Vetting of Reform candidates in previous years has been poor, Nigel Farage has admitted.
The party leader said he was “enormously angry” about mistakes in vetting in the past, but vowed it will improve for future elections.
Reform has struggled with questions over its candidates and elected officials in recent years, including former Welsh leader Nathan Gill, who admitted taking bribes in return for making pro-Russian statements and is now serving a 10-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
Mr Farage has previously said he “can’t apologise” for the lack of vetting of the party’s 2024 candidates, but was forthright at a press conference in Scotland on Thursday.
Asked if vetting processes had been insufficient, Mr Farage said: “Yeah, piss poor.
“Piss poor. Sorry it’s crude but it’s been piss poor in the past and it won’t be in the future.
“Nothing angers me more than all the work that I put in for this, seven days a week, being let down by people who haven’t told us the truth and we, frankly, haven’t put enough effort in or professionalism in to find out the truth about them.
“So yes, I’m enormously angry that many times over the years I’ve been thrown into political crises through no fault of my own.
“If it’s my own fault, I can live with it, I can own it, but with things like this, it’s not good enough.”
The Reform UK leader went on to “promise” the party is “doing everything we can” to ensure candidates in May’s elections are “fit and proper people”.
The party is due to unveil its slate of candidates for the Holyrood election at a special conference in the first week of March, Mr Farage said.
