Nigel Farage’s new party has sacked an election candidate for being ‘inactive’. It turns out he was dead. – POLICY

But Cawkwell had actually died two months earlier.

British Reform Party spokesman Gawain Towler said Wednesday evening that he was “mortified” by the error.

“After suggesting that we had canceled Mr. Cawkwell’s candidacy for inappropriate social media posts by a local newspaper, I suggested that he was one of those candidates who had been removed for inactivity,” Towler said at POLITICO.

“The Reform Party was not aware of Mr Cawkwell’s death,” he said. “Naturally, I am mortified that I did not understand, through ignorance, the reason for his inactivity. It must have been dreadful for his family to learn the way it was presented in the press.

Reform UK was created by Farage – one of Britain’s most prominent Brexit supporters – in 2021 as a right-wing alternative to the ruling Conservatives. Farage retired from frontline politics shortly after founding Reform, currently run by businessman Richard Tice.

A recent poll shows Reform are now just a few percentage points behind Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives. Farage has not yet decided whether he will return to the party in a leadership role before this year’s general election.