Bad loser Farage plays the Trump race card

The Bloomberg site reports that Reform Party Leader Nigel Farage has accused the Greens of winning the Gorton by-election by “cheating,” after independent observers reported several instances of the banned practice of family voting.

Farage wrote on Twitter after the count that “This election was a victory for sectarian voting and cheating.”

Farage later issued a statement saying he’d reported the matter to the Electoral Commission and the police: “What was witnessed yesterday is deeply concerning and raises serious questions about the integrity of the democratic process in predominantly Muslim areas,” he said.

Farage’s remarks appear to follow the same playbook deployed by his friend, US President Donald Trump, who in the wake of his loss in the 2020 presidential election, accused his opponents of cheating and rigging the vote.

The Reform leader was later quoted in the right-wing tabloid press claiming that his candidate was robbed of victory by foreign-born voters.

He is reported as vowing that if he becomes Prime Minister he will rip up rules which allow non-British citizens (that is those born in Commonwealth countries but resident here) to vote in UK elections, calling the Gorton and Denton result ‘the most glaring example yet of what happens if we’re not careful about the impacts of mass immigration and about the legitimacy of those who can vote in our elections’.

What is unprecedented is a UK party leader taking his toys home and going into a massive sulk following a by-election loss. The reaction underlines how much Farage is beholden to Donald Trump for his playbook, the extent of his barely concealed racist agenda and shows that at heart he is an autocrat not a democrat, something that makes him dangerous and unfit for power.