A candidate running for election has said her anti-lockdown views would have no impact on how she would be as a councillor.

Laura King is standing as an independent candidate in Hanover and Elm Grove and is the leader of the Friends of Brighton and Hove Party.

Seven other candidates affiliated with the group are also running as independents in the upcoming Brighton and Hove City Council election next month.

However, Ms King has come under scrutiny after blog posts emerged where she expresses support for anti-lockdown activists and promotes conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

In one post from August 2020, she says that a “cabal of billionaires” appear to run the world “to tell us we can’t use cash any more or have our human rights back until we all submit to a vaccine to make them even richer with no guarantee of success and no indemnity insurance against injury either”.

LOCAL ELECTIONS 2023:

Another post from October 2020 details a trip by Ms King to an anti-lockdown protest in London, describing the event as “the new civil rights movement”.

She said: “Roll on the international crimes against humanity trials where our leaders will be held to account for what they’ve done to us and our country.

“Wouldn’t it be ironic if, having swept away our human rights, they found themselves condemned to face a firing squad or lethal injection?”

Ms King also recalls meeting Piers Corbyn at the event, an anti-vaccine activist and climate change denier who has been arrested on several occasions for taking part in protests against public health laws and for calling on supporters to commit violent acts against members of Parliament.

“I am now officially a Corbynista,” she wrote on her website after attending the protest.

The Argus:

In an interview with The Argus, Ms King said her personal views on lockdown would not affect her judgement as a councillor and that her focus would be on what is best for residents.

She said: “My views on lockdown are a bit like my views on synchronised swimming - they’ve got zero to with how I would perform as a councillor.

“It’s not a councillor’s job to interfere in people’s lives. People are allowed to have opinions and voters will also have opinions people don’t agree with.

“I don’t think my views on lockdown have anything to do with how I would be as a councillor, and that’s what they have to judge me as.”

Her new political group, which emerged from a citizens’ action group demanding accountability from the council, calls on councillors to “spend taxpayers’ money wisely and in the right places”.

In campaign literature, the group tells voters that “a council’s job is to run the city, not the citizens” and encourages them to “make 4th May independents day”.

Voters will go to the polls in less than four weeks to elect 54 councillors from across Brighton and Hove for the next four years.

People have until April 17 to ensure they are registered to vote - applications can be made online at gov.uk/register-to-vote.