Newly elected Reform councillor resigns after social media claims

A Reform UK councillor has resigned days after being elected, after he allegedly celebrated on social media the rape of a Sikh woman in the Midlands, declared white people the “master race” and called Muslim people “rats”.Stuart Prior was elected as a councillor for Essex county council last Thursday, winning 2,404 votes, the highest total of any candidate in the ward.Prior was one of 53 Reform UK councillors elected to the authority, giving the insurgent party overall control of the council. He also won a seat on Rochford district council.A spokesperson for Reform UK confirmed Prior had resigned his positions for personal reasons and that his party membership had been revoked.Prior has been criticised for the remarks he has allegedly made on social media. In posts on X in November 2025, he allegedly described white people as “the master race” and suggested that white people had “larger brains”.In other posts, Prior allegedly said “Muslims are dirt”, allegedly wrote that “Muslims are awful, globally” and allegedly declared: “There cannot be a genocide against Muslims. It’s only ever self-defence against those rats.”The posts were identified in a dossier compiled by the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate.Prior responded to the Mirror: “That’s not what I would have put down” and “this isn’t me” when confronted with the messages.Prior is also alleged to have said black people should be “segregated”, and asked why “black folk bitch about” the slave trade. On 27 October 2025, he allegedly wrote, “good.reap it” in response to a post by the MP Zarah Sultana about a Sikh woman being raped.The Guardian has attempted to contact Prior. He has previously denied making the comments or being racist.A Sikh women in her 20s was raped in Walsall last year. Last week, John Ashby, 32, was sentenced to life in prison for the racially motivated rape.In the runup to the local elections, four Labour MPs from the metropolitan borough of Sandwell sent a joint letter to Reform’s leader in Sandwell, Ray Nock, calling on him to condemn the comments.“The community in Sandwell was shaken to its core last year after a Sikh woman was raped in a racially aggravated attack. It has now emerged that a Reform candidate in Essex, Stuart Prior, has celebrated this attack,” the letter reads.“Will you, as the leader of the Reform party in Sandwell, condemn this disgusting behaviour and will you write to Nigel Farage requesting Stuart Prior be immediately withdrawn as a Reform party candidate?”A Reform UK spokesperson said: “Stuart Prior informed us that he was resigning from his elected positions for ‘personal reasons’. We have also revoked his Reform UK membership.”