Nigel Farage reacts:
“Yes, it’s a victory for sectarian voting. It’s a victory for cheating in elections… last night at the close of play, a very reputable organisation called Democracy Volunteers said in 12% of voting cases, they had witnessed family voting. That means a husband and wife or more going into the privacy of the polling station and effectively watching how the other member of the family votes. This is illegal under the law and yet it appears that the council didn’t do anything about it. So now there’s a debate about fraud in voting. That’s a very good thing.
…It’s postal voting that is being abused massively in this country. We need to get rid of the list. The only people that should ever vote by post are those who are elderly, infirm, or living or working abroad.
…Well, our vote was good. I’m very pleased we doubled our vote. The implications of our vote are that right across the north of England on the 7th of May and elsewhere in those elections we are going to do phenomenally well. Starmer has a massive problem. He’s on the way out.
…The Tory party is completely finished. There’s a resurgent hard left working now with sectarian politics, and emboldened off the back of it the Churchill statue in London has been vandalised overnight calling him a ‘Zionist’ and saying ‘globalise the intifada.’ We are in very big trouble. And the only party that will fight this, that will turn this around, will clean up the voting system, is Reform.”
All eyes now move to May…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”