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.

My Reform candidate does actually live in the Ward, unlike the other 6 candidates who don't. They are reasonably local though, neighbouring towns.

From the photo it looks like even Nigel is jeering him!

Best bit from article (direct quote) is:
After growing in Basildon, he graduation from the University of Sussex with a BA in Economics.

Sounds like erupted somewhat unexpectedly in Basildon!

Our constituency didn't have a Reform candidate but if people think it doesn't matter as these quiet candidates were not elected there is Short Money that opposition parties get that is calculated on the number of seats and number of votes so votes = money.

Edited as I quoted the wrong post, sorry

This is interesting. I personally know the Reform candidate here so he was
definitely real.

Just looked up our candidate. He’s a real person but I highly suspect isn’t local. Doesn’t see to have an online presence apart from his Reform stuff.

Whatever you may think about Reform voters, there's no need to sneer at them in this way. If we want to limit political polarisation in the UK we need to have a dialogue and understand why some people feel so disenfranchised they've voted for a disrupter like Reform. Especially if ultimately we want Reform not to be a force in UK politics.

I wasnt sneering at them.

I was saying, they wanted to vote reform, so regardless of who their local candidate was, they were going to vote reform. Because the party's policies were more important than who their local MP would end up being.

That's certainly the case for everyone in my family who voted reform, and it's a sad indictment on outgoing MPs if they didn't make enough impact on their local area to convince people that who your MP is just as important as what party they serve.

I'm not sure that it's sneering to point out that Reform voters probably voted for the party rather than the candidate.

It's a bit weird how we have this system where you vote for the people who are going to run the country by voting for a person you want to sort out local traffic issues. Most people prioritise one over the other when voting. Look at all the tactical voting, do you think that was about party or candidate?

Jeremy Hunt apparently won his seat by campaigning heavily as a local candidate for local people rather than as a Tory.

The paid actor thing in relation to the documentary is nonsense. OfCom looked into it and found there was nothing untoward. The canvasser is just a nasty racist.

Occam's razor applies.No one needs to employ anyone to discredit Reform UK Ltd. It happens naturally!

www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-standards/update-complaints-channel-4-news-undercover-reform/

Oh sorry thought you were talking about the other guy - he is the one who was chair of Southampton FC so I think different posters have been mentioning different people.

All our candidates are local people in every election and all of them seem to have roots in and care about the local area. The seat flips back and forth between Labour and Tory each election and is always inline with the national politics of the day. Being a decent local MP only seems to take you so far.

I don't think someone stood fake Reform candidates in several areas in order to discredit Reform. I think Reform did.

Really interesting thread.

My local Reform candidate appears to be real but is probably why we don’t have a Tory MP any more. (If everyone who voted Reform voted Conservative then we’d still have a Tory MP)

Ours is real. His blurb mostly focused on re-opening the local mine, which were closed over 90 years ago and are now flooded. He also said that he would "strive to get business to consider locating to rural areas" whilst at the same time promising that he would "fight hard to ban any development on rural land", so not sure how that would have worked. Honestly his whole campaign blurb was riddled with contradictions and pie-in-the-sky ideas, yet enough people voted for him that he came 3rd with over 6000 votes.

Absolutely. Reform is not a real political party, it is a dodgy organisation.

No hope required, they're bound to be. And hopefully they will be summarily dismissed by teh lctorate next time.

I'm looking forward to all the declarations of interests and expenses scandals.

This made me laugh. Re-opening the local mine??

Yes, if votes = money that definitely explains why they were keen to field candidates in so many constituencies.

Ive been looking up the reform candidate for and he looks real although his picture looks like a cut out of a family picture but I can't find anything online about him just the blurb about veterans and being a "local man" .

My local candidate did not appear at any hustings events and did not show up at the counting or final announcement. They came 3rd in my area.

Faceless campaign materials, no Facebook or twitter presence as a candidate. Not even a photo of him or a blurb on the 'find your candidate' bit of the website. Smoke and shitty mirrors. His registered address (not listed on the ballot) is local ish, another person at that address with a male name (son?) stood in a neighbouring constituency. Presumably similarly committed to the cause.

Same here. I didn't see much in the way of campaigning from him. Just one leaflet - but he is local, well educated with a solid career behind him. He didn't have much time to build a campaign but I don't think he intended to be a paper candidate either. He got nearly 10k votes.

If Reform doesn't implode in the next 5 years I could see our area electing him or someone like him in 2029. There's clearly been huge dissatisfaction with Labour and Conservatives, hence the seat swinging between the two in the last couple of decades. Starmer has a lot of people to win over and keep onside.

Mine was definitely real; I was at school with him where he always was borderline fascist.

I keep picturing Farage in Clacton being followed around by that woman from the Thick of It who repeatedly hectored Peter Mannion with 'Do you know what it's like to clean up your own mother's piss?' while he's trying to do a staged visit to a factory.

I don't know if there are any requirements of MPs to actually do anything though. Sinn Fein obviously don't even turn up to parliament. Can the Thurrock and Basildon guy keep working as a banker full time while collecting MP wages?

Funnily enough our local Facebook page had someone questioning our local Reform candidate going by name of Abdoul Aziz Ndiaye. Couple of people had a hunt around online but couldn't find any info or pictures of him.