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.
The problem is that a lot of those type of loons post some really easy to find batshit craziness online, the kind that means they have to be booted from the party.
With the speed of reforms decision to run and field so many candidates running properly vetted selection would have been very difficult and expensive. The money Farage talked about spending on vetting was nowhere near enough to do a proper job.
So I am not surprised if they invented fake people, far harder for the press to out loons if they don’t actually exist. It’s right on brand for the likes of Farage to break the rules like that.