Reform UK Candidate Runs Firm Hired by Sanctioned Pro-Putin Bosnian Serb Leadership

A Reform UK candidate directs a public affairs consultancy hired to handle UK media and communications for the leadership of Republika Srpska – the pro-Putin Bosnian Serb entity whose president, Milorad Dodik, has been sanctioned by Britain for seeking to undermine the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina – Byline Times can reveal.

Kenneth Oliver Morris, 31, who is standing for the party in Erdington, Birmingham,also serves as the English co-ordinator for the Patriots Network – a transnational far-right political coalition whose Paris event later this year is billed to feature Tommy Robinson, the far-right convicted fraudster who helped inflame the Southport riots.

The findings raise questions about Nigel Farage’s claim that Reform UK operates the “most in-depth vetting procedure of any party”.

Morris is the director of public affairs consultancy Morris De Corve & Associates (MCA), the Conservative Friends of Romania, and the Centre for Geopolitical Studies. A Brexiter, he is a regular attendee at the anti-abortion March for Life rally.

Earlier this month, Bosnian Serb broadcaster RTV BN reported that MCA is “in charge of the media and communications strategy” for Republika Srpska, aimed at strengthening ties with UK political and media figures.

Formed during the Bosnian war as a confederate entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska was originally created to safeguard Serb interests. In 2022, its then-president, Željka Cvijanović, and its current president, Milorad Dodik, were sanctioned by the UK Government for “attempting to undermine the legitimacy and functionality of the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina” – actions reportedly encouraged by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A close ally of Putin, Dodik has met with him on multiple occasions, including at last year’s Valdai Discussion Club, where Putin praised him for “contributing greatly to the development of relations with Russia”. The Moscow-based forum has been variously characterised by commentators as an elite showcase for the Russian political class and as a Kremlin propaganda vehicle.

Morris’s personal politics appear to align with the Republika Srpska leadership’s ideological position.

In December last year, he reposted on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) an American Postliberal article arguing that thirty years after the Dayton Peace Agreement – which ended the Bosnian war and created the state structure Dodik has been sanctioned for undermining – Bosnia and Herzegovina’s “sovereignty remains suspended” and that “a state cannot mature while governed by an external hand”.

Morris is active in wider European hard-right networks. In a post on his Threads account last year, he said he “had an excellent time” at the Re-Arm Europe Conference in Romania.

The accompanying images showed him with UKIP leader and Turning Point UK (TPUK) chief operating officer Nick Tenconi, TPUK chief executive Jack Ross, and former TPUK member Ethan Thoburn, who is now a head of office in the House of Commons.

Also pictured were Jonathan Wong and Callum Smiles of far-right news outlet Vox Populi, and Andreea Rusuf, secretary of the Conservative Friends of Romania.

A separate image posted last year to TPUK’s Facebook page showed Morris alongside Tenconi, Ross, and members of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) in London.

Founded in 2019, AUR is led by George Simion, who has forged close ties with the US Republican Party, and who has claimed that feminism has destroyed the traditional family, and blamed LGBT people for inclement weather. Morris, a devout Catholic, has publicly supported Simion on Threads, writing that AUR is in a “fight for Christian civilisation in a land where the faith still lives”.

Morris’s Christian nationalist politics reflect the Patriots Network’s broader agenda. Founded by a former leader of the French far-right youth group Rassemblement National de la Jeunesse, its recent conferences have featured talks titled ‘the de-Christianisation and ethno-demographic changes in Europe’ and ‘mass immigration is destroying our continent’.

Previous speakers have included members of the far-right Irish National Party. Tommy Robinson – whose prison conversion to Christianity has been centred in his recent protests – is billed to appear at the network’s Paris event this year.

Byline Times approached Reform UK and Kenneth Morris for comment.