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.

That's be the Gibraltar where more than 90% of people voted remain? He must fit right in.

You think you can ignore election fraud if you agree politically with the perpetrators?

You have an amusing autocorrect in your last sentence.

I've name changed for this as I don't want my regular username associated with this information, but I thought it might give some of you an insight into what went on behind the scenes.

My dh was asked if he wanted to be named as a Reform candidate. He ran it past me and I told him in no uncertain terms that I did not want that to happen so he declined. However, he knew which constituency he would have been standing for and it is one neighbouring our constituency. Our constituency has a long standing Reform candidate (by which I mean I remember seeing his name on previous election ballots.) This attempt to select him occurred quite some time ago, either earlier this year or late last year, I forget when exactly.

My dh has an interest in politics and obviously supports the Reform Party (I don't, so don't jump on me!) but has not been involved in any political action, not even distributing leaflets, so I was pretty surprised, to say the least, when he was asked if he would like to stand. I thought being selected to be a party candidate was quite a process of interviewing and vetting, not simply showing an interest in a party!

So my impression is that Reform were desperately scraping around for enough candidates to contest all the seats, but it was happening way before the election was announced (though obviously the election had to happen sometime in 2024).

election result baiters

Oh, are those of us who follow politics not supposed to discuss the GE result?

Yeah, but so did Nadine Dorries. This localism has set up an unfortunate collateral damage in her ex constituency whereby everyone runs around madly yelling 'I'm local me, reallly local. Defintley, though , not from Luton'. The only canvasser we had was a Labour lad who told me the main question was 'where is she from?' (which may have been loaded as she is Asian). Luton, apparently, was not the correct response so they were all told to respond 'Bedfordshire'.

The MP who succeeded Nads after the by election was shunted next door after boundaries redrawn and the lovely Labour candidate lost because she was from Luton. The Tory winner came form 1/2 mile within the constituency. The reform candidate was definitley local. And been trying to get elected for every anti immigration party going for years.

Every candidate had to get nominations signed by people in the constituency. If there is an allegation that the person standing did not exist, that is a criminal matter.

I recall a court case where the nominations were found to be forgeries, cannot remember which party it was.

and used to be chairman of Southampton FC.

@Anunymus that's really interesting, thank you. How did they know he supported Reform if he didn't leaflet for them or anything? Was he on a mailing list? It seems like their bar for being a candidate was pretty low then!

I'm struggling to get beyond one of the candidates being dead. I mean that's definitely not a thing... did voters not know??

Worth noting, Reform PR trawled the internet for pictures of dead people and used the images as images of elderly Reform voters on twitter. They got rumbled when people spotted the UK's oldest man who had died recently and was in the news.

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.

We've had quite a bit on local FB about lack of democracy as they couldn't vote for Reform as there wasn't a candidate.
I think there would be support for voting for someone who didn't exist.

Even if they didn't exist they still got the votes - which is all the more remarkable really.

I'm not even sure that makes sense , but hope you get my drift. I am not a reform voter, but I don't think the way the left are going about dealing with reform and their voters is helping.

Our Reform candidate was real, I saw him speak at the hustings. Although I didn't agree with a single thing he said, he did come across as more likeable and a touch more humility as the odious Tory candidate.

Dead or not, I must say I am alarmed by a Reform candidate volunteering for the RNLI , given that party's vitriol against them : and their plans to make them not be allowed to rescue migrants.

I just looked up the ex BNP candidate and even though he was disowned by Reform mid-election, he still got 6314 votes.

That's pretty depressing.

For anyone else who is interested, Reform didn't know their own candidate was dead. But he didn't actually appear on the ballot paper

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-68788850

Yes, he is on their mailing list. (I don't think he has actually joined the party but, knowing my antipathy towards them, he may not be telling me). He did used to be a member of the Conservative party, mainly to have a say in voting for the leader, but after the Liz Truss/Rishi Sunak debacle he left.

Given his very minimal involvement, I agree with your comment about the bar being very low.

It does demonstrate that a large proportion of the electorate simply vote for the party and don't care about the candidate.

Obviously that's not necessarily enough to win you a seat, although it might, as that unfortunate MP in Thurrock has now discovered. Does anyone know if he actually campaigned?

I'm struggling to get beyond one of the candidates being dead. I mean that's definitely not a thing... did voters not know??

Assuming Reform didn't deliberately put someone already deceased on the ballot I'm guessing it was a paper candidate who put their name forward months before. Possibly if none of their family knew they'd done this nobody thought to tell Reform they'd died.

Such an interesting thread

DH says there is some stuff about him in The ST today. He was one of their higher profile candidates. Always had a good chance of winning. Anyone who has been to Gt Yarmouth could tell you that (this would appear not to include him...)

I've just discussed this thread with DP, a former CS who has been bemoaning the fact he's no longer working in Westminster to see the transition and work for a different govt.

He has said 1. wouldn't Reform suffer from bad publicity if they are found to have been fielding non-existent candidates? (I'm not sure they have any scruples and wouldn't just brazen it out); 2 Isn't it more likely that some other actor, possibly a foreign actor, has done this than Reform themselves? Possibly the same actor as paid the supposed canvasser to make those comments to Channel 4? I.e. someone looking to discredit Reform/meddle in UK politics.

I doubt the reform voters care much if the candidates actually exist. They wanted to vote for the party, i doubt they care about who their local mp would be.

If anything like my ex local tory mp, they might never see hide not hair of their mp anyway.

If the person was acting as their own agent too then this is definitely a possibility.

I think this is part of the issue. Our Conservative candidate may as well have been dead the use he was.

He occasionally got wheeled out at carnival time but it was all a bit 'Weekend at Bernies'

It's the Thurrock and South Basildon candidate, not the Great Yarmouth one who didn't expect to win. He only won by 98 votes, looks like it was three-way split vote.

If anything like my ex local tory mp, they might never see hide not hair of their mp anyway.

We only saw ours when there was a photo opportunity. Locals joke that if you want to talk to them, you just need to make sure you provide an army of photographers.