Reform UK’s Reading group says it is mulling taking action over an apparently fake social media account that has been attributed to one of their candidates.
Andrew Williams is the party’s candidate for the Reading Central constituency in next month’s general election.
Earlier this week, it was alleged that he had been posting racist and interacting with adult accounts on the Twitter platform, using the handle @ajw_106 – the 106 could refer to Reading Football Club’s record points tally in the 2005-06 season.
The name on the account is Andrew Williams, and it contains retweets of Reform UK.
The now deactivated account @reformexposed tweeted screenshots of some of these posts on Wednesday.
They included retweets of posts by Paul Golding, the leader of Britain First, who was convicted under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 of refusing to give police access to his mobile phone on his return from a political trip to Russia.
Other posts included nude models and pornographic material.
The Reading Central Liberal Democrats responded to the claims with a single word: “Yikes”.
Mr Williams has denied having a Twitter account on two occasions to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
“This is fake. I don’t even have a Twitter account. Looks like I’m the victim of a dirty tricks campaign.”
Reform UK is mulling legal action against @reformexposed.
Alan Gulliver, Reform’s election agent for Reading said: “I have been in contact with X (Elon Musk’s name for Twitter – editor) regarding these posts that have been created regarding Andy Williams, when I hear back from them I will advise him it is up to him what course of action he takes in regards to the X profile posting about him.”
Mr Gulliver added that legal action could be taken.
The Twitter account has been attributed to Mr Williams as it was linked to him on the Who can I vote for? website which obtains information from volunteers using council websites and other sources.
It has since been removed.
A disclaimer states: “The data on this website is crowd-sourced and may not be complete (or may contain inaccuracies).
“If you find an error, please either update the page yourself, or email us to report the problem.”
Once made aware of the issue, Reform Exposed deleted its own post about the @ajw_106 account. The account itself was deleted on Thursday.
