The police investigation into Reform UK’s allegations of ‘family voting’ or voter coercion in the Gorton and Denton by-election has found no evidence of the illegal practice.
Greater Manchester Police said on Friday that it had found “no evidence to suggest any intent to influence or refrain a person from voting as stated in the Ballot Secrecy Act 2023”.
Family voting is where two voters use one polling booth at the same time, and can involve husbands telling their wives how to vote.
In the aftermath of the Gorton and Denton by-election, the Reform candidate Matt Goodwin said he had lost the race due to “dangerous Muslim sectarianism”.
Reform then reported allegations of family voting to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and the Electoral Commission.
After the polls closed, election observation group Democracy Volunteers said they had seen “concerningly high levels of family voting” in the by-election on 26 February.
Responding to the outcome of the police investigation, Green Party leader Zack Polanski said: “Reform offered hate. We offered hope. Hope won.
“The police say his accusations of cheating are baseless. Farage is a bad loser.”
Nigel Farage is not happy with the result, calling the GMP’s investigation “another brushed-under-the-carpet report from the usual suspects”.
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spokesperson, wrote on X: “Farridge and Matt Badloss talked a lot of conspiracy theory Islamophobic nonsense when they just, er, lost? Wasting police time anyone?”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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Nigel Farage has been accused of trying to “rig the rules” in elections by stripping Commonwealth citizens of their voting rights and restricting postal voting.
Yesterday, the Reform UK leader said he would only allow naturalised British citizens to vote in Parliamentary elections. This means residents from Commonwealth countries such as Pakistan and India would lose their right to vote.
Farage also vowed to end postal voting for all except elderly and disabled people, serving armed forces personnel, and those working overseas during an election.
He said he would restrict voting rules after claiming that Muslim voters had ‘cheated’ to elect the Green Party’s candidate Hannah Spencer in the Gorton and Denton by-election last Thursday.
Farage seized on reports from election monitoring group Democracy Volunteers, which said it had observed instances of “family voting” during the by-election.
The Clacton MP claimed that ‘cheating’ had cost Reform the election.
Family voting is where two voters use one polling booth at the same time, and can involve husbands telling their wives how to vote.
Democracy Volunteers raised the issue after the polls closed, and appear not to have reported the allegations to the police.
On Friday, Reform reported cases of family voting to the electoral commission and the police.
Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, told The Mirror: “Nigel Farage is a sore loser. His baseless conspiracy theories make him sound more like Donald Trump every day. Instead of trying to rig the rules – restricting who can vote or banning postal ballots – he should look closer to home.”
“People in Gorton and Denton turned out to reject Reform’s nasty and divisive agenda. An agenda that would scrap employment protections, legalise discrimination and axe renters’ rights – handing more power to bad bosses and rogue landlords.”
Unison’s assistant general secretary, Jon Richards, said: “If Nigel Farage was such a fan of democracy, he’d have insisted on a by-election every time another chancer Tory MP defected to Reform. It’s funny how he has far less interest in overseas influence when it comes to the funding of his party.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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A creep isn’t a nice word. It conjures something seedy, furtive, vaguely contaminated, a person out of step, not merely with polite society but with the moral order itself. It’s not analysis but a character assassination in a single syllable.
So when a veteran columnist in a national newspaper brands the leader of a political party “the biggest creep in British politics,” it deserves more than a raised eyebrow. It demands a red pen.
That is precisely how Sarah Vine chose to describe Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, in the pages of the Daily Mail ahead of the Gorton and Denton by-election. The timing wasn’t subtle. Nor was the intent.
Vine opens with a familiar tirade against the PM and his “financially illiterate” chancellor, supposedly plunging Britain into a “growth-stifling tax-and-spend abyss.” The country, she suggests, is already circling the drain. How, she wonders, could things get any worse?
Enter Polanski, likened not to a flawed politician with arguable ideas, but to a wasps’ nest in the roof or a dead rat beneath the floorboards – literally.
This isn’t political critique, it’s dehumanisation.
The ‘creep’ case collapses
Having established the mood music, Vine proceeds to outline Polanski’s supposed duplicity. She notes his down-to-earth persona, his “hope not hate” aspirations, his appeal to younger and minority voters, only to mock it all with heavy sarcasm.
There are the predictable jabs at his appearance. There’s the insinuation that his Jewish identity somehow sits uneasily alongside his support for Palestinian rights, and the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” refrain.
But where’s the evidence of wrongdoing? Of corruption? Of abuse of power?
The crux of the column rests on the Gorton and Denton by-election campaign of Green candidate Hannah Spencer. A campaign video voiced in Urdu and aimed at Pakistani Muslim residents is presented as proof of sinister “double personas” and sectarian intent. The video criticised the Reform candidate and referenced Gaza. Vine brands it “naked propaganda” designed to stoke fear.
