Reform UK has found another caveman to run for them, Andy Curwen. Is the party's vetting procedure failing to work or working as intended?

Reform UK candidate Andy Curwen, dressed in his regalier, and in the background, another image of Nigel Farage and other Reform members

Once again, a Reform candidate’s social media history has exposed the party‘s lax vetting procedures.

The candidate in question is Andy Curwen, the National revealed.

Gordon Highlanders veteran Curwen is running in the Peterhead South and Cruden by-election which will take place on 2 July.

Reform UK candidate blasted for misogynistic Instagram postshttps://t.co/abuets3LRp

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) June 23, 2026

Curwen’s posts also include this blatantly racist meme from 2021.

There’s also this which reads: “Women can argue for 3 straight hours but 2 minutes into a BJ and her jaw hurts”. A ‘BJ’ is a sexual act.

The National adds:

Another post from June 2019 said: “Studies suggest that 9 out of 10 men prefer a woman with curves. The 10th man drives a Ford and prefers the other 9 men.”

Curwen is making the sort of crude and bigoted jokes that white men were making 40 years ago in the pub. It’s not 40 years ago, though, and Curwen isn’t making these jokes in the privacy of a dimly-lit boozer.

Inevitably, then, voters are going to wonder what he’s saying when he feels more comfortable.

Curwen is far from Reform’s only dodgy candidate anyway:

Reform ‘should immediately withdraw all support’

Curwen has attracted criticism from both the SNP and the Scottish Greens. The former said this to the National:

These posts from the Reform candidate are absolutely abhorrent and clearly show he is not fit for public office

The Reform Party should immediately withdraw all support and investigate this as a matter of urgency.

Scottish Greens co-leader, Gillian Mackay, meanwhile, said:

Nigel Farage claims that Reform’s vetting has improved but, unsurprisingly, time and again, we see candidates linked to toxic, misogynistic and extremist views, often downplayed as banter or brushed off.

It is chilling that these candidates with those views could become elected representatives. Reform UK should take vetting seriously, and consider their choice of candidates more carefully, but they should also ask why so many people with such awful views are so keen to join their party.

However, incompetent vetting may not be at fault here. Given that so many of these people are becoming candidates and councillors, the party may simply not care about such bigoted opinions.

Net zeroes

In his bio, Curwen also highlights:

I am also against the proposed building of more windfarms in our community and I support the scrapping of net zero.

Reform is stridently against Net Zero and securing energy security through renewable technology. Reform simultaneously takes millions in donations from people who benefit from the continued use of fossil fuels.

Coincidence?

You’d assume not, although it is possible that many of the lower level Reformers don’t understand their senior politicians are pulling off a massive swindle (allegedly).

In a video titled, You’ve been lied to about Net Zero, documentary maker Simon Clark says that people create misinformation around Net Zero as follows:

So these are the five steps of the anti-net zero playbook. Inflate the costs, ignore the cost of business as usual, ignore the operational savings, ignore the co- benefits, and most egregiously, ignore the costs of inaction. Not getting to net zero is going to cost the world much, much more

Clark also highlights that when people target the ‘cost’ of switching to Net Zero, they ignore the costs of not switching.

The second step often is to pretend that we can just carry on with business as usual and it won’t cost us anything. Let’s say we’re talking about decarbonising transport. And then people say, “Oh, but you know, an EV that’s going to cost like £40,000. You know, that’s a huge investment. That’s expensive, right?” You know, and you add that up over all of the cars in the country and you suddenly get a big scary number.

Again, let’s say we just carry on with petrol cars. Petrol cars aren’t free, right? Okay, maybe you own a petrol car now, so you don’t have to buy a new one, but that won’t last forever. So, that’s step two is you basically pretend that the existing system, which we’ve already built and paid for, can just carry on forever and won’t ever need replacing.

Par for the course

Andy Curwen is a vile, no-nothing bigot who should be nowhere near power. In other words, he’s your typical Reform politician. Given that, it’s no surprise he passed the party’s vetting procedures.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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