Fresh from defeat to the Greens in the Gorton & Denton victory last Thursday, Nigel Farage is nevertheless claiming victory, of a sort.
At a press conference earlier in Westminster, he told GB News that he is “absolutely convinced that amongst British-born voters, Matthew Goodwin came first in that election”.
Yet, he also now says Reform “was never going to win that seat”, despite the party having painted a very different picture of its prospects right up to being defeated there.
That probably sounds completely contradictory.
But it could possibly be true.
Mr Farage now believes: “Only British passport holders should vote in British general elections or by-elections for Parliament.”
In the constituency in Greater Manchester, vacated by former Labour MP Andrew Gwynne amid health issues, the Greens came first, with 14,980 votes and 40 per cent of the vote.
Reform ended up second with 10,578 votes, leaving Labour in third on just 9,364.
It was a seismic result in a seat Labour had held since 1931, including with a 13,000-vote majority in the 2024 General Election.
Reform did particularly well in the eastern half of the constituency, Denton, which is largely white working-class and with an older average age.
It may be that Reform won in that area, where most voters are, as Mr Farage said, British-born.
However, the Gorton half of the constituency in the west has a high proportion of ethnic minority voters, students and double the number of voters compared to Denton.
That part of the constituency voted heavily for the Green Party and, secondly, for Labour.
So, the odds were certainly stacked against Reform winning, given the demographics.
Yet, until the polls closed on Thursday night in Manchester, when Reform press officers turned up to the count looking gloomy and told me it was “too close to call”, the narrative Reform had spun was very much that they could take the seat.
Before counting was even underway, the news broke that Democracy Volunteers, authorised by the Electoral Commission to observe that polling stations are following correct procedures, had witnessed high levels of “family voting”.
When GB News asked Reform’s candidate Matthew Goodwin “what went wrong” following plumber Hannah Spencer’s victory for the Greens, he gave a simple answer: “Sectarian voting.”
Now, Reform is calling for a crackdown on postal voting, “family voting”, and for only British people to be allowed to vote in national elections.
“If you’re a foreign national, but you’re paying council tax, I think you’ve got every right to vote in local elections,” Mr Farage said.
“For national elections,” the Reform UK leader added, “they should be voted on by British voters only. Absolutely. Otherwise, we get a really, very, very perverse influence on our politics, where people are voting more about Gaza than they are about Gorton.”
Robert Jenrick chipped in: “This is something that happens in many other countries. France, the United States, Japan. Many normal countries do this, and it has very widespread support.”
Mr Farage continued: “Many of you try and make us out to be radicals. We’re not. We just want to be a normal country. And normal countries protect their borders and protect their democratic systems.”
The Reform UK leader also believes the postal voting system is wide open to fraud: “If that’s what’s happening in 68 per cent of polling stations [Democracy Volunteers saw ‘family voting’ at 15 of 22 polling stations they visited], can you imagine what happens with postal votes? I’ve been saying this since 2015. I said it since they boxed the postal votes in Oldham West came in and they were 100% votes for the Labour candidate. I regard that as being statistically, literally, impossible amongst any group of human beings. I said the election was bent and I was accused of sour grapes.”
However, Green leader Zack Polanski told GB News Mr Farage was a “sore loser”.
When GB News put that to the Reform UK leader today, he laughed it off, but it’s clear that, under a Reform Government, there would be dramatic changes to our voting system.
Apart from only allowing British passport holders to vote in national elections, they would crack down on postal voting, only letting the elderly, disabled, or those working abroad to vote by post.
Mr Farage said there would need to be a “very good reason”. He claims around a fifth of votes in national elections are postal, and says that should be no more than one per cent