Since when did speaking to voters in their own language become evidence of moral degeneracy? Since when did criticising a political opponent qualify as uniquely toxic behaviour in an election campaign?
Campaign messaging targeted at specific communities is neither novel nor inherently nefarious. It is, in fact, routine, expected.
Selective outrage
Noticeably absent from Vine’s indignation is any mention of controversy surrounding Reform’s campaign materials. Leaflets circulated by supporters of Reform UK candidate Matt Goodwin reportedly failed to include legally required imprints identifying who was responsible for the material, a basic requirement under the Representation of the People Act 1983. One leaflet featured a faux handwritten letter from a purported local pensioner urging lifelong Labour voters to switch allegiance.
Yet the moral panic is reserved for a Ramadan solidarity post and a multilingual video.
Spencer’s comment that she fasts in solidarity with Muslims during Ramadan is presented as sectarian grandstanding. One might equally interpret it as a gesture of cross-community empathy in a climate where Muslims are routinely vilified by the right-wing press. That possibility receives no ink space.
Perhaps the most troubling element of the column is its treatment of Polanski’s Jewish identity. Vine suggests he deploys it as a shield when criticising Israel because it “plays well” with his supporters.
But what if a Jewish politician holds sincerely critical views of the Israeli government? What if those views arise from conscience rather than choreography?
To reduce identity to strategy is to assume bad faith by default. It’s an argument that closes down debate rather than engaging it.
By the time Vine compares Polanski to a “love-bombing” narcissist and alludes darkly to his supposed interest in prostitution, pornography and drugs, the piece has drifted far from public policy and deep into personal smear. Voters deserve rigorous scrutiny of economic plans, environmental targets, taxation proposals and foreign policy positions. That’s the job of serious journalism.
When commentary descends into name-calling and caricature, the temptation is to answer fury with fury. But politics, and journalism, are meant to be better than playground taunts.
In the end, it’s not Polanski who is diminished by being called a “creep.” It’s the standard of commentary itself.
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As the last weather-beaten stock hung limp, battered by months of rain and exhaust fumes, a fresh crop of St George and Union Jack flags sprang up around the roundabouts of South Manchester. Given the timing, coinciding with the Gorton and Denton by-election, one might reasonably assume this was a last-minute effort to stir patriotic fervour and electoral enthusiasm for Reform UK.
If that interpretation sounds cynical, recent events suggest it may not be misplaced.
This week, a businessman in North Yorkshire made headlines after being billed nearly £3,000 by North Yorkshire Council for the removal of Union and St George’s flags he had attached to lamp posts in Scarborough. He said he was “disgusted” by the charge and insisted his intention was simply to “lift people’s spirits.”
But it is fair to ask: lift spirits towards what? These displays increasingly appear less like spontaneous expressions of national pride and more like carefully curated political messaging.
In areas where Reform UK has gained control, prominent public flag displays have become conspicuously common.
In December, a £75,000 flag project was rolled out in Nottinghamshire under a Reform UK-led county council. Reform council leader Mick Barton argued the banners would “strengthen community spirit.” Yet critics were unconvinced. Labour and Conservative politicians alike questioned the motives behind the initiative.
Andy Abrahams, Labour mayor of Mansfield and leader of Mansfield District Council, described the move as “politically motivated” and “divisive.” He argued that patriotism must be expressed “in the right place and for the right motive,” warning that it is “morally wrong to claim patriotism via a political party.”
His concern speaks to a deeper tension about what patriotism actually means. In his 1940 essay ‘My Country Right or Left,’ George Orwell drew a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism, he suggested, is a love of one’s country and its people, a defensive, grounded affection. Nationalism, by contrast, is inseparable from power. It seeks prestige, dominance and political advantage.
That distinction feels increasingly relevant. When politicians wrap themselves in national symbols while pursuing electoral gain, the line between pride and propaganda begins to blur. The St George’s Cross, once largely confined to sporting events, has in recent years been amplified online through campaigns such as “Operation Raise the Colours,” presenting coordinated flag displays as cultural resistance.
Just last weekend, a sea of Union Jack flags made its way through the streets of Manchester city centre. Organised by the far-right party, Britain First, the gathering was billed as a ‘march for remigration and mass deportations.’
Yet this phenomenon is not uniquely British. Across Europe and North America, right-wing populist movements have made strategic use of national symbols, framing themselves as the defenders of the nation.
Which brings us to back to Nigel Farage, a self-styled standard-bearer of this ‘patriotic’ movement, yet a figure whose political alliances, sympathies and even proposed policies echo forces well beyond Britain’s shores.
