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.

They don't have to provide photos, and biographies, or be present

It was in response to Reform being utterly incompetent, but hey ho, you do you.

Mark Matlock's (the AI chap) Twitter feed is, er, interesting. Only joined in June 2024.

My post was in response to people making a joke of the death of someone's relative and colleague

Ours had an address in Gibraltar! No idea if they would have relocated if elected.

Sadly my one is real and is now my town's MP. He will prove to be fake and invisible to his constituency.

The Great Yarmouth candidate lives in the cotswolds!

The Reform candidate on the leaflets delivered (which named our constituency) was a completely different person. The leaflets were a man and the actual candidate a woman, and not a trans issue, a totally different name and picture.

No, why?

He's the actual MP now, not just the candidate. But he is planning to buy a property in GY, though has made it quite clear that he has no intention of actually spending much time there:
Mr Lowe said: "I never said I would move to Yarmouth, what I said is I would buy a property in the constituency, which will be necessary because I will be there."
https://www.greatyarmouthmercury.co.uk/news/24433112.general-election-2024-great-yarmouth-mp-rupert-lowe-wins/

Our Reformer is very much real. Has been a thorn in the side for the city council for years and managed to come home second behind the Labour candidate with a surprisingly large share of the votes. Labour also hemorrhaged votes to a similarly controversial local figure who stood for WPUK, so the previous Labour majority is now looking a little thinner...

Wtf that's mad!!!

Our Reform candidate campaigned heavily on his anti-immigration stance.
He moved here from Cyprus six years ago.

When you add the Reform and Conservative votes together in our constituency the vote is pretty close to Labour. I know that not everyone who voted Reform would vote Tory but it makes you wonder what the 2019 result would have been if Farage hadn’t stood Reform candidates down.

Depressingly mine claims to have been a Magistrate for 16yrs. Seems to be a real human though.

I'm hoping that the small wins Reform have made in this GE will flush them out as the charlatans they are. Some of the candidates are definitely real, local campaigners (see my above post), but when others realise they've voted in someone from 200 miles away or someone who had no intention of taking office and who has no interest in sorting out their potholes and GP waiting lists, they're going to get very disillusioned. Bring it on.

So you have to show ID to vote, but not to be voted for?

Good point

Looking down his twitter feed I've already seen three other AI generated photos supposedly of diverse groups of people supporting Reform.

I'm hoping that the small wins Reform have made in this GE will flush them out as the charlatans they are.

Totally agree with this. Farage is, as he always has been, going to be focusing on 'political revolt' (?) rather than Terry's dispute with the council over dog poo.

How long will it be before one of them has to stand down for some kind of debacle?

I wonder if they’ve all had their online presence killed deliberately so that people don’t find their vile racist/sexist/anti-semetic posts and tweets to use against them.

For goodness sake - give it a rest. Have all you election result baiters got nothing productive and useful to do in your lives than keep on attacking those who have a differant viewpoint (politically) from yours.
Whether or nor there were a few mysteries around some of the candidates in all parties - the fact is that people voted ACCORDING TO WHAT THEY WANTED FROM THEIR MPS - IT IS THEIR RIGHT TO DO SO.

Start looking under some stones in the other political parties, start looking at the postal vote scandal, start looking at coercion and bigotry in other candidates.
And blame those of you who spoilt your votes, abstained from voting and tactically voted to unleash Ed davey and his limpdems on us.

Wow. A fascinating read. Thank you for linking this. I shall watch developments with interest. Definitely something not right here… 🤔

Have all you election result baiters got nothing productive and useful to do in your lives than keep on attacking those who have a differant viewpoint (politically) from yours.

It's not people who have a different viewpoint to mine, it's people standing for election who don't appear to exist, therefore have no viewpoint due to not existing.

Our candidate was real. I met him when I was out shopping in the town where I live.