Blyth Valley in the collapsed "red Wall" - Was it pushed or did it fall?

On 12 December 2019 whilst watching BBC Election 2019 and reeling from the shock of the exit poll predicting an 80 seat majority, imagine my horror when it was announced that for the first time in my 62 years I had a CONSERVATIVE MP.

Blyth valley was established as a constituency in 1950 as Blyth, renamed in 1983, has always been labour, was the third seat to declare the result in 2019 and was the first conservative seat at that election.

After a few days I decided to investigate this dubious result. Where to start? Much on twitter about rigged postal votes, folks left off electoral register but how?

I recalled Naga Munchetty was reporting from the Blyth valley count for BBC and looked to the video again and again. I took screenshots with subtitles on and made a full transcript of the first 75 minutes of the broadcast.

A few things had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Naga mentioned

• ·        A new count Manager being employed by Blyth Valley for this count.
• ·        Blyth valley being in a race to be first to declare the result.
• ·        It took only 38 Seconds for the first ballot box to arrive at the count.
• ·        Blyth Valley was using new computer software.
• ·        There were very low numbers of postal votes.
• ·        There were high numbers of people turning up at the polling stations necessitating extra staff being employed at the count.
• ·        A total of 28 ballot boxes arriving at the count.

I sent a freedom of information request to Northumberland County Council for information re Blyth Valley + 3 other constituencies they are responsible for. These are Wansbeck (Lab), Berwick (Con) and Hexham (Con). I asked for the other 3 for comparison.

The reply from Northumberland County council ignored most of my questions but did give postal vote numbers for the 4 constituencies. I have sent further FOI request and asked the information commissioner to look at responses from NCC.

With regard to the new count manager, the race to be first to declare, 38 seconds for the delivery of the first ballot box and new computer software, without any information I am unable to comment. I am not hopeful that I will ever get this information but more on that later.

With regard to the number of ballot boxes Naga said 28 in total however the notice of situation of polling stations published on NCC website and dated 10 December 2019, states Blyth Valley used 31 polling stations so surely 31 ballots boxes should have been received at count?

The only information I have to date re Naga’s reporting and from NCC response relates to the number of postal votes and the number of people turning up at polling stations.

I put that information into a spreadsheet, along with the same information for the 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017 General elections, again for comparison. (See Appendix 1)

Yes postal votes that were included in the count in 2019 (15599) were lower than those included in the count in 2017 (16336) a difference of 735 but the total valid votes counted was also lower in 2019 than it was in 2017.

The number of postal votes not returned as a % of the total postal votes issued increased in 2019 to 2890 (15.60%). In 2017 this was 2587 (13.40%). A difference of 303.

So Naga was right about lower postal votes but “very Low” is questionable.

She was wrong about higher numbers at polling stations. The total number of votes counted in 2019 was 40859 and after deducting postal votes this means 25260 people voted at a polling station. In 2017 the total number of votes counted was 42560 and after deducting postal votes this means 26154 people voted at a polling station. So in 2019 there were 894 less voters at polling stations than in 2017.

Confused I started to look into the electorate and population to see if this might have a bearing. 

A freedom of information response from Northumberland county council, dated 23 December 2019 stated the electorate for Blyth valley at the 12 December 2019 General election was 64429.

This figure of 64429 was confirmed in commons briefing paper CBP-8749, dated 28 January 2020 which used data from this spread sheet HoC-2019GE-results-by-constituency.

The notice of situation of polling stations new version, dated 10 December 2019 (https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/NorthumberlandCountyCouncil/media/Councillors-and-Democracy/Notice%20of%20Elections/General%20Election%202019/notice-of-situation-of-polling-stations-new-version-10122019_1.pdf) showed the electorate was 66228.

Why is there a difference of 1799? And why are there differences for other years – see table below and appendix 1.

		Year	Population estimate Mid year aged 18+ from ONS	Electorate A (from Electoral commission data)	Turnout (number of valid votes counted as % of electorate A)	Total number of valid votes counted	Electorate B (from notice of situation of polling stations)	Turnout (number of valid votes counted as % of electorate B)	Difference in Electorate (A – B)
	Blyth Valley	*2019	67490	64,429	63.42%	40,859	66228	61.69%	-1799
	Blyth Valley	2017	67240	63,428	66.99%	42,490	61264	69.36%	2164
	Blyth Valley	2015	65907	61,247	62.80%	38,461	63957	60.14%	-2710
	Blyth Valley	2010	65021	62,900	61.31%	38,566	60252	64.01%	2648
	Blyth Valley	2005	63793	63,628	57.15%	36,366	Not available see FOI response 7489
		* mid 2018 population data used here as this is latest   available

Once again a FOI request to NCC was refused when I enquired about this, and once again I have asked the Information Commissioner to investigate for me.

