The Observer reports that five councillors standing for the Conservative Party in the upcoming local elections have been suspended over allegations of racism and Islamophobia in recent years - part of a wider group of 13 party councillors who have been suspended over similar concerns in the last four years and subsequently reinstated. Mohammed Amin, a former chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum who left the party for the Liberal Democrats, says individuals, once exposed, "are typically suspended and then quietly reinstated a few months later", with the party's lack of transparency leaving the public in the dark about "whether they have given adequate assurances that they have changed their ways".