From gay conversion therapy advocates to supporters of paedophilia legalisation, from climate change deniers to rampant tax avoiders, from NHS abolitionists to besties of neo-Nazis, from fracking supporters to unabashed profiteers of chaos…

Nigel Farage with Beatrix von Storch, who is the granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister, and the deputy leader of the notorious far-right party AfD. She invited him to speak at her far-right rally, and he was delighted to attend.

I have a hunch that 2–10% of my friends, family and colleagues are going to go to their local voting booths on Thursday and scrawl a cross next to The Brexit Party.

Firstly, I still love you guys. Despite, um, everything.

Secondly, I wrote this handy list for you. It’s about your favourite party’s candidates.

Now, I was kinda worried you might be voting for The Brexit Party for one reason (especially as they forgot to publish more than one policy). And that you might reconcile yourself with the motley crew as a wanky means to an end.

Some of you might not have the time to investigate what kind of people you’re voting for, and what views they have, something made harder by their often suspicious levels of secrecy and stonewalling. Put simply, you might not know who you are voting to give power and influence to.

Which is why I took the time to do the reading for you.

I read up on every single listed Brexit Party MEP candidate, and some staff members, to find out what kind of people they are. And it was an epic, revealing slog.

PLOT SPOILERS: Many of them are really, really into things like conversion therapy for gay people, many support and are beaming friends to actual fascists, and a number have campaigned for a paedophile’s right to access child porn or groom children. Heck, that’s just for starters.

A vast amount have a history of tax avoidance / using tax havens, or are minted enough for Brexit to present a massive green light for such practices — see the pesky EU Anti Tax Avoidance Directive, which sets out to clamp down on several types of tax avoidance (https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/company-tax/anti-tax-avoidance-package/anti-tax-avoidance-directive_en). And many candidates preside over corporations that are paid to show other corporations how to comprehensively dodge and mitigate paying tax.

A vast number of Brexit Party candidates work in property, finance, or real estate. Which is fine, only many of them have been spectacularly candid about — and quoted on — their desire to personally profit from and fecklessly exploit the chaos and decline that they openly admit Brexit would cause.

Many candidates manage huge businesses and have been vocal about how fed up they are with annoying things like the EU telling them that their food produce needs to be safe to consume, or that they need to pay their employees sick leave.

If this doesn’t make you angry, read that again.

A huge number of Brexit Party candidates are climate change deniers. And work in fossil fuels, are pro-fracking, or anti-environmentalism or anti-renewable energy. Some Brexit Party candidates describe themselves as environmentalists, scientists or physicists, which sounds nice on paper… until you realise they specialise in nuclear power or fossil fuels.

Some describe themselves as journalists or authors. Which also sounds nice, until you realise they write incessantly on dubious websites about how great colonialism was, how climate change is a lie, and how welfare and the NHS should be abolished, and much more. Far too many write slavishly for neo-Nazi websites like Breitbart, and infamously inaccurate papers, while several churn out bile on very murky websites like Spiked Magazine.

A lot of them aren’t ‘bad boys of Brexit’; they’re just shit human beings.

A very significant number seem to be pretending they are taking on the establishment, even if they are privately educated, multi-millionaires, besties with billionaires, Etonians, Bullingdon Club members, linked to the Rothschilds, friends with Cameron, work for the Koch brothers, or play polo with aristocrats. I’d be lying if I said that this is the sweeping majority, but it’s amazing how so many of these very same people are masquerading as ‘mums of four’, men of the people, or little people heroically taking on the elite.

I don’t want to generalise too much about the candidates, as some are seemingly decent, well-meaning people, a percentage of which have done some selfless and admirable things for the community. Though an interesting number of ostensibly decent candidates (doctors, lawyers, charity workers etc) actually have shady backgrounds, inexcusable beliefs, and skeletons in their closets, or are at best hypocritically burying their heads in the sand about their party bedfellows.

*Also, while make a point of mentioning these things, I’m >not< resolutely against people having a private school education, being from a wealthy family, or working in finance, or even in real estate ;) . I mention these things because they often indicate false personas, conflicts of interest, ulterior motives, and self-serving agendas. And I realise that you can find hypocrisy or dirt out about nearly everyone; I’ll simply leave it up to you to decide if they still worth voting for.

The list of candidates appears quite diverse, though this illustrates striking contradictions. For example, one candidate describes themselves as an environmentalist, yet holds hands with numerous climate change deniers and fossil fuel advocates. Some are gay, yet stand alongside repugnant, vocal homophobes. Some are European migrants, yet stand with candidates who relentlessly write bile about Romanians and the Polish. Some are anti-IRA campaigners, yet are bedfellows with unrepentant supporters of IRA bombers.

Many Brexit Party candidates simply don’t exist online, and haven’t bothered setting up a website or Twitter page, and there is no way of fathoming what their politics are, or what experience they may or may not have. Which must have its advantages. (Incidentally, numerous candidates have rock-bottom experience in politics. Or in everyday life.)

Here we go. All you have to do is have a quick read of this list.

This. is. who. you’re. voting. for.