Zia Yusuf furiously hit out at the BBC after Laura Kuenssberg queried the number of controversies surrounding Reform candidates.

The right-wing party has lost at least 67 candidates since May 2025, according to Lib Dem peer and polling expert Mark Pack.

In the last week, past social media posts from candidate Linda Holt referred to the former first minister of Scotland Hamza Yousaf as an “Islamist moron” – and the party has stood by her.

Corey Edwards was photographed appearing to perform the Nazi salute, and has since stood down from the upcoming Senedd elections in Wales.

Chris Parry, who was set to stand in a 2028 mayoral election before being dropped by Reform, compared a Jewish community group to “Islamists on horseback”.

Reform vowed last year that their vetting process would improve and they would not face the same problems they did during the general election.

When questioned over these controversies on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Yusuf said: “Firstly, all of that is abhorrent and the party has taken action on that.”

“Why does it keep happening?” The BBC presenter replied.

Reform’s home affairs spokesperson said: “Laura, Reform has vetted over a thousand candidates over the last couple of years.

“Even if our success rate is 99.9%, a handful will slip through.”

He then went on to attack the BBC, saying: “Yes, of course it’s reasonable to hold Reform to account.

“But what consistently happens is the BBC pounces on every single Reform mishap and gives it vastly disproportionate coverage in your news cycles – and completely ignores the far most voluminous misdemeanours and frankly egregious things from other parties do.”

But Kuenssberg cut in: “No, proportionally, Reform has lost more candidates over this kind of thing happening than other political parties.”

He claimed that was “actually incorrect” – before pointing to reports that Green activists had made a series of antisemitic remarks in a group chat.

He claimed a Green Party council candidate made that same claim but “the BBC hasn’t even reported on that and I think that’s unbecoming of the BBC.”

This is a reference to a story from The Telegraph about the Greens for Palestine group, one faction of the party.

A spokesperson told the newspaper: “We do not tolerate discrimination against anyone and also reject deliberate and disingenuous attempts to conflate Zionism and Judaism.”

The BBC has reported on antisemitism allegations within the Greens in the past, and how the party dropped candidates in the run-up to the 2024 general election over problematic or extreme social media posts.

The leader of Reform UK in Scotland, Malcolm Offord, was also asked this week if his party was “shambolic” after losing five Holyrood candidates in a matter of days.

He claimed: “I wouldn’t say it was shambolic, I’d say in fact he opposite. I would say we’ve done an extraordinary thing in a short space of time to interview over 300 candidates to get 73 wanting to stand.”

He claimed the party’s vetting process has been “terrific”, adding: “As I said, it’s gone from over 300 to 73 in six months.

“That’s an extraordinary achievements for a brand new party with a lot of very interesting people coming in, a really interesting mix of people of whom 80% have not been politicians before,” Offord said.