Nigel Farage's Brexit Party 'accidentally' announces candidate again

Two weeks ago we revealed that the party had pciked Mark Nash to take on Tory MP Douglas Ross at the next General Election.

Writing under the pseudonym Moraymint, Nash had used his blog to call for mosques to be bulldozed and for the “cancer” of Islam in the UK to be “crushed out of existence”.

When we pointed out some of his past writings to the Brexit Party, a press officer told us it had all been an accident and that Nash had been announced as the candidate in error.

The actual candidate for Moray would, they said, be Arthur Durance.

However, on Tuesday afternoon, in a press release sent to the Scottish media, the party again announced Nash as their candidate in Moray, with Durance now their man in Gordon.

READ MORE: Brexit Party: Nigel Farage reveals Scottish candidates

In that release, Richard Tice, the Brexit Party chairman, was quoted as saying: “It fills me with pride to showcase these game-changing individuals and future politicians who will be representing The Brexit Party. They are both ordinary people and extraordinary people who will restore excellence as well as common sense to our failing parliament.”

When we highlighted that one of the game-changing individuals was Nash, the party said they had made a mistake again.

It is not now entirely clear who the candidate for Moray is.

Other names in the party’s list included the Herald columnist and anti-smacking ban campaigner Stuart Waiton, and former Tory councillor Paul Aitken in East Renfrewshire.

In one post on his blog, Nash, a retired RAF officer who lives in Elgin, wrote: “We’re at war with Islam, to all intents and purposes, but the last people in our country to acknowledge this at the moment are – ironically – the people elected to govern us.”

He continued: “If the Muslim community resists this change of attitude by our society, to its place in our society and the implications for the religion and its followers, then Islam in the UK should be crushed out of existence.”

In another he wrote: “Call me a fascist if you like, but I’ll lay money that right now our society is regressing to the Middle Ages for as long as the Establishment insists on talking to us about ‘So-Called Islamic State’.”

Shortly after the London Bridge terror attacks in 2017, Nash even called for mosques to be monitored and controlled. He wrote: “We must be able and willing to monitor and control that which goes on in mosques, certainly for as long as there is any suspicion whatsoever that mosques are breeding grounds for fanatics. In so doing, we must have the legal powers to counter ‘bad’ mosques and, rather like we’d tackle an errant licenced premises, we must be able to close down mosques if that’s deemed to be best for society; bulldoze them to rubble if necessary.”

And in one post, which he caveats by claiming he’s using “black, military humour”, he calls for a “full, frank and forensic analysis of the pros and cons of Islam in our society”.

He continued: “Not ‘radical Islam’, or, ‘Hard Islam’, or ‘Soft Islam’ (the politicos are trying that one with Brexit), or ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, or ‘Islamic Jihad’, but Islam.

“We need to take the religion of Islam off its pedestal, take off our kid gloves, lambast [sic] and ridicule Islam, draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, bring the Enlightenment to bear on Islam, scrub bandying about the preposterous term ‘hate crime’ and move to eliminate (rather than protect and promote) the Medieval, politico-religious creed that is a cancer in our society – before it eliminates us. Forget ‘moderate Islam’ and ‘radical Islam’ – we need to talk about Islam. Full stop. Every day we don’t discuss Islam, we move a day closer to the Caliphate. It’s not difficult.”

READ MORE: Scotland’s Brexit Party MEP asks if it’s time to shut Holyrood

Labour MSP Anas Sarwar, who chairs Holyrood’s Cross-Party Group on Tackling Islamophobia, said: “These abhorrent racist comments have no place in Scottish society.”

Nash was a member of the Scottish Tories until April.