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My relatives who live in the constituency were very concerned that Reform UK might win.
Posted 12 March 2026. Transmitted 2 March 2026.
The Green Party winning the Gorton & Denton by-election held on 26 February generated a great deal of media attention, not just in the UK but also in Australia.
My website page "Australia's proposed antisemitism and hate speech laws"gives some background on "The World Today News" and their show "The Protagonists."
I took part in a one hour discussion about the Gorton & Denton by-election. The protagonists were described as follows:
Councillor Alan Cook is Reform UK's representative for Bromley Common and Holwood Ward in the London Borough of Bromley. Alan is a politics and technology consultant.
Mohammed Amin MBE is Director of The Campaign for Shared European Values. Mohammed was a Clare College Cambridge Alumnus of the Year (2014) and his website is www.mohammedamin.com.
Bernie de Haldevang has a 40+ year career in credit & political risk insurance including working as a diplomat based in East Africa. Bernie joined the freedom movement in early 2020 as part of the Yeadon Campaign and subsequently was in the original set up of HARTgroup.org [Health ethics Advocacy and Research Team] on its Executive Committee, where he still is today. He is a committed supporter of Swiss style Direct Democracy. He is a podcaster under the name of @Gilt_Elephant on X and @GiltElephant on YouTube.
The full election result as published by Manchester City Council is below.
Party |
Votes |
% |
The Green Party |
14,980 |
40.7 |
Reform UK |
10,578 |
28.8 |
The Labour Party |
9,364 |
25.4 |
The Conservative Party Candidate |
706 |
1.9 |
Liberal Democrats |
653 |
1.8 |
The Official Monster Raving Looney Party |
159 |
0.4 |
Advance UK |
154 |
0.4 |
The Rejoin EU Party |
98 |
0.3 |
Libertarian Party UK |
47 |
0.1 |
Social Democratic Party |
46 |
0.1 |
Communist League |
29 |
0.1 |
Total votes cast ignoring spoiled papers |
36,814 |
100.0 |
All national polls show that the UK has a clear anti-Reform UK "progressive" majority if one adds up support for Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens and the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales.
However my concern for the by-election was that if the anti-Reform UK vote divided evenly between Labour and Greens, Reform might win due to our "first past the post" voting system. However the final result showed that even if the Labour and Green vote had been split exactly equally, Reform UK would still not have won.
In my opening comments, I mentioned that my relatives who lived in the constituency had been very concerned that Reform UK might win.
At about 6 minutes 34 seconds that led Alan Cook to assert that Reform UK is not anti-immigrant and is not a racist party.
The following day, the Guardian newspaper carried a story "Most Reform members believe non-white UK citizens born abroad should be forced or encouraged to leave, poll finds." I would describe such views as racist.
The Guardian story was based on the Hope not hate report "State of Hate 2026: It Could Happen Here." Starting on page 44, it reports the results of a survey of Reform UK party members carried out by the polling organisation Survation.
I have reproduced two quotes from the report below.
"Over half (54%) think non-white British citizens born abroad should be forcibly removed or encouraged to leave, compared to 24% if they were white."
That means they want me and my wife to be forced or encouraged to leave the UK.
"Almost half (49%) think non-white British citizens whose parents were born abroad should be forcibly removed or encouraged to leave."
That means they want my children to be forced or encouraged to leave the UK.
Views like those are the reasons that I consider Reform UK to be a party that attracts racists.
