A Conservative candidate standing in Roehampton on 7 May has been expelled from the party after a post on her social media account invoking Hitler surfaced. She remains on the ballot paper and cannot be removed.
Helena Kanaan, one of three Conservatives nominated for Roehampton ward, was excluded from the party on Thursday after the post, made in January 2024, was shared publicly.
Aled Richards-Jones, leader of Wandsworth’s Conservative group, said:
“This afternoon, I was made aware of remarks by Helena Kanaan that are both abhorrent and horrifying. Rightly, she has been immediately excluded from the Conservative Party. No one with such views will ever be allowed to join Wandsworth’s Conservative councillor group.”
The post, which appeared on Kanaan’s X account before it was deleted, read: “Nevertheless, the way the Israel government behaved with Palestinians during the years showed the world that Hitler was right (just the government politics). Please note that I am not against Jews people but against the Israel government. Not diplomacy, no morals!”
X flagged the post as potentially violating its rules against violent speech and limited its visibility. The account has since been deleted.
The Conservative Party and Putney MP Fleur Anderson have both characterised the post as antisemitic. Anderson wrote to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch on Thursday demanding to know how Kanaan had been approved as a candidate. “This is especially distressing for the local community which includes a Jewish primary school in the very ward Ms Kanaan is standing to represent,” Anderson wrote.
The tweet has surfaced a week where two Jewish men were stabbed in north London, prompting the government to raise its threat level to ‘severe’.
Still on the ballot
Kanaan will still appear on ballot papers on 7 May. The nomination deadline passed on 10 April, before the post surfaced publicly, and party suspension after that date cannot remove a candidate. The Conservative Party’s own Roehampton ward page has already removed her, leaving only Anjusha Chaughule and Jane Cooper as the party’s endorsed candidates.
Chaughule and Cooper are both standing on women’s safety and community service platforms. Cooper is a retired civil servant who has lived in Wandsworth for 50 years and served three times as Mayor of the Borough.
How she was approved
Anderson’s letter raises a direct question about the Conservative Party’s vetting process. Kanaan’s X account was publicly searchable and active in the weeks before the nomination deadline: archived posts from 28 March and 5 April 2026 confirm the account was posting as recently as five days before nominations closed. The post invoking Hitler was publicly visible on the account throughout the selection process.
This is the second Conservative candidate nationally to be suspended for antisemitic social media posts in the same pre-election period. A candidate in Peterborough was suspended earlier this week after antisemitic posts surfaced. Putney.news reported on Wednesday that a Reform UK candidate standing in Tooting Broadway had a series of posts flagged, including a reference to Auschwitz gas chambers.
Roehampton ward polling day is 7 May 2026, 7am to 10pm.
