Nathaniel Menday #

Introduction #

Nathaniel Menday is a Reform UK politician who was elected to represent the Woodhouse ward on Sheffield City Council in the May 2026 local elections and was suspended by his party less than a week later, after the Sheffield Star published deleted social media posts attributed to him. According to the Star and the Yorkshire Post, the posts — recovered from a now-deleted X account using the Wayback Machine — included pictures of swastikas, a Nazi flag, and Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, alongside a post describing the UK as having a “disgusting, almost subhuman underclass of people.” Reform UK said Menday had been suspended pending investigation after he “failed to declare social media posts which have brought the party into disrepute,” adding that “Reform UK does not support such comments.” Menday, confronted about earlier posts during the campaign, denied being antisemitic or holding Nazi sympathies.

Background Information #

Menday stood for Reform UK in Woodhouse at the local elections in early May 2026. In the run-up to the vote, The Times published an article highlighting social posts in which he allegedly encouraged the use of white supremacist symbols and suggested that “Jewish people in the West” were responsible for antisemitism because they “overwhelmingly favour open borders” — a claim also attributed to the campaign group HOPE not Hate. The Times further reported that he had called Nazi architects “real visionaries,” with the Yorkshire Post stating he praised the Nazis as “visionaries” for their design of Berlin’s Olympiastadion. Approached by the paper, Menday said he enjoyed “risky humour and pushing boundaries,” adding: “I am not antisemitic nor do I have any Nazi sympathies.” He said he had “flirted with what could reasonably be referred to as ‘far-right ideology’ but ultimately I have come to reject its core tenets,” and that he was “motivated by love, not hate.” He apologised for the remarks during the campaign, and Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice said Menday would be assessed if elected and “decisions will be made,” remarking: “Have many people in their private lives occasionally sworn, thought something dark, said something dark? Yes, we’re all human.” Menday won the seat with 1,987 votes, beating Labour’s Danny Allsebrook by more than 1,000.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

The immediate controversy broke on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, when the Sheffield Star reported further posts from a now-deleted X account it said belonged to Menday, uncovered through the Wayback Machine. According to the Star, the account had shared pictures of swastikas, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and other far-right iconography such as the Sonnenrad, or “sun wheel.” The Yorkshire Post described a photo of someone who appears to be Menday holding a box of Lynx Africa — captioned “Cheers Nan, not Xmas without it” — with what it called a huge Nazi flag bearing a swastika hanging on the wall behind him. In one recovered post about returning to the UK, he reportedly wrote that people there were “fatter, uglier and poorly dressed” compared to those in continental Europe, adding: “On top of this we have a disgusting, almost subhuman underclass of people bringing the place down.” The Yorkshire Post further reported that in one post he described himself as an “ethnonationalist,” a phrase it noted refers to the belief that nations should be divided by ethnicity; that at other times he praised eugenics; and that he wrote that “dictator shouldn’t be an ugly word,” adding: “A dictatorship with the right man in charge will always be a better way of governing than democracy.” These accounts rest on the newspapers’ reporting of the archived posts rather than on any official finding.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

Reform UK contacted the Star just before 5pm on the Wednesday to confirm the suspension, on the same day the posts were published. A party spokesman said: “Councillor Menday has been suspended from Reform UK pending investigation after he failed to declare social media posts which have brought the party into disrepute. Reform UK does not support such comments,” and said there was no timeline for the investigation. Labour councillor Minesh Parekh called for the council’s standards committee to take action, saying Menday was “clearly unfit for public office and should do the decent thing and resign,” and that his election showed Reform’s vetting processes to be “an absolute joke.” Liberal Democrat group leader Martin Smith called the revelations “deeply disturbing,” saying that “promoting white supremacist symbols, describing others as ‘a subhuman underclass’ and blaming Jewish people for antisemitism are the hallmarks of far-right extremism.” The Liberal Democrats had earlier called for Menday to be suspended while he was still a candidate. His suspension came the same day Reform’s Ken Tranter apologised for a post about “non white persons taking over” a Hampshire town park, and fellow Reform councillor Glenn Gibbins was suspended following allegations of racism.

Current Status #

Menday remains suspended from Reform UK pending an investigation, for which the party gave no timeline. The reporting does not state that he has resigned the Woodhouse seat or that the council has removed him, and opposition councillors’ calls for his resignation had not, at the time of the reports, resulted in any announced outcome. The BBC said it had approached Menday for comment. When asked about his earlier comments at the local election count, he told reporters “I am not a Nazi” before walking away; he has otherwise maintained that he rejects the core tenets of far-right ideology. No legal action arising from the posts has been reported, and the posts themselves have not been independently authenticated by any authority — the accounts of their content rest on the Star’s and Yorkshire Post’s investigations.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The arc from victory to suspension took five days: Menday won Woodhouse with 1,987 votes in elections held in early May 2026 and was suspended from his party before the week was out, leaving his council position in limbo while the investigation runs. The case became part of a wider run of post-election controversies involving new Reform councillors — with Tranter’s apology and Gibbins’s suspension reported the same day — and fed opposition claims that the party’s candidate vetting had failed. Menday’s name is now attached nationally to reports of Nazi imagery and far-right rhetoric, against his own denials of Nazi sympathies. Whether he is reinstated, resigns, or remains on the council was not known at the time of the reporting.