Olympic gold medalist unveiled as Reform UK candidate for mayor sent homophobic tweets

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An Olympic gold medallist boxer unveiled as Reform UK’s candidate for the mayor of Hull and East Riding’s metro sent homophobic tweets, it has emerged.

Luke Campbell, 37, who won gold for Team GB at the London 2012 Olympics, made the offensive remarks in tweets from 2011 and 2012.

Mr Farage’s party had pledged to clean up its vetting system after a series of rows over its general election candidates last year.

After the tweets emerged, a Reform official did not refer to the tweets but said: “Luke Campbell MBE is an Olympic gold medal winner and local hero who has made his country and community proud. He also happens to have featured in multiple front covers of Gay Times magazine and raised money for HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust.”

Last summer Nigel Farage said a Reform UK campaigner who made homophobic remarks had done so because he’d “watched England play football” and “was drunk.”

An undercover Channel 4 reporter’s recording in Clacton showed a canvasser describing the Pride flag as “degenerate” and suggesting members of the LGBT community are paedophiles.

“People when they’re drunk often turn quite nasty. It was unforgivably nasty,” the party leader told Loose Women panellists in June.

Campbell was presented to Reform supporters at Hull’s Connexin Live Arena on Thursday, where Mr Farage declared he would be a "knockout candidate".

Late last year the former Ukip leader promised Reform UK would “be vetting candidates rigorously at all levels” in future as he delivered his keynote speech to the party’s conference.

He said the party did not have “time” or “room” for “a few extremists to wreck the work of a party that now has 80,000 members”, after it secured five MPs at the general election in July.

Last In September, the government approved a devolution deal for the region which will see the creation of a combined authority comprising of Hull City Council and the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, with a mayor.

The election for the position is due to take place on Thursday 1 May.