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A former Tory MP who organised an infamous Nazi-themed stag party has joined Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Aidan Burley was sacked as a ministerial aide after the incident came to light.
But he was welcomed by Mr Farage, who hailed the politician’s decision to cross the floor, suggesting it was “death by a thousand defections” for the Conservative Party.
Reform’s decision to welcome Mr Burley comes just months after a Reform candidate claimed the country would have been “far better” off if it had “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality” instead of fighting the Nazis.
In 2014, while he was still a Tory MP, an internal Conservative Party investigation found Mr Burley “caused deep offence” with the Nazi-themed stag do.
He even bought a Nazi uniform for the groom to wear on the last night of the four-day trip to French ski resort Val Thorens in December 2011.
After the meal, the groom’s brother gave a Nazi-themed toast, the Tory report said, while it added that Mr Burley was not a “racist or anti-Semite” but had acted in an “unacceptable” way.
The report, which was delayed while French authorities considered legal action against him, said that the groom had given a Nazi salute when prompted by a Mail on Sunday journalist also present in the restaurant and attendees had reportedly chanted the names of prominent Nazi figures.
At the time he told the Wolverhampton Express and Star newspaper: “We did not know that wearing a fancy-dress outfit would be illegal in France. It was done in the spirit of mocking the Nazis. There was no malicious intent, no ideological motive, no desire to offend people.”
His defection comes a week after Reform welcomed controversial former Tory minister Andrea Jenkyns to the fold.
Earlier this year Ian Gribbin, who was standing in Bexhill and Battle for Reform, was reported to have posted on the Unherd website in 2022: “Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality … but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people.”
The same month he wrote that the UK should “exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognise that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal”.
The previous month he criticised women, writing: “Do you think you could actually work and pay for it all too like good citizens?
“Men pay 80% of tax – women spend 80% of tax revenue. On aggregate as a group you only take from society.”
In 2021, he wrote female soldiers “almost made me wretch [sic]” and were a “total liability”.
In the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said that President Putin had “shown a maturity of which we can only dream of”.
A Reform spokesman said the comments were not “endorsements” but “written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths”.
Reform has been approached for comment.
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