The Gorton and Denton by-election result will be remembered as the moment when British elections firmly descended into the gutter of Trumpian lies and misinformation.
The result, a stunning victory for the Greens in an area with no previous history of significant support for the party, was immediately used by the party’s opponents to spread a series of racist lies about the election being “stolen” by Muslim voters.
These lies, which spread quickly across the media, were justified on the basis of a report written by an organisation called ‘Democracy Volunteers’ alleging that there had been “extremely high” levels of what they described as “family voting” in the seat.
The BBC devoted a significant amount of time to discussing these unsubstantiated claims, with their Political Editor Chris Mason telling viewers that the election “might not [have been] as secret a ballot as it should be.”
“In other words,” he told the Newscast show “[the suggestion is] that there is conferring that goes on about how people choose to vote, and that has been leapt on, in particular, by Reform talking about sectarian politics”.
The Daily Mail also leapt on the claims in a series of front pages throughout the following week, alleging that the election had been “stolen” by “foreign-born voters”.
There was one big problem with all this. It simply wasn’t true.