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.
Right, but it’s unusual to have masses of candidates that have no online presence, no address, no email address, don’t even show up to the count, etc.
Think of every seat declaration you saw on election night: the Lib Dem candidate was standing right there on stage, even in Leave-voting Red Wall seats where centrist moderate liberalism is a deposit-losing proposition.
It’s not all that bizarre, and it’s more common amongst smaller and newer parties.
I know the Reform candidate for Ilford North through another forum, and he didn’t attend any hustings (because he wasn’t made aware of them), he didn’t attend the Ilford North count because he was helping out at Hornchurch and Upminster, and he didn’t upload his info to Reform’s site because he was too busy leafletting and doing his regular political job in the London Assembly.
The lowest Lib Dem vote share in the country was recorded in Ynys Mon, where Leena Farhat got 439 votes or 1.4% - the most ‘paper’ of paper candidates the Lib Dems will have put up. I typed her name into Google and it took me seconds to find her Twitter, her LinkedIn, her local campaign page, and many photos of her.
It’s a bit unusual for any adult in 2024 to have no online presence, but especially when a party that appears to have won the third largest vote in a UK-wide election appears to have multiple people among their purported candidates who all have no online presence…