THE Holocaust-denying leader of an ultra-Unionist group is running to be elected in a Scottish council by-election.

Alistair McConnachie, from the Force for Good fringe group, is seeking election under the “Independent Green Voice” banner.

The IGV party was called a “fascist front” by the Scottish Greens, with suggestions that the similarity to the Green branding cost them two list seats at Holyrood.

A freedom of information request revealed the “false flag” IGV party was the subject of hundreds of complaints to the Electoral Commission after people felt they were “misled” when voting in the Scottish Parliament election.

McConnachie is again using the IGV party banner to run in the Hillhead by-election for Glasgow City Council.

The by-election was called in the wake of the death of former Labour MSP and councillor Hanzala Malik in December.

One independent, Ryan McGinley, is running in the by-election, as well as representatives for the SNP, Scottish Labour, Scots Tories, Scottish LibDems, and Scottish Greens.

Polling analysis website BallotBox Scotland said the Hillhead by-election, which will be held on March 7, could see the “first ever Green by-election win”.

Seonad Hoy is standing for the Scottish Greens.

The SNP are standing Malcolm McConnell, Labour are standing Ruth Hall, and the Tories have selected Faten Hameed, who twice stood for Labour in General Elections before defecting to the Conservatives. The LibDem candidate is Daniel O’Malley.

McConnachie founded IGV in 2003 after being barred from UKIP for questioning the Holocaust. He had been UKIP’s Scottish organiser from 1999 to 2001 and stood as a candidate for the party five times.

UKIP refused to renew his membership in late 2001 because of comments he made in an email about the killing of Jews during the Second World War.

He wrote: “I don’t accept that gas chambers were used to execute Jews for the simple fact there is no direct physical evidence to show that such gas chambers ever existed.”

READ MORE: The Unionist party founder who was barred from UKIP for questioning Holocaust

McConnachie led a pro-monarchy counter protest in Edinburgh in July 2023 after republicans demonstrated against King Charles’s “Scottish coronation”.

Asked at the event if he stood by his denial of the Holocaust, McConnachie insisted that he was not a Holocaust denier, but stood by his assertion that “gas chambers [were not] used to execute Jews” – and that eyewitness accounts of it happening had been “revealed as false or exaggerated”.

The US Holocaust Memorial Musuem defines Holocaust denial as “any attempt to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jews”.

It goes on: “Holocaust denial and distortion are forms of antisemitism, prejudice against or hatred of Jews. Holocaust denial and distortion generally claim that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests.”