Newcastle City councillor Daniel Astley has been expelled by Reform UK with immediate effect due to his prior membership of the far-right Homeland Party. Steven Rutherford, Reform UK's local leader, stated that Astley had not declared these links when he applied to be a candidate, and the Homeland Party is a proscribed group under Reform UK rules.
The expulsion follows Astley's apology for a series of social media posts made last year on a now-deleted X account. In these posts, he made offensive comments about Muslims and called for what he regarded as "non-Europeans" to leave the UK. He has since said he wanted to "retract all previous social media comments."
Astley, who represented Benwell, Scotswood and Denton Burn, was also criticised last week for comments made in a council meeting concerning immigration, where he was accused of appearing to endorse the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. He has since stated he rejected this "wholeheartedly" but "would like to see some reversal via sustained net negative migration."
A deleted X account described Astley as a nominating officer for the Homeland Party, which calls for the removal of more than 10 million migrants. Astley said he did not accept the Homeland Party was "extremist" and had not had contact with it since last year.