\n<\/p>\n
A Reform UK councillor has been suspended for participating in a WhatsApp group where members allegedly called for a \u201cmass Islam genocide\u201d.<\/p>\n
Tom Pickup, who was elected to Lancashire county council in May, confirmed to the Guardian he was a member of the group set up by a rightwing activist.<\/p>\n
In one exchange, one person said Keir Starmer \u201cneeds a fucking bullet\u201d, to which another replied: \u201cHe\u2019s a DICKtator.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pickup responded by calling the prime minister a \u201cdicktaker\u201d.<\/p>\n
In other messages, he called a government minister a \u201cUkrainian boy penetrator\u201d and said he agreed with \u201cmass deportations\u201d. He posted: \u201cEveryone in Reform is a lot more hardline on immigration than is typically stated publicly, to get a majority government we have to be tactical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nigel Farage\u2019s party confirmed to the Guardian that Pickup had been suspended on Wednesday pending an investigation.<\/p>\n
Pickup, who was the council\u2019s lead member for resources and finance, admitted he was a member of the group but said his messages had been \u201ctwisted out of context\u201d. He said he was not aware of the more extreme posts, which included one person allegedly calling for a \u201cmass Islam genocide\u201d and encouraging others to stockpile weapons to attack \u201clefties\u201d and \u201cmigrants\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pickup said his comment about Starmer being a \u201cdicktaker\u201d was a \u201cjokey comment\u201d but had been \u201cpoor judgment\u201d. He told the Guardian: \u201c99% of what occurs in groups, I don\u2019t see. Based on my involvement in it and what I have seen, I\u2019ve been my usual jokey self and it\u2019s been twisted out of context.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pickup said he had left the group this week when screenshots of his messages were posted on social media. He said he had tried to find other posts but that messages after 24 hours were automatically deleted so they had been lost.<\/p>\n
Asked whether he supported calls for a \u201cmass Islam genocide\u201d, Pickup said: \u201cOf course not. I\u2019ve done a lot of community engagement work with the Islamic community. It\u2019s something that I would have condemned and probably reported but I don\u2019t know if they [the messages] are genuine. I\u2019ve not seen them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Samara Barnes, a Labour councillor on Lancashire county council, called for Pickup to resign as a councillor and said she had reported him to the authority\u2019s standards watchdog. She added: \u201cWe are at a time when we\u2019re living in a tinderbox and if people are suggesting we should be having an Islam genocide, this is domestic terrorism.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen what can happen when people become radicalised, people become emboldened to do really nasty things. This is beyond an apology or some training. This is more serious and Reform UK need to really take a stand.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Lancashire county council said: \u201cWe are aware that county councillor Tom Pickup has been suspended from Reform UK pending investigation. Cllr Pickup remains a councillor, sitting as an independent.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Reform UK councillor has been suspended for participating in a WhatsApp group where members allegedly called for a \u201cmass Islam genocide\u201d. Tom Pickup, who was elected to Lancashire county council in May, confirmed to the Guardian he was a member of the group set up by a rightwing activist. In one exchange, one person<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[10780,19571,5772,1936,3101,838,4779,17179],"class_list":{"0":"post-34425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-councillor","9":"tag-extremist","10":"tag-featuring","11":"tag-group","12":"tag-posts","13":"tag-reform","14":"tag-suspended","15":"tag-whatsapp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}