Britain First have launched themselves at the upcoming local elections with gusto, their electoral enthusiasm boosted by the recent removal of two obstacles in their path to becoming the Worst Government Ever.
In late 2021, they finally re-registered with the Electoral Commission, having been deregistered in 2017 for failing to file the annual paperwork that every other party – including hundreds of tiny local independent groups – manages to stay on top of.
This year also marks the end of leader Paul Golding’s five-year ban from seeking public office, which resulted from his 2018 conviction for religiously aggravated harassment.
It was therefore unsurprising that Golding would therefore wish to stand for office this year, and he duly announced his intention to reenact the dizzying lows of his time as BNP councillor in the late 2000s.
But it might be surprising – at least to anyone unfamiliar with Golding’s lifelong addiction to dishonesty – that he would celebrate his new electoral freedom by committing an act of corruption that, if proven in court, could result in him being banned from office for another five years.
Anyone familiar with Britain First might have been surprised to hear that Golding is running for election in Swanscombe ward of Dartford Borough Council. For some years he’s been happily settled in with his partner Ashlea Simon in Salford, Greater Manchester – last July they put in a “huge amount of hard work” to open a new Britain First HQ there, including a new office for the Dear Leader himself:
But for some reason it seems that Golding decided that his adopted hometown of Salford wouldn’t be suitable for turf for his launch his own political campaign, and so at some point in late 2022 he decided to run in Dartford instead. And in typical Britain First fashion, it seems he decided that the rules about who is and isn’t qualified to stand in area didn’t apply to him.
You don’t technically have to live in an area in order to run for office there, but you DO have to be “resident” in an area for at least part of the time in order to register to vote there…
So when Paul Golding falsely informed the electoral registration officer for Dartford that he was living in an old Britain First office there – along with fellow Britain First candidate Nick Scanlon – it appears he was committing an offence under s.13D of the Representation of the People Act 1983:
This offence only carries a maximum of 51 weeks in prison and £5000 fine, ie unpleasant but wouldn’t necessarily rule out Golding’s chances of parading his troupe of thugs round another unsuspecting constituency at future elections.
However, the Statement of Persons Nominated for Dartford suggests that Golding doubled down on the law-breaking by going on to falsely report an address in Dartford – presumably the old BF office, but possibly a different one – on the Home Address form of his legally prescribed nomination papers.
As mentioned above, it is legal to stand for election in a ward you don’t live in. But it is very much illegal to give a false address on your nomination papers:
It would ordinarily be quite hard to establish where someone was actually resident, but luckily Golding is so committed to documenting his life on social media that he has essentially provided an itinerary of his own movements over the past few months.
And, unfortunately for Golding, this itinerary shows that he has continued to live in Greater Manchester throughout this entire period. He drives down to Dartford for occasional three-hour stints of canvassing on a Saturday before returning to Salford.
A word of advice for aspiring electoral fraudsters: if you’re pretending to be resident in Dartford, it’s best not to post a video in which you say that you’ve just been in Dartford but are “off home now”, particularly if the footage reveals that you’re driving northbound on the M25 through Essex – ie, the opposite direction from Dartford.
Similarly, if you’ve just submitted legal documents claiming a property in Dartford as your current home address, you should avoid posting a video two weeks later complaining that your partner has filled “our conservatory” with plants – particularly if your partner has just submitted her own nomination papers with a Salford address on them.
We’ve provided the police with a dossier of these and similar posts from Golding, but they won’t have to rely on social media posts; we’re sure that Golding will be very happy to provide evidence to the authorities showing that he’s been eating, sleeping and buying groceries in Dartford for at least the past few months or so…
A Reform Party candidate fantasised about deporting “millions” of British citizens to “rid itself of the foreign plague we have been diseased with”. UPDATE: Reform…
