Reform candidates benefit from low turnouts in council by elections

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Reform candidates benefit from low turnouts in council by elections

NOTE: This article was published on 14 December 2024”We came a close second. The Conservatives got 1,304 votes. We got 977. Nearly a thousand votes in 4 weeks. We now have 5 months until the next one.” Thus trumpeted Reform candidate Tom Allison (above, centre, with Nigel Farage), proud of his losing bid to become…

14 December 2024

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NOTE: This article was published on 14 December 2024

Essex Reform candidate Tom Allison with Nigel Farage

”We came a close second. The Conservatives got 1,304 votes. We got 977. Nearly a thousand votes in 4 weeks. We now have 5 months until the next one.”

Thus trumpeted Reform candidate Tom Allison (above, centre, with Nigel Farage), proud of his losing bid to become an Essex County Councillor on Thursday. It was a by-election for the Chelmsford-adjacent ward of Stock, to fill a vacancy caused by the death of a popular Conservative councillor.

Sad little tweet

If the council had their way, we don’t think there would have been an election at all. The ’5 months’ referred to in Allison’s sad little tweet is the length of time before the ward is next contested in a regular election. The poll was only held because someone thought it would benefit them to call one on a technicality. We wonder who that might have been…

Unsurprisingly, the Stock electorate were not as keen as mustard on plodding down to the polling station on a chilly December day to fill a seat for a few weeks, registering a turnout of just 19%. Even so, Newkip couldn’t pull off the classic snatch-one-in-a-micropoll stunt that they planned on.

Even under the sarniephobic leadership of Kalamity Kemi, the Tories hung on to the ward, and come May Reform will be demolished there.

Pickpocketed a seat

It was better news for Deform in St Helens where, in a similar low-turnout stunt, they did actually succeed in pickpocketing a seat in the borough council ward of Blackbrook from Labour – again in a by-election occasioned by the death of an incumbent. When we say ’similar’, in fact we mean that the turnout was even lower – just 16%.

No doubt the Bloaters will be cock-a-hoop at this win, but Victor ’Fink’ Floyd’s (above) tally of 546 votes can’t really be claimed as evidence of Nutty Nigel’s delusional claim that Reform are now the country’s main party of opposition. Come next election proper, the seat will surely be back in Labour hands, rejoining the ward’s other two councillors.

Poor desperate Niglet. How he must be hoping for the next POTUS to appoint him ambassador to London. Or at the very least award him the franchise to sell Trump cologne and sneakers in the UK, so he can go AWOL and ABC (Anywhere But Clacton).

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