cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/14383028
Reform UK has come under pressure to provide evidence its candidates at the general election were all real people after doubts were raised about a series of hopefuls who stood without providing any photos, biographies or contact details.
Reform insists every one of its 609 candidates on 4 July were real, while accepting that some were in effect “paper candidates” who did no campaigning, and were there simply to help increase the party’s vote share.
However, after seeing details about the apparently complete lack of information about some candidates, who the Guardian is not naming, the Liberal Democrats called on Reform to provide details about them.
A Liberal Democrat source said: “This doesn’t sound right and Reform should come clean with evidence. We need Reform to show who they are. People need to have faith in the democratic process.”
A series of candidates listed on the Nigel Farage-led party’s election website only show their name and the constituency they stood in, without any information about them, or contact details beyond a generic regional email address.
Many of these people have no visible online presence, and did not appear to do any campaigning. Photographs of the electoral counts for some of the relevant constituencies show that the Reform candidate was the only person not to attend.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A series of candidates listed on the Nigel Farage-led party’s election website only show their name and the constituency they stood in, without any information about them, or contact details beyond a generic regional email address.
The Guardian has also learned that one Reform candidate suspected of being fake, in part because his official election photo looked AI-generated, is a real person.
The suspicions about Mark Matlock, who won 1,758 votes in Clapham and Brixton Hill in south London, were compounded when he did not show for the election count, with sceptics also pointing to an apparent lack of any photographs of him campaigning.
Matlock, who lives in the Cotswolds, said he did undertake a leaflet drop, adding that he understood the rush to get candidates in place: “The election caught us all on the hop and Rishi Sunak knew that.
Yusuf, a Muslim businessman who spoke at a recent Reform rally, is the founder of a luxury concierge company called Velocity Black, and gave Nigel Farage’s party £200,000.
Other donors to Reform include £125,000 from Jeremy Hosking, a businessman who recently backed Laurence Fox’s Reclaim party and the anti-vax former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen.
The original article contains 723 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I hope all those people and companies that tried to game the political system and not really stand face consequences for it. If it was legal but snakey, they should face boycotts. If it was fake, the person signing them up and voivhing for them should face fines and/or jail.
I’ve no problem with a real candidate with views I detest. The problem is trying to game the system by giving misleading or false information.