A former Tory activist who appeared to offer to “broker” the hiring of contract killers in an undercover film report previously worked for Conservative headquarters.<\/p>\n
Jack Ross was contracted to do social media work for the party until earlier this year, the BBC has been told.<\/p>\n
It comes after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch referred to them as “shocking allegations”, adding that she did not “believe that person is a member anymore”.<\/p>\n
A Conservative spokesman said Ross’s party membership had “been suspended with immediate effect pending an investigation”. It has reported that Ross said his words were not meant to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n
Ross was paid to provide social media advice to the party for a brief period, the BBC has been told. He was never an employee or Conservative Campaign Headquarters pass holder. <\/p>\n
However, he met Badenoch on several occasions as part of his role as chief executive of Turning Point UK, an offshoot of a right-wing American organisation. <\/p>\n
Ross has also met several other right-wing politicians including the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader.<\/p>\n
In undercover filming broadcast this week by Al Jazeera, Ross appears to offer to “broker” the services of contract killers. <\/p>\n
The Al Jazeera report said its undercover journalist approached Ross in 2022 with a fictitious situation of a family business at risk of being taken over by a criminal gang.<\/p>\n
Ross is alleged to have asked the undercover reporter what was needed from him, and listed violent options that could be bought including stabbing, shooting and killing.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera said Ross denied the finding “completely” and claimed everything he said to the reporter was not meant seriously.<\/p>\n
Turning Point UK has been approached for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Tory activist who appeared to offer to “broker” the hiring of contract killers in an undercover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-812204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}