Was your Reform candidate a fake?

[noblegiraffe]

We know that the election was called unexpectedly and that small parties had to rush around last minute to find people to stand in all the constituencies. We know that Reform had problems with (lack of) vetting and some of theirs had to be dropped mid-campaign due to being problematic.

I saw a couple of amusing videos on twitter about someone worried that their Glaswegian Reform candidate Helen Burns didn't actually exist
https://x.com/kbfilms92/status/1808772750938448124?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g
https://x.com/kbfilms92/status/1808857245456773492?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

This morning I see that the North Northumberland Reform candidate Katherine Hales was suspiciously absent from all proceedings.

https://x.com/josiahmortimer/status/1809583328049168541?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

Clifford Ronald Thomas Bond in York Central also had no photos and the same generic leaflet as Helen Burns.

Helen Burns got 1655 votes, Katherine Hales got 7688 votes, Cliff Bond got 4721 votes. These start stacking up when you are talking about vote share and they're not the only missing candidates.

Did your Reform candidate appear to be a real person standing for election? Are there rules requiring people standing for election to actually do anything apart from be a name on paper? It seems suspicious, particularly if that party is now banging on about their vote share, if it came via dodgy means.

it was so bizarre. The ghastly far right pundit Adam Brooks declared his Reform candidate had dropped out kind of implying there was a plot. Only there never was a candidate.

It does not. It demonstrates a large number of Reform UK voters vote for the party rather than the MP.
In my constituency the sitting MP lost his seat. Partly because he has been so shit locally.

It does not. It demonstrates a large number of Reform UK voters vote for the party rather than the MP.

Isn't that exactly what Noble said??

I said a large proportion of the electorate vote party not candidate.

Which I also think is true. Think of the amount of tactical voting that has gone on this election.

That's spooky! They must be looking at this as I think I am the first person who pointed out his background. Haven't seen anyone on Twitter looking beyond the apparently dead nominees .

But the fact that they are deleting accounts speaks volumes.

Edward Powell, as well as being the Reform candidate in Lewisham North, was one of the electors that nominated the Reform candidate in Mitcham and Morden.

https://www.merton.gov.uk/system/files/statement_of_persons_nominated_and_notice_of_poll_-_mitcham_and_morden_constituency.pdf

There seems to be a lot of mutual nominating going on with so many of these Reform candidates.

Chris Lonie is still on LinkedIn . It's odd as he has worked on some quite Woke stuff and then started posting Right Wing stuff all of a sudden.

If you look long enough they all get interlinked.

I am deeeeeply suspicious of two people who work in branding/AI nominating an candidate who only seems to exist in AI form.

I looked at him yesterday, thought he was just a standard right winger - was intrigued to see that Sarah Phillimore was following him.

Wonder why he felt the need to delete his X account?

It's in the Guardian, with this interesting nugget "One person with the same name and location of a candidate denied it was them." 👀

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/08/reform-uk-under-pressure-to-prove-all-its-candidates-were-real-people?CMP=twt_b-gdnnews

Because he and the other fella created 'Mark Matlock'??

The Guardian article says that Mark Matlock showed them the original photo that was amended to change his tie colour. And presumably also his entire head.

Hmmm... who did The Guardian actually speak to, and how??

If he emailed it, it's no proof at all.

Edit - I misunderstood, my bad.

Thing is, by clearly writing something stupid or offensive to Alice Roberts, you can deduce that he's not a person many in the creative field are likely to want to get involved in. The speed of the removal of his Twitter account may have been coincidence or... Hi Chris, 👋.

I remember having a weird dream some years ago that some of the Tory MPs turned not to be real people, but AI programmes 'programmed to be right wing', and there was then a big court case about whether computer programmes are eligible to sit in Parliament! I woke up before the court case was decided.

It seems that my dream may not have been as far off as all that! Just the wrong party.

I didn’t see the Alice Roberts stuff. Did he really go off on one?

R=The Alice Roberts thing are about a person whose Twitter handle is Chris Lonie though - which is a different bloke, I think.

Oh no, I stand corrected!!

https://x.com/theAliceRoberts/status/1808279828795215933

It was quite a famous Tweet on the day. It said 'stick to bones. love' or something like that.

You can't see what he said, may "only" have been "Fuck off" but with her having a lot of followers, it means there were a lot of replies to him.

Ah, I missed that, having avoided Twitter for a while.

Ours was real he was at the hustings

That’s hysterical. 😭

A virtual office… do they all just hold meetings down the pub?

Don't need a desk and a chair if you don't exist!