Novara Media Warned the Tories About an Ex-Candidate’s Violent Connections. They Hired Him Anyway

Last week, a former Conservative election candidate and consultant in party leader Kemi Badenoch’s office was caught on camera seemingly discussing the cost of hiring terrorists to carry out a contract killing.

Far-right figure Jack Ross, CEO of Turning Point UK (TPUK) – an off-shoot of the US campus culture war organisation – was caught by undercover journalists offering to “broker” the services of an alleged far-right paramilitary group.

Badenoch described the allegations as “shocking”. She said: “Every day I am working to make sure that people like that who are in my party go elsewhere, which is what we’ve been seeing. This Conservative party is under new management.”

She may have been shocked, but was she surprised? And if she wants people like Ross to go elsewhere, why did her party give him a job, despite warning signs?

As part of an investigation that started in 2021, undercover journalists from Al Jazeera approached Ross, pretending that a fictitious family member’s business was getting taken over by a gang. In response, Ross appeared to introduce the reporter to Allan Nesbitt, a criminal from Glasgow with links to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) – a loyalist paramilitary group and proscribed terrorist organisation.

Discussing their services, Ross said: “They can just kick the fuck out of someone – that’s a certain amount. They can start cutting people’s faces up – that’s another amount. And they can stab someone. They can shoot someone. They can kill someone.”

Ross has now been suspended from the party. In 2023 he stood unsuccessfully as a Tory candidate in the local elections. He has long been a prolific networker, and his social media is littered with pictures of him posing with top Conservatives.

On Sunday, the Guardian reported that Ross was a consultant in Badenoch’s office as recently as last year. A Tory staffer told the newspaper that Ross had been hired as a junior social media external consultant in 2025, and that concerns about him were “brushed under the carpet because he got the party clicks on socials”.

By the time Ross had been hired to Badenoch’s office, Novara Media had already reported the findings of an investigation which showed how a WhatsApp group called TPUK Direct Action, set up by TPUK, was used to advertise the sale of “legal knuckle dusters” ahead of a pro-Palestine march which its members were set to oppose.

The 2024 investigation by anti-fascist research group Red Flare showed how members of the WhatsApp group also bragged about their threatening behaviour at previous marches, and members made their WhatsApp avatars the logos of groups such as the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA), the Patriots of Britain and the Pie and Mash Squad – fringe groups linked to far-right football hooliganism and with a documented history of violence.

A member of Red Flare who infiltrated the group told Novara Media at the time: “Ross should be expelled from the Conservative party for leading a violent far-right street gang.”

Ross dismissed the findings, telling Novara Media the messages were a “weak photoshop”. In the Al Jazeera documentary, he is filmed discussing the formation of the “new right” with TPUK COO Nick Tenconi, involving winning over MPs while also building an army of street activists. “What I’m really interested in: the DFLA lads,” Ross said. “Getting them out, getting them some numbers. Not working with them directly. Getting them so they can start causing some problems.”

Back then, the Conservative party ignored Novara Media’s request for a comment about this. A few months later, it was hiring Ross as a consultant.

By this point, it was clear what kind of group Ross had been leading at the same time as he was schmoozing with Tory grandees. In 2023, TPUK organised a number of protests against “drag story hour” events at a pub in Honor Oak, south London – latching onto a homophobic moral panic imported from the US by neo-Nazis. The protests attracted far-right activists and when they turned violent, the group made bizarre excuses.

The revelations in Al Jazeera’s undercover sting are indeed shocking. But given the nature of TPUK, what checks did the Conservative party do on his background, why did it think he was an appropriate person to offer consultancy services, and what does that say about the party under Badenoch?

Ross denied the findings of the Al Jazeera investigation, saying everything he said to the undercover reporter was “not meant seriously”.

A spokesperson for Red Flare said: “That a nasty far-right activist like Ross was employed at the heart of Badenoch’s office is deeply concerning. This is a result of a desperate grab for votes to stave off Reform. To do so, the Tories are willing to associate themselves with dangerous individuals who appear to offer to broker contract killings and oversee WhatsApp groups where weapons are sold.”

Ross, the Conservative party and TPUK have all been approached for comment.