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.

I hate to be the one standing up for Reform as I despise them, but I do think it needs to be pointed out that the BBC article about the Reform candidate for York Central having died is from April. They had a new person on the ballot (whose address was given as nowhere near York Central).

I have spent the morning going down a Mark Matlock/other phantom Reform candidates rabbit hole. A guy on the UK politics subreddit has reported to the Electoral Commission, BBC and Channel 4. Something certainly smells off.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-59206904

This is from 2021 but talks about second jobs.

Just looked ours up and can only find a reference to him opposing a new building from 2018. No photos and no details at all on the Reform site. Genuinely would have had no chance of winning here.

The York Central candidate is one of the ones listed in my OP as being completely invisible.

I guess if the previous candidate died they didn't have much time to find a new one who actually existed.

Our candidate is very real and very local, YouTube video, mobile number, full biography etc. He came third.

TBF voting for the party rather than the MP happens across the board I suspect. I am in a safe Labour seat, four voters in my house and three of them couldn't name the candidate they voted for (just the party). They take no more than a vague interest in politics at best and I think there are a fair number of people similar regardless of their political preference.

SF don't turn up in the HoC but, presumably, are very active locally. If I had a Reform MP, I'd be writing to them all the time now about local issues.

I live in that constituency which is a safe Lab seat and didn't hear from any of the candidates. Except a leaflet from a wacko campaigning on an anti covid vaccine platform.

He may well have been invisible but I just wanted to correct the thing about him being dead. Can't believe I'm defending Reform but I just think accuracy is important.

In the interest of fairness the only thing Reform might have done which is illegal and not (hopefully) done by other parties is create entirely fictitious candidates, which is yet to be proven but potentially does need investigating if there's evidence.

Having paper candidates who you can find scant detail about and dropping candidates into far away constituencies is something all parties do from time to time in both general and local elections and is not against any rules.

The previous candidate for York Central died, the current one doesn't exist.

Oh I see. Is that really true? I genuinely have no idea. It seems to me that he had very little chance of being elected in that constituency so I suppose little risk of being found out if true.

Reform candidate was real and was there at the results. Although a bit hypocritical in his bio, wants to protect our borders and defend patriotism, also says he has lived abroad for 11 years and all his family has emigrated out of the UK. So it's ok for you and your family to emigrate to other countries, but not for others to come here.... 🤔

Our Reform candidate did not have a local presence; we got the generic Farage leaflet posted to our address. No pictures online of the candidate and his social media seemed very sparse, impersonal and recent.

He got 11,000+ votes. The sitting Labour candidate got 16,000.

If Reform manage to stay together I can see them fighting it out at the next general and targeting this seat. They have taken seats from the very safe Labour council over the past decade.

He didn't attend the hustings (not sure if invited) and he got 1.1% (46 votes) when stood in 2022 local elections.

A lot of candidates accross all parties aren’t local to their constituency. Many people base their voting decisions on this, as they want to vote for people who have a connection and knowledge with the area they’re going to represent. Surprised some people on here don’t know that? It’s not something just common to Reform candidates.

It's pretty self evident their bar was on the floor when you look at how many they lost right before the election for racism - and those were the best they could muster! I'm not surprised they'd prefer to fake their candidates, imaginary people can't embarrass you on Facebook ranting on about how much they hate anyone of colour.

It's even harder to have a connection to a local area if you aren't real.

Ours is real. Lives out the back of us, nice young lad studying for a social work qualification.
Used to be our local tory councilor.

Ours was real, works at the local secondary school. Not quite sure people will be comfortable going to them with their pastoral issues now after the things that were said. Didn't do a great deal of campaigning, certainly didn't see any leaflets or anything, but they still came third

That fella looks like an AI generated spawn of Tice and Oakenshott.

@Rowgtfc72, studying for a social work qualification? That's worrying for anyone who ends up on his caseload. I'd expect him to have an understanding of health inequalities and as such not endorse a party campaigning to dismantle ECHR, the Equalities Act and the Race and Health Observatory. As well as removal of access to universal healthcare and reduction of access to unemployment benefits.

@HelloTreacle9

Me too!

Interesting that the Reddit poster spotted that the Mark Matlock X account posted a photo of a closed Gloucestershire hospital ward (claiming that he was too ill to attend the count), and the only Mark Matlock I could find being born in E&W in the last 60 years is an antiques dealer in the Cotswolds.

I wonder if they’re related?

They seem to like the surname Burns for fake candidates, maybe like a burner phone?!? This our local one

Or they're just big Simpson's fans?

I tried a free AI image generator with the prompt Reform UK candidate. This is what it gave me. 😄