u/Acrobatic-Room-9478

Deleted social media posts from a newly-elected councillor include one in which he claimed the UK has a “disgusting, almost subhuman underclass of people bringing the place down.”

Reform UK councillor Nathaniel Menday, who was voted in to represent Woodhouse on Sheffield City Council, also posted online support for the Nazi party - including celebrations of dictators and Adolf Hitler himself - his social history media shows.

The Star was alerted to the social media posts and verified them independently using technology to uncover posts from the councillor’s now deleted X account (formerly Twitter), which show him displaying a swastika flag and sharing other far right iconography including the Sonnenrad, or ‘sun wheel’.

A newly elected Reform UK councillor who claimed the Holocaust was a hoax has resigned from his party just days after being elected.

Jay Cooper was voted in to represent the party in the Bootle West ward at Sefton Council on Merseyside.

However, he has now apologised for his comments, resigned the party whip and has indicated he would go on to sit as an independent.

Reform confirmed Cooper had resigned and said his membership of the party had been revoked.

Cooper said comments made on Facebook in September in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of US political commentator Charlie Kirk were "poorly expressed".

In posts which have now been deleted but were reported in the Liverpool Echo, Cooper reposted an article about the shooting with the accompanying headline: "Heartbreaking. Murdered for having an opinion."

Responding to a comment which asked, "Hitler had [an opinion] too, did he deserve to die?", Cooper made reference to the Holocaust being "a hoax" and suggested it was "propaganda".

Barry Blaustein, a long-time writer and director, had died at the age of 72.

Blaustein’s connection to professional wrestling was through the 1999 documentary, “Beyond the Mat”, chronicling the careers of several performers at various stages of their careers.

Blaustein had been battling Parkinson’s disease for the past nine years and was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer last month.

The Hollywood Reporter story on his death noted that the wrestling documentary was the “favorite thing he had ever done.”

The documentary was released by Lions Gate Films and featured early cooperation by the World Wrestling Federation, which provided Blaustein backstage access for filming in 1998 and 1999.

AEW has filed a lawsuit against TrillerTV and its parent company, Triller Group, Inc., alleging the streaming platform owes Tony Khan’s wrestling company just under $5 million in unpaid revenue from AEW pay-per-view sales and from proceeds for the now-discontinued AEW Plus subscription service.

AEW’s lawsuit was filed on April 29 in Duval County Court in Florida. The legal complaint alleges TrillerTV’s parent company used AEW-derived revenues to fund other businesses — including a social media platform that never took off — rather than paying AEW what it was owed

A newly elected Reform UK councillor has been suspended from the party following allegations of racism, according to one of its politicians.

Glenn Gibbins was elected to represent the Hylton Castle ward on Sunderland City Council on Thursday when Reform took control of the local authority**.**
Gibbins, who appeared as Gibbons on some party material, is accused of posting racist comments online.

Speaking on BBC's Politics North, deputy leader of Durham County Council Darren Grimes said Gibbins had been suspended from the party pending an investigation.

As reported by Hope Not Hate, the now-deleted post made by Gibbins against Sunderland's Nigerian community is believed to be from March 2024.
He has also been accused of misogyny in earlier posts.

Grimes said: "He's been suspended and the party is investigating those very serious allegations and will act on them."

When asked, Grimes agreed it had been "a failure of the vetting process".

"I accept that, I do accept that," he said, before pointing towards antisemitism allegations against various Green Party candidates in Newcastle.

Some key takeaways from the Economist’s analysis of the local elections (it’s still very bad for Labour), but not the victory Farage will claim.

“Since taking office in July 2024, Labour has shed support. For each voter who switched to Reform this time round, there are more who switched to the left-leaning alternatives. Many others will not have voted. Labour lost dozens of councillors to the Greens, particularly in young, urban areas. In Hackney—a thoroughly gentrified London neighbourhood—the eco-socialist party defeated Labour to gain its first elected mayor. Labour’s losses are so broad that no wing of the party seems to have a credible route to power, ironically making it harder to remove Sir Keir.

The other half of Britain’s crumbling duopoly also suffered substantial losses. Six Conservative county councils in the south of England changed hands. These covered large parts of the party’s traditional, rural power centres. In Essex, home of Kemi Badenoch, the party’s leader, the Tories lost 39 of their 52 councillors—mostly to Reform, which won 53 seats.

But Mr Farage fell short of his hopes to destroy the Conservatives entirely. The party remains the largest in Hampshire, a county in the south of England, and has so far won six boroughs in London, including Westminster, which it lost to Labour in 2022. 

Moreover, Reform’s victories are not quite the outright triumph they appear at first glance. The “National Equivalent Vote” is a measure produced by academics to estimate how Britons would have voted if local elections were held across the country. Early projections suggest Reform would have won 31% of the vote this time round. That is lower than the 32% it scored in elections last year. Indeed, it is lower than the 33% won by the Conservative Party in 2022, shortly before the party deposed Boris Johnson as prime minister. Reform may be the preferred party of a plurality of voters, but that is because the system as a whole is fragmenting.”