Matt Goodwin’s polling station poppycock

Having discounted the obvious – that he was a terrible candidate with zero charm, exaggerated local credentials and no clue whatsoever about how to campaign – he has settled on another reason: that he was cheated out of it by what he calls “dark and sinister forces”.

“It wasn’t just the intimidating atmosphere out on the streets of Manchester where I went door-to-door canvassing as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Reform UK under the menacing gaze of groups of mainly young Muslim men,” wrote the GB News presenter.

“Or even the rumours of under-hand deals being struck between other political parties and local so-called community elders.

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“Far more disturbing was what my colleagues and I witnessed at the polling stations.

“I’m talking about husbands and fathers standing by voting booths, instructing their wives and adult children exactly where to put their mark on the ballot paper. In many cases these coercive patriarchs might as well have had the pen in their own hands.”

Worrying stuff if true – but seasoned Goodwin-watchers will not be surprised to learn that much of his actual evidence was not exactly up to the academic rigour the Reform man would once have demanded from his students.

Firstly, Goodwin states as fact that “it emerged after the polls closed that ‘family voting’ took place in 68 per cent of polling stations in Gorton and Denton”. 

The election observance group Democracy Volunteers did indeed state that they “observed family voting in 68% of polling stations”. But – as their report says – they observed 22 out of 45 polling stations in the constituency. Finding instances in 15 of those 22 stations equals 68% of the observed sample, not 68% of all polling stations across the seat.

Indeed, as the report – available on their website – says: “Within those observed stations, the observers noted 32 instances of family voting (conferring, colluding, or entering a booth together) out of 545 voters observed affecting roughly 12% of the sample.”

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“My early warnings may have been ignored,” complains Goodwin. But they weren’t – as even his own article notes, “Greater Manchester Police took no action after saying it found ‘no evidence’ of the law being broken.” Which is not the same as ignoring it.

Elsewhere, Goodwin notes that the force has “since launched an investigation into alleged offences during the May local elections in Tameside, a Manchester metropolitan borough, amid concerns about how candidates were put forward and represented in the ward”. But this is utterly irrelevant as rules regarding how candidates register to stand have got nothing whatsoever to do with ballot secrecy violations inside polling booths, and thus placing police officers at polling stations.

He also claims that “it was Tony Blair who opened up the system to anyone who wanted to vote by post back in 2001, in the cynical belief that it would garner more votes for Labour”, despite it passing the Commons with broad cross-party support following recommendations from a bipartisan working group chaired by George Howarth – something one might think a former professor of politics at Kent University might know.

And then he claims that “on some nights while canvassing local voters in Gorton and Denton, I walked along streets where not a single person could speak English and where people living in homes did not match official records”, without detailing exactly how he knew that or, even if he did, it proved illegal electoral manipulation.

All in all, another absolute triumph for Goodwin. Let’s get those underworked bobbies in the polling stations immediately!