Germany than a modern day democracy.'

He also defended those who refused the Covid jab, saying he used to be baffled by how 'ordinary German folk meekly comply with orders to hate and persecute Jews, with zero justification' but was now watching 'something so similar unfold around me'.

Last night he said 'certain actions' taken during Covid 'would be something you would normally expect to emanate from a totalitarian state'.

John Edwards (Southampton Test) criticised a Canadian rail firm that 'tells vaccinated travellers to wear a yellow sticker', adding: 'Nazi Germany did something similar.'

All named candidates were asked to comment.