The chairman of Reform UK has admitted “mistakes” in the party’s selection process after its candidate in Orkney and Shetland suggested Nicola Sturgeon should be shot.
Robert Smith posted numerous insults about prominent women on social media between 2016 and last year, The Times reported.
BBC Scotland has asked Mr Smith for comment.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Reform Party chairman Richard Tice described the abuse as “appalling”.
The party has been forced to drop several candidates over offensive comments, while two have defected to the Conservatives over concerns about intolerance among other candidates.
The Times reported that Smith made several insulting comments about Sturgeon, as well as author and activist JK Rowling and Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank.
In 2016, he shared an article about Sturgeon in a post about political leaders who had been shot. “Why not start with this b***h?” he asked.
Mr Smith also called the former prime minister a “b***h” in two further posts in 2020.
In another post that year he used the same insult against Rowling and later called Lagarde “the head of the globalists.”
In other posts, the reformist candidate used insults against gay and lesbian people and said the rainbow symbol used to support the NHS during the pandemic was like “the new swastika”.
Asked about the social media posts, Mr Tice told the Today programme they were “obviously appalling, absolutely appalling”.
He said: “We are a new political party, we are growing rapidly. Of course, like anyone, we make some mistakes.
“What happens is we admit them and we move on and we change and we learn from them. That’s what we’re doing.”
Mr Tice added: “People really appreciate the fact that there is a new party that tells it like it is.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage previously said “bad apples” would be removed from the party, which he said had been “defrauded” by a research firm hired to assess candidates.
