Reform UK has dropped its candidate for Derbyshire Dales, Edward Oakenfull (above) for derogatory comments about sub-Saharan Africans and Muslims – a mere 11 days after they were reported by the BBC.

Also dropped is Barnsley North candidate Robert Lomas (below) who said that black people should “get off [their] lazy arses” and stop acting “like savages”. Those remarks were reported in the Times three weeks ago.

Leslie Lilley (below) the candidate for Southend East and Rochford, illustrates that three’s the charm by being dropped after saying of migrants arriving on small boats that they were ”scumbags” and that ”I’ll slaughter them then have their family taken out.”

Jaw-droppingly, Reform is still asking the electorate to vote for these supposed outcasts regardless, as a gesture of support for the Reform ”policy platform” not the candidates themselves. Which is very much a case of having your fruit-and-nutcake and eating it.

So, in just what sense are these bigots suspended? According to a party spokesman they would have to sit as independent MPs. Their election being a prospect up there alongside Nigel Farage’s chances of winning a mixed martial artists’ beauty pageant.