LONDON—Leaders of the Reform UK party have expressed shock and dismay after discovering that social media posts made by their local election candidates were visible to the general public, and not, as previously believed, part of a private diary kept exclusively between them and Mark Zuckerberg.

“Frankly, none of us realised that posting ‘All immigrants should go home, except for my Spanish Tapas delivery guy’ could end up in the press,” said Reform UK candidate Trevor Blunt, whose campaign slogan is ‘Britain for the British, For Real This Time.’ “If I’d known people might read my Twitter, I would’ve at least used less punctuation.”

Party leader Nigel Farage, dressed in an uncharacteristically somber Union Jack blazer, insisted that all candidates undergo a rigorous vetting process, which currently consists of “asking them if they’ve ever accidentally become a Nazi, and accepting a firm ‘no’ as proof.”

Labour’s press secretary Jane Woke called for immediate dismissals. “Reform’s checks are clearly not fit for purpose. In fact, I think one candidate was just a sentient Union flag with a Facebook account,” she said.

Meanwhile, in a related story, rival party Restore Britain admitted to receiving a donation from a man known online only as ‘AdolfFan1939.’ “He assured us he just liked the uniforms,” said party treasurer Basil St. George. “We do thorough checks, like making sure donors can spell ‘Britain.’ What more do people want?”

At press time, Reform UK was reportedly considering changing its vetting questionnaire to include the question, ‘Have you ever posted anything terrible on the internet, even ironically?’