We all know that toward the end of his time as Member of Parliament for North West Leicestershire Andrew Bridgen, sadly, descended into something of a cesspool of conspiracy theories. We know that from his social media output, his increasingly erratic but predictable questions to the former Leader of the Commons, and because even his wife told us so.
So, it won’t come as any surprise whatsoever that Mr Bridgen is now questioning the validity of this year’s election result in North West Leicestershire, an election result so poor it saw him achieve only 1,568 votes and the loss of his deposit.
But time and time again Mr Bridgen has suggested the result of the election may have been tampered with.
So, let me clear at the outset. As the Conservative candidate who came second, and lost – narrowly – to Labour’s Amanda Hack.
The election was fair. Amanda was properly returned as Member of Parliament for North West Leicestershire. I fell short by just over a thousand votes. And Mr Bridgen was a long, long way back.
The election staff were outstanding, as they always are and maintained the highest standards of probity throughout. Mr Bridgen would have seen that first hand if, perhaps, he had stayed at the count for more than 30 minutes. If he had bothered to wait around for the declaration and to congratulate our Labour opponent on her victory.
But, I should like to address some of the comments – or questions – that Mr Bridgen has posed in accusations of election tampering, and will do so below:
- Mr Bridgen has stated – prior to election day – that only he and Labour were actively campaigning for the election. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Just like Labour I and my team were out knocking on doors every single day. In politics there is a huge difference between solely delivering leaflets and actively canvassing. It is my understanding that Mr Bridgen and his team did more of the former and much, much less of the latter – many people told me that they received his ‘out’ card, but no one had knocked on the door. Had Mr Bridgen been actively canvassing he would have known that support for him was weak, and indeed very close between myself and my Labour opponent. I would say the results of canvassing closely mirrored the actual election result.
- It has been suggested that ‘Bridgen’s competitors were virtually unknown in the area too’, that I have around 2,200 followers on Facebook whilst he has 28,000. This is a classic example of the Father Ted premise of cows being either very small or far away. You can have a million followers on Facebook, but if they don’t live in the constituency their voice – in electoral terms – is meaningless. I would suggest my own followers are much more local than Mr Bridgen’s ragtag bunch of conspiracy theorists. My followers are my friends and neighbours.
- Mr Bridgen claims that the ‘exit poll’ in North West Leicestershire was cancelled. I wouldn’t presume that Mr Bridgen isn’t a professional psephologist – he is, after all, an expert at most things – but North West Leicestershire, to my knowledge, has never been a location for exit polling, unlike our neighbouring constituency of Loughborough. Exit polling is about measuring voting activity in, notionally, much more marginal constituencies and extrapolating those results nationwide. As a result, in recent years, North West Leicestershire has not been considered a suitable constituency for exit polling, as in normal circumstances, the seat has been much less likely to swing, in no small part thanks to a Conservative government and local authority.
- Mr Bridgen seems to overestimate the weight of any candidate’s personal vote. In elections most people vote for the party with a personal vote of – somewhere around – a couple of thousand votes for the candidate themselves. It’s arguably why I did marginally better than Conservative candidates in demographically similar constituencies elsewhere, because I had something of a personal vote as a truly local candidate. A personal vote is why Mr Bridgen received around 1,500 votes. To provide Mr Bridgen with a similar example to his own in 2015 Rochdale’s MP, Simon Danczuk, then standing for Labour received 20,961 votes. In 2017, expelled from Labour and and standing as an independent he received 883 votes. Using Mr Danczuk as a base Mr Bridgen could argue that he outstripped expectations!
- Mr Bridgen would have you believe that there is something dastardly happening in the time it takes between polls closing and the count beginning. There is no such thing. It takes time to transfer sealed boxes from around the constituency, the first task in any election is to ensure the seals are still in place. That check is visible to every observer. It then takes time to verify the contents of the boxes contain the same number of ballot papers as have been handed out, that check can take hours as sadly, inevitably, you always get one or two boxes where there are fewer slips as a result of voters taking their papers our of the polling station with them! Once again, this verification stage is done in front of each candidate’s counting agents, and indeed Mr Bridgen had his own counting agents at the count. Although Mr Bridgen had long since departed himself, to my knowledge not one counting agent raised any concern on the evening, certainly none of my own counting agents did, and I’m fairly positive no other candidate’s agents did either.
- It is interesting to note that candidates are also allowed to send counting agents to the opening of postal votes. I had agents at each day’s postal vote openings, as did other parties. To my knowledge Mr Bridgen did not send a registered counting agent to the postal vote openings. Once again there were no concerns around the process adopted.
- North West Leicestershire District Council has an experienced and dedicated electoral services team. When you have been to many counts you get to know them. They always, rightly, maintain a professional distance but are friendly. I won’t name long-standing electoral staff, I feel it is inappropriate, but am certain that if Mr Bridgen had that relationship of mutual, professional respect he would understand why some members of the team left, whilst others remain in post. It’s the nature of working in an office, but personally naming and shaming local government staff is, in my opinion, pretty low behaviour.
So. Just to reiterate.
The parliamentary election in North West Leicestershire was fair.
Do I like the result? No, I do not, because I came second.
But I came second because more people voted for Amanda than voted for me.
I didn’t come second because of some wild conspiracy theory. I came second because on this occasion the decent people of North West Leicestershire thought, marginally, that it would be better to have a Labour MP.
It’s those same people of North West Leicestershire who had the final say on what, sadly, their former MP has descended into.
