Councillor expelled for far-right party membership

A councillor has been expelled by the Reform UK party shortly after apologising for a series of social media posts in which he made offensive comments about Muslims.

Newcastle City councillor Daniel Astley made the derogatory references, including calling for what he regarded as "non-Europeans" to leave the UK, last year on a now deleted X account.

He since said he wanted to "retract all previous social media comments".

A Newcastle Reform UK spokesperson earlier rejected criticism of Astley's comments as "politically motivated nonsense", but the party's local leader Steven Rutherford later announced Astley had been expelled because of his prior membership of the far-right Homeland Party.

The deleted X account described Astley as a nominating officer for the nationalist group which calls for the removal of more than 10 million migrants.

Astley said he did not accept the Homeland Party was "extremist" but said he had not had contact with it since last year.

Rutherford said Astley had "done some great work for residents", but had been expelled from Reform UK "with immediate effect".

"We were made aware of his links to the Homeland Party which he did not declare when he applied to be a candidate," he said.

"The Homeland Party is a proscribed group under Reform UK rules."

Astley, who represented Benwell, Scotswood and Denton Burn, had made offensive claims about Muslims and called for them, and other communities he considered "non-Europeans", to leave the UK.

He was also criticised last week for comments made in a council meeting concerning immigration on the city's West Road, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

He was accused of appearing to endorse the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which claims there is a deliberate plot to replace white populations with non-white immigrants.

He has since said he rejected this "wholeheartedly" but "would like to see some reversal via sustained net negative migration".

Newcastle's Green Party leader Nick Hartley said Astley's apology over the social media comments was "not enough".

"This rhetoric causes real harm and our communities deserve clear reassurance that their elected representatives reject racism and the politics of division," he said.

A spokesperson for Reform UK in Newcastle earlier said: "Newcastle voters are tired with the mainstream media's constant 'gotcha' journalism, and taking old social media quotes out of context has become a boring cliche.

"Councillor Astley's comments, months before he began his campaign to become a councillor, reflect frustration at the London elite's failure to take our nation's worsening state seriously."

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