A Reform council candidate has defended sharing a picture of a Gaza lego kit as a ‘joke’, suggesting that ‘genocide is funny’.
James Bembridge, who is running in West End ward, uploaded a picture of a lego box containing a pile of grey bricks symbolising rubble just days before Christmas last year with the caption ‘a Christmas present’.
However the deputy editor of the Country Squire magazine insisted his post, a response to another post by a Muslim saying they didn’t celebrate Christmas, was supposed to be a humorous take on events in the Middle East.
He told Dan Wootton: ‘I don’t know what the jokes might have been, that I believe genocide is funny or something. I mean, of course genocide is funny but it was a joke.’
WT has also found other inappropriate posts shared by Mr Bembridge, including several lambasting the NHS, calling it ‘the pity of the world’ and ‘free at the point of uselessness’.
He also wrote in 2023: ‘Hate is too weak a word for what I feel towards the NHS. I’d tear it down and salt the earth upon which it stood.’
Last year, he also shared a post suggesting that ‘Worse than Racist’ would be a ‘great rock band name’.
He also reposted a post by UN Women reading ‘Any job is a woman’s job’ with the response ‘especially a blow job’.
The same year he suggested that NHS nurses look like ‘they’re eating food banks out of business’ and that health service staff treat patients like ‘objects of charity’.
In October, he quote tweeted a post by Conservative MP Katie Lam condemning modern antisemitism, responding with a quote from German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, ‘One cannot – even if there are decades between them – kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place.’
Another clip of Mr Bembridge showed him defending Tommy Robinson, insisting he could find no online evidence to suggest the far-right activist has extreme views.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has been barred from Reform by Nigel Farage, who has sought to distance himself from the former BNP and EDL member.
WT has approached Reform UK for comment.