As UKIP select ‘pop preacher’ George Hargreaves as a candidate, we reveal details of his curious past
UKIP is a party known for selecting fruitcakes as candidates but in choosing the Reverend James George Hargreaves to represent them in Coventry South, they’ve really taken the biscuit.
Hargreaves, who has forced a candidate named Mark Taylor step aside, made his fortune in the 1980s penning “gay anthems” such as “So Macho” for singers such as Sinitta. He is bizarrely said to have used his wealth to fund a “heavily anti-gay message” when he stood for the Scottish Christian Party in 2007.
Of Trinidadian descent, Hargreaves took just 90 votes when he stood for Operation Christian Vote in Birmingham in 2004 whilst at the 2010 general election, when he stood in Barking, he garnered just 1% of the vote.
According to Wikipedia, Hargreaves “regards homosexuality as a sin and campaigns against gay activisim”. He is said to have been a tax exile in the Isle of Man, was involved in protests against Jerry Springer: The Opera and is an advocate of removing the dragon symbol from the Welsh flag as he believed it to be “nothing less than the sign of Satan”.
If ever there were a reason as to why not to vote for UKIP, George Hargreaves provides it.
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During the run~up to 1997 general election, Hargreaves stood as the. Referendum Party candidate in Walthamstow. He wrote the unofficial party anthem, “Let the People Decide”, and like a black Arthur Daley, seemed to spend most of his time trying to off~load his record to all and sundry. He struck me as goofy then!