Plans to create an ICE-style agency
Consider immigration. While many in Britain have watched the aggressive enforcement tactics of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States with horror, Reform UK has pledged to establish what amounts to a British analogue. The party’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, outlined plans for a “UK Deportation Command” with the capacity to detain up to 24,000 migrants at any one time and to operate up to five deportation flights per day should the party enter government.
In a speech in Dover this week, Yusuf went further, suggesting Reform would end the granting of indefinite leave to remain and review existing arrangements. He also proposed revoking visas from six predominantly Muslim-majority countries, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan, a policy that bears sickening resemblance to the travel bans introduced under Donald Trump in the US.
‘Fundamentally un-British’ – Reform’s loss in Gorton and Denton
The proposals have drawn criticism. Labour chair Anna Turley described them as “a direct attack on settled families and fundamentally un-British,” arguing that Britain’s political tradition rests on tolerance, legal stability and equal treatment under the law, not sweeping executive crackdowns modelled on foreign administrations.
Similar criticism emerged following Reform UK’s reaction to losing the Gorton and Denton by-election, where Green candidate Hannah Spencer won 14,980 votes, and Reform came second, with over 4,400 fewer votes.
The party’s candidate Matt Goodwin, who had campaigned on prioritising “local people” over Muslim voters, responded to defeat by alleging “Muslim sectarianism” and claiming Britain was being “lost.”
His remarks were widely condemned. Campaigner Mike Galsworthy accused him of echoing “Trump tactics” and undermining democracy with a “racist libellous story.” Journalist Carole Cadwalladr called the statement “racism, pure and simple.” Former politician Salma Yaqoob dismissed attempts to portray the result as Islamist sectarianism as baseless.
“Almost feel sorry for the haters who are trying to spin Muslims voting for a woman in a party led by a gay Jewish man is evidence of Islamist sectarianism,” Yaqoob wrote.
Reform presents itself as the guardian of British sovereignty and tradition. Yet much of the party’s behaviour and policies, including its flagship immigration proposals closely mirror those of Trump-era Republicanism. If patriotism means confidence in Britain’s own democratic traditions and legal norms, then importing the playbook of another nation’s culture wars appears less like national renewal and more like ideological imitation.
For a movement draped so heavily in the Union Jack, the influence is noticeably transatlantic.
The Farage and Trump bromance
Farage has never hidden his admiration for Trump. After Trump’s 2016 victory and the Brexit vote, he celebrated with him in Trump Tower, framing their wins as twin populist uprisings, united by anti-establishment rhetoric and ‘patriotic’ appeal – parallel insurgencies.
That association continued over the years. Just last September, Farage posted a photo of himself beside Trump in the Oval Office, writing: “It’s good to be back.”
The closeness has drawn criticism in the United States as well as at home, with Democrat congressman Jamie Raskin dismissing Farage as a Trump loyalist.
Yet Trump’s brand of politics, that is brash, combative, culturally divisive, doesn’t seem to fit as well in Britain as it does in the US. Polling by More in Common suggests that Farage’s proximity to Trump is more of an electoral turn off than an asset.
Farage’s desperate search for his own MAGA cap
The parallels with Trumpism extend beyond photo opportunities. Reform’s branded football shirt, emblazoned with ‘Farage 10,’ a not-so-subtle nod to Downing Street, was seen as a British echo of the MAGA cap, that is politics repackaged as wearable identity, nationalism fused with ‘personality.’ And the choice of football shirt was particularly striking from a politician who, in 2021 regarding players taking the knee, argued football should be kept free of political gestures.
“The baseball cap was the perfect vessel for Donald Trump’s populist revolution,” wrote GQ Magazine, “an accessory heavily identified with the rural, outdoorsy white working class that forms his core base.”
“Like the MAGA cap, the Reform football shirt is confident enough to go big on colour, and so become something people are proud to wear.”
More recently, however, Farage’s tone towards Trump has shifted. As European leaders criticised US tariff threats and economic aggression towards NATO allies, Farage described proposed American tariffs on the UK as “wrong.”
Yet for a movement that relies so heavily on patriotism and sovereignty, the depth of its transatlantic entanglement remains an unavoidable tension and whether Farage’s distancing from the US president is too little too late, remains to be seen.
Farage and Putin
If Trump presents one source of controversy for Farage and Reform, Russia presents another.
From accusing the EU of “poking the Russian bear,” after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, to naming Putin as the world leader he most admired, Farage has a long and chequered record on Putin admiration.
And the issue isn’t fading for Reform. This week it emerged that Reform’s new head of policy, James Orr, holds some worryingly views about Russia and Ukraine, having at one point claimed that “a lot more people have got into trouble for free speech offences in the UK than in Putin’s Russia.”
