Early in the morning of Friday 2nd July 2021, the world of politics was shaken to its foundations by a count declaration in Huddersfield’s Cathedral House. The returning officer for the Batley and Spen by-election had announced an unexpected win for Kim Leadbeater, sister of murdered MP Jo Cox, albeit with a majority reduced from 3500 to only 323. The previous day, bookies gave odds of 1/5 on for a Tory win. Senior Labour figures prepared Angela Rayner for a leadership contest in anticipation of a dire night. One over-confident columnist *cough* predicted a near 12,000 majority for the Conservatives. How did Kier Starmer’s party pull off such an unexpected victory? By cheating, that’s how, and here’s how they did it.
Postal Voting
Since 2001, postal voting in UK elections has risen exponentially. Table one shows a similar rise in Batley and Spen then a remarkable increase between the general election of 2019 and the by-election in 2021. Postal ballots in the 2019 general election amounted to 11,400 and in the by-election 16,000, an increase of 40%.
Year | % Postal Votes | Notes |
---|---|---|
2001 | 4% | [1] |
2005 | 12% | [1] |
2010 | 15% | [1] |
2015 | 20% | [2] |
2017 | 22% | [2] |
2019 | 21% | [2] |
2019 | 21% | Batley & Spen General Election |
2021 | 42% | Batley & Spen By-Election |
Given the lower turnout in the by-election, this means that the proportion of postal votes cast doubled in the eighteen months between the 2019 and 2021 polls. Correspondents were told that the result would be announced in the late morning of July 2nd because of the rural nature of some parts of the constituency. However, the count was concluded surprisingly quickly. Now we know why, an exceptional number of postal votes counted separately before the ballot box count. Importantly, you don’t need to give a reason when applying for a postal vote and postal votes can be sent anywhere, even outside the United Kingdom.
The downside of postal voting was explored in Richard Mawrey QC’s famous ‘banana republic’ report into election fraud in Birmingham where he unearthed a “massive, systematic and organised” postal voting fraud to win two wards in a local election. The fraud was carried out by Labour Party officials in an area with a large Muslim population and involved a sudden increase in postal voting, from 28,000 to 70,000, with ballots being stolen, changed or filled in by someone else. Ominously Mr Mawrey concluded, “Until there are [realistic prevention systems in place] fraud will continue unabated.”
Find Your Voter
Although general and by-election results aren’t broken down by ward, local election results are, as individual council seats are being contested. Looking at the results of the May 2021 local government elections, we can see the political composure of the six wards that form the Batley and Spen constituency. Batley and Spen wards typically contain 13,000 voters. Census returns are also presented by ward which means we can compare characteristics such as religion with voting.
Ward | Muslim in 2011 | Muslim in 2001 | Councillor | Party | Labour Vote, May 2021 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Batley East | 52% | 40% | Fazila Loonat | Labour | 68% | |
Batley West | 30% | 20% | Shabir Pandor | Labour | 57% | |
Heckmondwike | 21% | 12% | Steve Hall | Labour | 45% | |
Liversedge & Gomersal | 2% | n/a | Melanie A Stephen | Conservative | 25% | |
Cleckheaton | 1% | 2% | Kath Pinnock | LibDem | 12% | |
Birstall & Birkenshaw | 1% | 1% | Mark Thompson | Conservative | 14% |
The reason that Labour is in favour of mass, uncontrolled immigration is because it imports Labour voters and concentrates them in certain areas. As can be seen in table two, a direct relationship exists between a rapidly increasing Muslim population, the Labour share of the vote and the race and religion of the winning candidate. The reason for the racial and religious segregation of this constituency is because of an influx of cheap workers from Maipur in the Pakistan administered region of Kashmir from the mid-1960s, added to by their following family members and descendants.
The Labour Party knows in which parts of the constituency it is strongest, and therefore knows where to flood with voter registrations and postal vote applications. It also knows which race and religion-based dog whistles to use to motivate its voters.
In the census, wards are split into sub-wards. The data is available in the public domain. Sub-wards typically contain between 1,500 and 3,000 people. Examining sub-wards makes British politics appear even more racially and religiously segregated. Famously, in the 2011 census, Dewsbury Savile Town (a few miles from Batley) only contained 48 white British people.
To examine an area smaller than a sub-ward, and find exactly where Labour voters are, the party go from door to door armed with the full version of the electoral roll that political parties are entitled to (or phone up) and ask. Trawling data in this way is called ‘Voter ID’. The Labour Party manages its voter ID on a database system called Labour Contact. Their partner in Labour Contact is the marketing company Experion. Below is a video from 2008 showing how people can be added to Labour Contact after taking an interest in a local community issue. Once inputted into the system, the voter can be reached by an ongoing centrally coordinated Labour Party communications effort.
Since 2008 Labour’s Contact database has become more sophisticated. Contact Creator Getting Started is a presentation showing Labour activists how to harvest your data and add you to the Labour Contact database. Questions you are likely to be asked on the doorstep, or over the phone, include:
- If there were a general election tomorrow, which political party would you support?
- Think back to the last general election. Which party did you vote for?
- Would you prefer a Labour or Conservative Government?
- There are local elections taking place in [ward] on [date]. Which party will you support in these elections?
Don’t be fooled by Labour activists chatting informally or standing with a clipboard and pen, as soon as they’re out of sight any information about yourself that you’ve accidentally or deliberately given to them will be typed into the Contact Creator mobile phone app, the use of which is explained in a Doorstep App Quickstart Guide.
Is there much difference between what Cambridge Analytica did in the 2016 US presidential election and what the Labour Party does now? The reason Labour don’t want social media companies harvesting political data and selling it is because it removes the advantage they have by already having such a system up and running.
