Change UK: Second candidate resigns in 24 hours, after 'crazy black wh***' remarks emerge

Joseph Russo was the party's top candidate in Scotland and was unveiled only yesterday

A second candidate from new centrist party Change UK has been forced to resign within 24 hours, after it emerged he had made a series of sexist and derogatory comments about women.

Joseph Russo, who was announced as the party’s top candidate for Scotland just yesterday, had said: “Black women scare me. I put this down to be chased through Amsterdam by a crazy black wh***”.

In another tweet, he had also said: “I wonder if there’s a c*** / anchovy correlation. One smells like the other.”

In separate comments, whose full context are unclear, he referred to an American woman a “b****”, adding: “i’d burn her as a yule log”.

Mr Russo deleted his Twitter account on Wednesday morning after social media users highlighted the old posts.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Change UK said: ”We have been made aware of several offensive Twitter posts. We have discussed this with Joseph Russo and it has been agreed that he will stand down and is no longer on our list of candidates.”

Mr Russo would have been in his late 20s when he made the remarks, which date from 2010-2013.

The resignation comes after another Change UK candidate in London, former Tory Ali Sadjady, resigned shortly after being unveiled. Mr Sadjady had said: “When I hear that 70% of pick pockets caught on the London Underground are Romanian it kind makes me want Brexit.”

The new centrist party’s original launch as The Independent Group earlier this year was also dogged by a race row after one of its MPs, Angela Smith, used the phrase “funny tinge” to refer to BME people in a televised discussion about racism. She did not resign, but later apologised for having “misspoke”.

One person who unsuccessfully applied to be a candidate for Change UK told The Independent that they had had to submit all their social media profiles for examination by the party during the process – raising questions about its vetting procedure.

Other candidates for the party include former BBC journalist Gavin Esler, the former conservative deputy prime minister of Poland Jacek Rostowski, and Rachel Johnson, a journalist who is also the sister of Boris Johnson.

At its election campaign launch the party said it would unveil some policies in the future, but immediately confirmed it would not be supporting a no-confidence vote in Theresa May’s government – potentially throwing the embattled prime minister a lifeline.