YIKES

Far-Right U.K. Party ‘Mortified’ After Dropping ‘Inactive’ Candidate—Who Was Actually Dead

“Through ignorance I did not realize the reason for his inactivity,” a spokesperson for the Reform UK Party said.

A far-right political party in the U.K. publicly dropped one of their parliament candidates for being “inactive,” only to discover that he’d actually been dead for two months, according to Politico. On Tuesday, Reform UK announced that they would no longer back Tommy Cawkwell ahead of the next general election because he hadn’t done anything to secure his seat in York. “We can’t afford to have people doing nothing in an election year,” a spokesperson said. In the following days, the party was made aware that Cawkwell’s “inactivity” was due to the fact that he’d unexpectedly died in February. Gawain Towler, a spokesperson for Reform UK, was forced to cop to the unfortunate gaffe on Wednesday. “Naturally I am mortified that through ignorance I did not realize the reason for his inactivity. It must have been ghastly for his family to read about it in the way it was presented in the press,” he said.