After the Gorton by-election, a number of stories circulated about so-called “family voting” — Muslim families voting together, with the husband supposedly directing how others should vote.
This narrative was quickly seized on as an explanation for Reform’s failure to win the seat and for the collapse of the Conservative vote. The Conservatives, in particular, had a catastrophic result: just 706 votes in total, their worst ever by-election performance, well short of the roughly 1,700 needed to retain their deposit.
A group called Democracy Volunteers claimed there was evidence of voting irregularities linked to family voting. Like most people, I had never heard of them before — or since. The prominence given to their claims, especially by right-wing accounts on X, was questionable.
The claims spread widely enough for Greater Manchester Police to investigate allegations of electoral fraud.
They found no evidence whatsoever to support them.
It did, however, take a month to reach that conclusion — by which point blatantly misleading stories about Muslim voters had already circulated widely.
What matters here is not just that the claims were false, but that they were useful. They provided a convenient explanation for political failure and a ready-made suspicion of a minority group. By the time they were disproven, the story had already done its work. This is how racially tinged lies find their way into the mainstream of politics. For Reform and the Conservative parties such conspiracy theories are preferable to confronting the truth of their own failure.