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.
So I need to bring my ID to vote, but don’t need to provide any personal information at all (or apparently even confirm that I really exist) to run as an MP?
Not as far as I’m aware. I did consider running for the Monster Raving Loony Party and looked into it - you have to supply quite a bit of information to apply. What they are talking about here is that there is little information available on Reform’s website:
That would make it difficult to verify who the people are. Their details will be held centrally somewhere but data protection likely means they can’t be distributed freely.
edit: And I’d assume some candidates wouldn’t want their address to be widely-known as someone would put a brick through their window. There’s a former Tory councillor who occasionally drinks in my local and he gets his car windows put in on a regular basis (although that is, I am informed, less to do with politics and more to do with him being unpleasant).