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Bigotry posted by your Facebook account? Use this, Mister UKIP MP wannabe: 'I was hacked'

'I've got lots of Asian friends'

A UK Independence Party candidate has claimed hackers broke into his Facebook account and posted racist and homophobic comments under his name.

Alan Harris, who is standing in Oxford West and Abingdon in May's general election, cried foul after the blog Hope Not Hate posted screenshots of remarks made by the wannabe MP's Facebook account between 2011 and 2013.

A UKIP candidate's Facebook post from 2011
UKIP candidate's Facebook post from 2012
UKIP candidate's Facebook post from 2013

"I’m absolutely disgusted. My account has been hacked – again. You know what Facebook is like," Harris told The Independent. "I wouldn’t say anything about gay people because I have a gay son. I’ve got lots of Asian friends. I never said any of this."

If hackers were involved, it's clear they are a cunning and devious lot, infiltrating his account two years before he joined UKIP and three years before he was picked as a parliamentary candidate. UKIP Oxfordshire organizer Dickie Bird, to whom one of the vile messages was written, is not impressed.

"I will be looking into this urgently and I think the party will as well," Bird told the Oxford Mail. "I am a close personal friend of Alan’s and can say this is not language he uses."

The Facebook account has now been deleted, but it's clear UKIP has a social media problem. Last week the UKIP candidate for Hendon Jeremy Zeid was forced to step down over comments made on the social network.

"Once Obama is out of office the Israelis should move to extradite the bastard or 'do an Eichmann' on him and lock him up for leaking state secrets," Zeid said, in response to an article on the declassifying of US federal government documents on Israel's secret nuclear program. ®

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