A Reform UK candidate’s claim that Britain would have been better off had the country taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality are “not worthy of any further action”, the party’s deputy leader has said.
Ben Habib said the remarks made by Ian Gribbin, who is standing in Bexhill and Battle in East Sussex, had been looked into, but that no further action would be taken.
Gribbin posted comments online in 2022, suggesting Britain would be “in a far better state today” if the country had “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”.
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Gribbin is reported to have posted on the UnHerd website: “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.”
He also reportedly wrote online that women were the “sponging gender” and should be “deprived of health care”.
Habib told Times Radio that the comments had been looked into by “Richard Tice [Reform’s chairman and former leader] and other members of the senior management, and they have come to the conclusion that they are not worthy of any further action.
“Gribbin is standing”, he said.
“One of the things I suppose should be obvious to anyone who’s been in politics for more than five minutes is that whatever you say in politics people are looking for that gotcha moment. And this is a gotcha moment that they think they’ve got Gribbin on.”
He added: “Gribbin has apologised and what I’d like to do is focus on the election and not comments about 1930s United Kingdom.”
Reacting to an initial BBC report on the comments, a Reform spokesman said Gribbin’s remarks were not “endorsements” but “written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths”.
His remarks about women, meanwhile, were described as “tongue in cheek”.
Reform’s ex-leader Richard Tice has since said that the spokesperson “misspoke.”
In a post on X/Twitter, Tice said: “[The spokesperson’s] Dad is on his deathbed and he misspoke under intense personal pressure.”
He added: “Perhaps Westminster should focus on our economic policy to save taxpayers tens of billions [and] stop enriching the banks instead of juvenile gotcha identity politics.”
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