Reform Attacks Byline Times For ‘Attempting to Derail a Democratic Election’ – Before Blaming ‘Family Voting’ and ‘Muslim Sectarianism’ for Gorton and Denton Defeat

Reform UK accused Byline Times of “attempting to derail a democratic election” for reporting on Matt Goodwin’s academic ties to organisations linked to discredited pseudoscientific race ideology – just days before the candidate lost the Gorton and Denton by-election, claiming this as evidence of “a dangerous Muslim sectarianism” and calling into question whether it was a “free, fair, and democratic election”.

Goodwin – who came second in the Manchester constituency behind the new Green MP Hannah Spencer, overturning Labour which came third – posted on social media at 11.21pm yesterday, after polls had closed, questioning the ballot’s legitimacy.

“Given the reports we are reading in the UK media about family voting and sectarianism, I am deeply concerned about the extent to which the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election is a free, fair, and democratic election,” he wrote on X.

His party leader, Nigel Farage, also raised the same concerns about family voting – whereby a family member is seen to be influencing another person’s vote, such as by accompanying them in a polling booth – following the result.

Reform has since reported its allegations to Greater Manchester Police and to the elections watchdog, the Electoral Commission. 

Just days before the election, however, Reform was unwilling to raise any concerns about a Byline Times report on the visiting professorship Goodwin holds at the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Heterodox Social Science. 

The Centre lists organisations as part of “our network” online, which are all described as “mission-aligned”. Among them is Aporia Magazine, exposed by a joint investigation by Hope Not Hate and the Guardian in 2024 – broadcast on Channel 4 News – as the publishing arm of the Human Diversity Foundation. 

The HDF is a reconstituted version of the Pioneer Fund, a Nazi endowment established in 1937 in New York which distributed Nazi propaganda and cultivated ties to the Third Reich.

For decades, the Fund bankrolled research claiming to establish biological hierarchies between racial groups. Although the claims have been comprehensively debunked by mainstream genetic science, neither the Pioneer Fund nor the HDF have renounced these origins.

When asked for a response to Goodwin’s academic links, Reform declined to distance itself from, or address, the issue at all. Instead, it attacked Byline Times.

“These accusations are desperate, bordering on conspiratorial, by a discredited outlet attempting to derail a democratic election”, a spokesperson said. “It is standard for academics to hold fellowship positions at other institutions around the world.”

This tactic of blaming the press has been a tried-and-tested method of Republican Party politics in the United States since Donald Trump’s first election as President. 

Like other Reform Party imports from the US – its localised version of Elon Musk’s efficiency programme DOGE, or its plans to create a UK version of ICE to oversee the removal of illegal immigrants – the Trumpian tactic of claiming that a vote was rigged (“stop the steal”, as MAGA supporters have called it) is now seemingly being utilised by Reform.  

Shortly after the polls closed in Gorton and Denton, election observer group Democracy Volunteers issued a statement in which its director John Ault said it had seen “concerningly high levels of family voting” in the constituency – which amounted to “the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10-year history of observing elections in the UK”.

It said it had deployed four accredited election observers across 22 of the 45 polling stations in the constituency, spending between 30 and 45 minutes in each.

According to Ault, “we rarely issue a report on the night of an election, but the data we have collected today on family voting, when compared to other recent by-elections, is extremely high”.

Gorton and Denton’s acting returning officer dismissed these findings, noting that “no such issues have been reported” and that staff on the ground had not been informed of this during polling.

But, approximately 30 minutes after Democracy Volunteers’ statement, Nigel Farage cited its figures on X, claiming they raised “serious questions about the integrity of the democratic process in predominantly Muslim areas”.

Minutes later, Adam Brooks, a GB News commentator, columnist, and prominent supporter of Nigel Farage – who continues to host a regular GB News show while being an MP – cited the Democracy Volunteers figures on X.

He was followed by Farage’s former campaign manager Raheem Kassam, former Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart London, who said “Nigel just called me” about the issue.

“The situation with the Muslim vote in the United Kingdom is absolutely insane,” he wrote on X. “It’s outright and absolute sectarian politics the likes of which we have been blowing the whistle on for over a decade now.”

Within an hour, the Telegraph ran the headline “Farage accuses Muslim voters of cheating to elect Greens”. 

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‘Stolen Election’ Claims Criticised

However, this characterisation of the Democracy Volunteers findings has been downplayed by one of its own former advisors – renowned Conservative pollster Lord Robert Hayward.

He told Bloomberg News that, while he was “seriously concerned”, he believed that the “scale is such that you cannot say that the election was stolen”. 

Hayward played a key role in the Ballots Secrecy Act passed in 2023, which was based partly on research on family voting by Democracy Volunteers.

A Byline Times analysis of Democracy Volunteers’ previous reports on family voting casts further doubt on the assertion that the Gorton and Denton by-election saw the highest levels of family voting ever recorded. 

The main figure Democracy Volunteers appears to rely on to make the claim is a measure of the geographic spread, finding family voting in 68% of Gorton and Denton’s polling stations. However, this figure does not measure the actual ‘level’ of family voting in terms of the number of cases – only its geographic distribution. 

The Democracy Volunteers statement noted that it had confirmed 12% of the observed electorate over 32 separate incidents being potentially directed via family voting. It did not state whether this was related to any particular political party, religious group, or ethnicity.

However, in 2018, a Democracy Volunteers report on mayoral and council elections in Tower Hamlets found a much higher number of the observed electorate involved in family voting, some 19%. While the geographic spread was smaller, covering 58% of polling stations, this was a far higher figure encompassing 74 separate occasions.

By Democracy Volunteers’ own data, its description of the Gorton and Denton by-election as experiencing “the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10-year history” appears to be misleading. Even in the case of Tower Hamlets, its report did not state that its findings on that occasion suggested that the overall vote had been undermined.

The Tower Hamlets report praised local election officials, described being “impressed by the standard of training for presiding officers and polling clerks offered by Tower Hamlets Council” and went on to offer procedural recommendations such as better signage and staffing to address the family voting levels observed.

Byline Times contacted Democracy Volunteers with a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission, said: “We are aware of the report. Electoral offences are a matter for the police. We encourage anyone who believes an offence has occurred to report it to the police.

“The statutory electoral observer Code of Practice says that electoral observers may bring potential irregularities, fraud or significant problems to the attention of elected officials on the spot. We provide advice and guidance to returning officers which supports their training of electoral staff and is available to staff in polling stations to guide decision making on polling day.”

Byline Times has been banned from attending any of Reform’s party or press conferences.