With local election season upon us, Guido has taken to sharing the cases of crackpots vying for council seats. Although these have previously come from the Liberal Democrats and Labour – the Conservatives are not without their own poor-quality candidates. According to Sky News, Pembrokeshire councillor Andrew Edwards, who also serves as a magistrate and primary school governor, has been suspended pending an investigation into racist comments. In a recording circulated on social media, Andrew is alleged to have said all white men should own black slaves, based on the justification that black people belong to a “lower class”. Listen for yourself…

“Nothing wrong with the skin colour at all. I think all white men should have a black man as a slave or a black woman as a slave you know. It’s, It’s nothing wrong with skin colour. It’s just they’re lower class than us white people you know”

Clearly these comments are indefensible – to the extent they’re almost hard to believe. Perhaps this is why a sympathetic local news report is speculating the recording is a deep fake. Although Guido can’t discount the possibility, it’s hard to believe a Pembrokeshire councillor would be a target for information warfare. What’s more likely: a local councillor is a racist crank, or some malevolent agent used advanced cyber tech to frame an innocent representative?

Either way, the Conservatives clearly need to improve their candidate filtering processes. When Tories sound like Guardian founders you know something’s gone awry…