The abiding theme in all of this is a total lack of transparency. 

Further reading and research has shown me just how little scrutiny there is of the whole election process, what little redress there is if electoral fraud is found and how much of our personal data is accessible by so many people. 

In order to better understand how electoral fraud might occur I looked at the electoral commission guidance for Electoral Officers, sent FOI to cabinet office, DWP and of course NCC.

I managed to scrape together enough information to draw up this flowchart of the Individual Electoral Registration process.

I was not in the least surprised to see how the cabinet office (Demonic Cummings) has full access to all of our private data, our entry on the electoral register and even the printing company that handles most of the electoral printing requirements including postal vote packs.

Not hard to see how armed with all of this data a person can be tracked on social media and having been run through VICS very accurately predicted which way they will vote.

Not a lot of personnel involved and certainly nothing that would show up as glaringly obvious in data, which is what I found in Blyth Valley.

I also discovered that a lot of local authorities, NCC included, do not record the number of people who complain about being prevented from voting.

In my opinion the only way that these numbers can be obtained is by an audit of those voters who said they were voting but did not. 

The Constituency Labour Parties HAVE lists of who said they were voting and did not. It would not be a difficult task to contact these people and find out why. 

If it could be shown that significant numbers of people were removed from the electoral register and or did not receive their postal votes then an official investigation could be called for. 

This would be an abuse of a person’s human rights and could go to European Court of Human rights.

See the writings of Kim Sanders-Fisher about this potential human rights abuse on this excellent site https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/elections-aftermath-was-our-2019-vote-the-eu-referendum-rigged-toryrig2019

I have tried in vain to get Blyth Valley CLP to carry out an audit of non-voters and have asked several contacts but none of their CLPs are interested in doing this either.

Labour at a national level does not even bother to respond to requests!

I have taken this as far as I can and I am shelving this project.

Shame because for everyone on twitter etc. I see whingeing about this lackadaisical government, no one seems to care that WE DO NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT IT!