Such sympathies could prove politically costly. Britain remains overwhelmingly hostile towards the Russian president. A 2025 YouGov poll found that 89 percent of Britons hold an unfavourable view of Putin. In a country so sceptical of the Russian leader, any suggestion of softness may linger far longer than a football shirt ever could.
The late 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson famously observed that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” He was not condemning a love of country. He was condemning its misuse, the cynical wrapping of selfish ambition in the language of national virtue.
That distinction feels newly relevant.
Reform UK presents itself as the authentic voice of British sovereignty, rooted, traditional, proudly distinct. Yet again and again, its rhetoric, alliances and policy proposals echo movements and models imported from abroad. Its immigration blueprint borrows heavily from Trump-era enforcement tactics. Its political branding mirrors the aesthetics of American populism. Its leading figures have, at various points, expressed indulgent or admiring words about tyrannical strongmen far beyond Britain’s shores.
Flags can lift spirits. They can also obscure motives.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch
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A poll commissioned by Byline Times and carried out by Opinium ahead of tomorrow’s by-election in Gorton and Dernton, showed the Greens tied with Labour at 28%, and Reform at 27%.
Among people who said they would most likely vote on Thursday, Greens had a lead of 30%, with Labour and Reform on 28% each.
Labour missed the Greens off the graphic. They shared the graphic with the caption: “BREAKING: new poll suggests there is just one point between Labour and Reform in Gorton and Denton.
“Every vote will count on Thursday. Back Labour and choose unity over Reform’s division.”
Stats for Lefties called Labour “shameless” for sharing the graphic without including the Greens.
Jeremy Corbyn’s former spokesperson Matt Zarb-Cousin wrote on X: “You missed a bit”.
Labour has also accused the Greens of sharing “dodgy” bar charts.
Powell said to Polanski: “Your bar charts would even make your former Lib Dem colleagues blush.”
Professor Rob Ford, a political scientist at the University of Manchester, recently told FullFact: “Both parties really want to be able to claim the mantle of the main ‘anti-Reform’ party in the seat but the truth is there is no reliable data available, from polling or other sources, which can be used to decisively evidence such a claim.”
An Omnisis poll published at the end of last week had the Greens on 33%, Reform on 29% and Labour on 26%.
Britain Predicts’ forecast for tomorrow’s by-election has the Greens on 31%, Reform on 30% and Labour on 29%.
However, Ben Walker, a New Statesman journalist who runs the forecaster, says the result is “anyone’s guess” because the Greens, Reform UK and Labour are neck and neck.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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Reform UK’s Gorton and Denton by-election candidate Matt Goodwin will face a three-hour hearing in the High Court today to determine whether his campaign leaflets breached the rules.
Goodwin’s campaign team circulated a faux handwritten letter from a local pensioner, Patricia Clegg.
In it, Clegg said she has been a loyal Labour voter, but she will now vote for Reform, and is urging her “neighbours” to do the same.
However, the leaflet failed to include the party’s legally required party imprint.
Under the Representation of the People Act 1983, election material must carry an imprint to show who is responsible for the material.
Breaches of the law can result in fines up to £5,000, criminal prosecution, and three-year disqualification from office.
As reported by the Manchester Evening News, Goodwin’s barrister Adam Richardson argued the breach was “limited in scope, technical in nature, and had no material impact on the election”.
Richardson added: “Without relief, they face the risk of criminal prosecution, a fine, a three-year disqualification from elective office, and, if Mr Goodwin were elected, potential invalidation of the result.”
The court heard the imprint was included in the original leaflet design sent to Hardings Print Solutions. The printing company said that an “internal error” led to a font change that caused the imprint to be “trimmed off or omitted”.
The error was spotted on 6 February. Hardings then publicly admitted responsibility for the mistake.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
Left Foot Forward doesn't have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
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Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has thrown his support behind the Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer in the Gorton and Denton by-election this week.
Voters in the Greater Manchester seat will go to the polls this Thursday 26 February.
Corbyn has joined fellow Your Party co-founder Zarah Sultana in backing the Greens as a way of defeating Reform UK’s candidate Matt Goodwin.
In a post on X on Sunday, Corbyn wrote: “There is only one way we will defeat Reform: together. That’s why I’m backing the Greens in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
“We are a mass movement of all ages, backgrounds and faiths — united in a belief that things can, and will, change.”
An Omnisis poll carried out last week put the Greens on 33%, Reform on 29% and Labour on 26% in the by-election.
It has, however, been criticised for its small sample size. The survey polled 452 voters, but excluding undecideds, only had 265 respondents.
The Greens also remain the bookmakers’ favourite to win the contest.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
Left Foot Forward doesn't have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
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