Press the Right Buttons
If you’ve been asked about specific issues, perhaps in a letter from your MP wondering of your priorities between say, Brexit, rubbish collection, immigration and equality, this isn’t to decide what your MP’s priorities should be when representing you. It is to decide what ‘tribe’ you and other people in your area belong to, so you can be targeted with effectively focused marketing.
According to their website, electoralcalculus’ tribes are; Strong Left, Traditionalists, Progressives, Centrists, Somewheres, Kind Young Capitalists and Strong Right. Having said that, you can have as many or as few tribes as you want, defined any way you want, as long as your categories help to reach the voters and make an impact upon them. In Batley and Spen, or more accurately in Batley West, Batley East and Heckmondwike, there are strong and distinctive tribal interests.
In response, Labour Party leaflets mentioned Kashmir, Palestine and Islamophobia and avoided mentioning local school teachers in hiding following death threats. They also attacked Boris Johnson, claiming he couldn’t be trusted simply because he’d been pictured with Indian Premier Mr Modi, and avoided mention of Ms Leadbeater’s other half.
The Candidate
As we’ve seen previously, with Nike and St Gareth of Southgate and Saint Marcus of Rashford, modern-day persuasion is done via a subtle association with values and nicey feelings stories. Which brings us to the candidate, Kim Leadbeater, sister of Jo Cox MP who was shot and killed by Thomas Mair in the run-up to the Brexit referendum in 2016. Leadbeater claimed that she had been chosen as a candidate by 80% of local Labour Party members. This is disingenuous. The selection process was limited to three candidates in a closed process and excluded popular local councillors who wanted to stand.
Leadbeater had only been a member of the Labour Party for a month, whereas the rule book states that only members of one year or more’s standing are allowed to become candidates. Word is that Leadbeater had previously been a Labour Party member, left because of Corbyn and was then approached by Kier Starmer and asked to rejoin and become the by-election candidate. During the campaign, any nicey feelings quickly evaporated with Leadbeater being harangued by Muslims because of Kashmir, LGBT, rumours about her sexuality, Starmer’s reticence on Palestine and even the Labour leader having a Jewish wife.
The presence of George Galloway and The Worker’s Party of Britain threatened to turn the by-election into a towsy farce, with eggings, kickings, journalists being told “They [careful now] gave the English [Mair] the gun”. Posters were vandalised, a public address system was damaged and Leadbeater needed police protection. Getting such a negative reaction, Vote Labour was dropped and replaced with Vote Kim. Labour’s #LoveLikeJo and #MoreInCommon being made to look ridiculous, it was a bad day at the office for nicey feelings. Or was it?
With London mainstream media, and the London soy boy fake alternative media, already being left-leaning and soft on Leadbeater, she could now be portrayed as a bigger victim, even beyond the loss of her sister.
As for her sexuality, the day after the by-election, the victorious Labour candidate’s Wikipedia entry was alerted to include her partner, enigmatically referred to only as ‘Claire’. Since this is now in the public domain, By-Election Bloodbath can reveal that Ms Leadbeater is in a relationship with hockey playing lady cyclist Clare Mullaney, presently of the Dewsbury Cares Community Group, soon to be employed as a researcher (or some such) at the House of Commons.
GOTV, Get Out The Vote
Having established who your voters are, where they live, which tribes they belong to and having motivated them with election communications, those that haven’t already voted by post from Kashmir have to be encouraged to the ballot box on polling day. This is done by using hundreds of activists bussed in from outside of the constituency to knock on doors. A very expensive and resource-hungry exercise. Leeds North West MP Alex Sobel, via Labour List, gives us a hint of what happened in Batley and Spen:
“Everyone had stories of finding two people or a house post-7pm who hadn’t delivered a postal vote or had no polling card or needed a bit of a push. We had around 400 out so it was our GOTV,”
Mr Sobel’s comment adds to the disquiet surrounding the by-election result and show how even the ballot box system is open to abuse.
Postal votes don’t have to be posted, they can be handed in at a polling station or at an Electoral Registration Centre. If you claim to have spoiled your postal vote, you can apply for new one up until 5pm on polling day. You don’t need a polling card to vote, you can give a name and address to polling station staff and they will look for it on the electoral roll. Even if already crossed off, you will be given a ballot paper, albeit a tendered ballot paper which won’t be included in the initial count.
Conclusion
Claims by the LibDems that Labour won because LibDem voters lent them their votes as part of a progressive alliance is nonsense. The LibDem vote share only dropped by 1%. The Labour Party’s claim that red wall Tories are flocking back to them is also nonsense. The Conservative vote share only dropped by 1.6%.
A simpler explanation is that George Galloway took the protest vote (the fringe partys vote dropping to only 1908) and part of the Labour Muslim block vote. Labour made up sufficient of that loss by flooding their core, Muslim, areas with postal vote applications and getting their ballot box vote out on the day, having motivated them with toxic racial and religious communications.
At a general election, it will be impossible for Labour to put that kind of polling day activist-led effort into 650 constituencies or even the 150+ extra seats they need for a Westminster majority. Therefore, they will rely on new voter registrations and postal votes. Labour are already calling for compulsory voter registration and for 16 and 17-year-olds to be added to the mandate. Given the chance, Labour will flood their wards with ballots with no regard to who fills them in, as the Democrats did in the 2020 US presidential election.
The Government must insist upon voter ID at polling stations and limit postal voting, as in Northern Ireland, only to those who have an excellent reason not to vote on the day. Will they? Don’t hold your breath. The Tories pull exactly the same tricks as Labour. Embarrassed at being too complacent with their own Connect type system in Batley and Spen, the Conservatives didn’t even bother to call for a recount in the close contest.
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file