APPENDIX

Region	Year	Electorate	Turnout (number of valid votes counted as % of electorate)	Total number of valid votes counted	Total number of ballots at count	Total number of ballot papers rejected at the count	Total number of ballot papers rejected at the count as % of valid votes counted	Total number of postal ballot papers issued	Number of covering envelopes received by the RO or at a polling station before the close of poll	Number of covering envelopes NOT received by the RO or at a polling station before the close of poll	Number of covering envelopes NOT received by the RO or at a polling station before the close of poll as % of total number of postal ballot papers issued		Number of ballot papers returned by postal voters which were included in the count of ballot papers	Number of ballot papers returned by postal voters which were included in the count of ballot papers  as % of Total number of valid votes counted		Number of ballot papers returned by postal voters which were NOT included in the count of ballot papers	Number of ballot papers returned by postal voters which were NOT included in the count of ballot papers  as % Number of covering envelopes received by the RO or at a polling station before the close of poll	Won by Party	Won by Number of ballots		Won by % Share of total ballots at count		Population estimate Mid year aged 18+ from ONS ***	Electorate (from notice of situation of polling stations)		Turnout (number of valid votes counted as % of electorate from notice of situation of polling stations)		Difference in Electorate (Results versus notice of situation of polling stations)
Blyth	2019	64,429	63.42%	40,859	40,953	94	0.23%	18,527	15,956	2,890		15.60%	15,599		38.18%	357	2.24%	CON	712	42.68%		67490			66228		61.69%		-1799
Blyth	2017	63,428	66.99%	42,490	42,560	70	0.16%	19,275	16,688	2,587		13.42%	16,336		38.45%	352	2.11%	LAB	7915	55.94%		67240			61264		69.36%		2164
Blyth	2015	61,247	62.80%	38,461	38,502	41	0.11%	17,848	15,790	2,058		11.53%	15,198		39.52%	592	3.75%	LAB	9467	46.31%		65907			63957		60.14%		-2710
Blyth	2010	62,900	61.31%	38,566	38,615	49	0.13%	21,875	18,479	3,396		15.52%	17,748		46.02%	731	3.96%	LAB	10744	44.48%		65021			60252		64.01%		2648
Blyth	2005	63,628	57.15%	36,366	35,773	593	1.63%	14,409	10,409	4,000		27.76%	10,131		27.86%	278	2.67%	LAB	14677	54.95%		63793			Not available see FOI response 7489
Berwick	2019	59,939	70.25%	42,109	42,287	178	0.42%	10,661	9,419	1,242		11.65%	9,237		21.94%	182	1.93%	CON	14835	56.90%		62583			59562		70.70%		377
Berwick	2017	59,148	71.37%	42,212	42,291	79	0.19%	10,497	9,306	1,191		11.35%	9,111		21.58%	195	2.10%	CON	11781	52.50%					Not Available
Berwick	2015	56,969	70.96%	40,423	40,501	78	0.19%	8,910	8,116	794		8.91%	7,855		19.43%	261	3.22%	CON	4914	41.10%
Berwick	2010	56,578	67.94%	38,439	38,523	84	0.22%	7,529	6,580	949		12.60%	6,375		16.58%	205	3.12%	LIB D	2690	43.70%
Berwick	2005	56,722	63.63%	36,090	36,269	179	0.50%	14,409	4,137	3,452		23.96%	3,439		9.53%	698	16.87%	LIB D	8632	52.80%
Hexham	2019	61,324	75.26%	46,150	46,330	180	0.39%	14,441	12,973	1,468		10.17%	12,737		27.60%	236	1.82%	CON	10549	54.50%		63515			60861		75.83%		463
Hexham	2017	61,737	74.87%	46,224	46,303	79	0.17%	14,607	13,102	1,505		10.30%	12,792		27.67%	310	2.37%	CON	9236	54.10%					Not Available
Hexham	2015	59,708	72.59%	43,345	43,427	82	0.19%	12,556	11,500	1,056		8.41%	11,155		25.74%	345	3.00%	CON	12031	52.70%
Hexham	2010	60,360	72.04%	43,483	43,543	60	0.14%	12,960	11,265	1,695		13.08%	10,919		25.11%	346	3.07%	CON	5788	43.20%
Hexham	2005	60,298	69.44%	41,872	41,513	359	0.86%	10,026	8,010	3,452		34.43%	7,920		18.91%	90	1.12%	CON	5020	42.40%
Wansbeck	2019	62,100	65.23%	40,509	40,628	119	0.29%	14,538	12,489	2,049		14.09%	12,089		29.84%	400	3.20%	LAB	814	42.30%		66675			66228		61.17%		-4128
Wansbeck	2017	62,151	68.31%	42,454	42,511	57	0.13%	14,979	13,128	1,851		12.36%	12,799		30.15%	329	2.51%	LAB	10435	57.30%					Not Available
Wansbeck	2015	60,705	63.47%	38,528	38,596	68	0.18%	13,491	11,968	1,523		11.29%	11,513		29.88%	455	3.80%	LAB	10881	50.00%
Wansbeck	2010	61,782	61.95%	38,273	38,334	61	0.16%	15,562	13,194	2,368		15.22%	12,722		33.24%	472	3.58%	LAB	7031	45.90%
Wansbeck	2005	63,005	58.42%	36,809	37,068	259	0.70%	6,405	4,659	3,452		53.90%	4,633		12.59%	26	0.56%	LAB	10581	55.20%
** PV per party             Conservatives  7342      Labour             1710                LibDem            1224              Green                492                     Rejected             79                     Total             10847								NOTES:                                                                                                                                  The representation of the people act 2000 gave everyone the right to vote by post starting with the 2001 general election although take-up was low. By the 2005 general election there was an increased take-up of postal voting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The electorate as shown on polling station notice has been included because of the difference noted between this figure and the electorate declared as part of the results. Most of these notices are removed quite soon after an election and those for Blyth Valley were obtained by an FOI request to Northumberland county council archives.														*** These population figures include people   living in UK who are not eligible to vote and exclude people living overseas who are eligible to vote.    Mid 2018 used for 2019 (latest available data)