Claims cousin marriages are driving illegal ‘family voting’ as police are urged to investigate by-election fraud allegations in crushing Green victory

The debate over alleged voter fraud in the Gorton and Denton by-elections deepened today as a leading academic claimed the practice of cousin marriages was a major factor in illegal ‘family voting’.

Oxford-based academic Dr Patrick Nash has argued that there is a strong correlation between family voting, which means a man walks into the voting booth with his wife or daughters and tells her how to vote, and marriages between blood relatives in the local Muslim community.

It has been claimed that one in eight votes cast in the by-election, won by the Green Party’s Hannah Spencer, could be attributed to group voting.

Police have been called to investigate ‘clear evidence’ of voter fraud in the Manchester by-election, following warnings that Britain is ‘sleepwalking into sectarian politics’.

Ms Spencer cruised to victory for the Greens in the previously safe Labor seat of Gorton and Denton.

Labor’s slide to third place was a humiliating result for Keir Starmer, triggering fresh calls for him to resign.

But Ms Spencer’s historic victory was mired in allegations of sectarianism after the Greens targeted her constituency’s large Muslim population with messages about the war in Gaza.

Election observers reported record levels of so-called ‘family voting’; This is an illegal practice that usually involves a man entering a voting booth with his wife and telling her how to vote.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage passes reports on so-called family vote to Greater Manchester Police

Shortly after the polls closed, the independent group Volunteers for Democracy published a rare report warning that one in eight votes cast may have been affected by the practice, which is a criminal offense and punishable by imprisonment.

Nigel Farage, whose Reform Britain party trails the Greens by 4,402 votes, said Ms Spencer’s victory was ‘a victory for sectarian voting and fraud’.

Mr Farage also called on the Electoral Commission to investigate.

“The incident witnessed yesterday is extremely worrying and raises serious questions about the integrity of the democratic process in Muslim-majority regions,” he said. ‘If this is what’s happening at polling stations, imagine the potential pressure of voting by post.’

Kemi Badenoch said Labor had ‘created the monster that captured the votes of the Muslim community bloc’ in previous elections, adding: ‘This monster has come back to bite them.’

The Conservative leader said the rise of sectarian politics was beginning to ‘unravel the culture of tolerance that has made Britain great’.

He accused the Greens of running a “disgusting, sectarian campaign and also wanting to legalize crack cocaine”. Greens leader Zack Polanski has denied encouraging sectarianism.

Today, Dr. estimates that close to 50 percent of the Muslim community in his constituency practices cousin marriage. Nash told the Daily Mail: ‘Election fraud is often committed by South Asian Muslim tribes and the high rates of cousin marriages are a good indicator of the high rates of fraudulent claims.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski with new MP Hannah Spencer at the press conference held in Manchester yesterday

‘These clans are routinely courted by Labor to secure bloc votes in exchange for lucrative local government contracts and prestigious official positions.

‘Wherever clans have great electoral power, corruption and sectarian violence occur. ‘There is an urgent need for a cross-party agreement to break up these toxic mafia families by banning cousin marriage and strengthening our electoral safeguards.’

Authorities have already established a link between grooming gangs and cousin marriages. Baroness Casey said ‘two-thirds of the suspects were attacked in uninformed and informal groups, often by siblings or cousins’.

Unions’ enforcement of ‘rigid patriarchal hierarchies’ held together by fathers and husbands and their use to oppress women fuels the link between inbreeding and electoral fraud.

There are even allegations of votes being exchanged for social or financial support through the cousin marriage network.

Advocates said the current system is vulnerable to fraudsters because there is nothing to verify the identities of people who register to vote by mail.

Senior election judge Richard Mawrey QC said the system was open to abuse because it ‘operates in trust’ and assumes ‘both voters and officials are honest’. Critics called for an urgent investigation into voting practices in the by-elections, while the electoral commission insisted there was ‘no evidence of large-scale election fraud’.