Labour accused of staging by-election video

According to Labour, the Greens never stood a chance in the Gorton & Denton by-election. What’s strange is Labour are now saying voters are switching from the Greens to Labour, suggesting they did actually abandon the incumbent Labour Party at some point, but have now switched back?

We’re unsure what Labour have done to convince people they can win besides shouting ‘ONLY WE CAN WIN‘, but apparently that is happening.

Unless, of course, this is all staged:

“So fucking staged”

Let’s do a detailed breakdown of the above video, shall we?

What seems to be happening is Labour candidate Angeliki Stogia is speaking with a resident on their doorstep. The camera person is standing behind some bushes for some reason, with their focus trained on the resident’s window. In said window there’s a flyer for the Green Party, and the video ends with the resident replacing it with a Labour flyer.

The problem is not everything adds up:

1. For whatever reason, the audio isn’t aligned with the footage. You can tell this because Stogia walks away from the house while the resident is still speaking.
2. The fact that the camera person is stood behind a bush suggests they were recording the scene without the resident’s knowledge.
3. The camera person is focused on the window while Stogia was still speaking to the resident, suggesting they somehow knew what was going to happen with the flyer.

How did they know that the man would immediately replace the Green Party flyer with the Labour once? Unclear. But the simplest explanation is ‘it was staged – they faked that shit‘.

Others had similar suspicions:

If Labour have faked it, it’s another sign Labour are once again copying a Reform MP. As Emily Apple wrote for the Canary in 2019 on then-Conservative Lee Anderson:

Lee Anderson is running in the Tory/Labour marginal seat of Ashfield, in the East Midlands. Labour narrowly won the seat in 2017 by just over 400 votes. But Anderson’s dirty tactics should provide yet another reason why no one in Ashfield should vote for him.

She added:

Michael Crick from Mail Plus caught Anderson redhanded “setting up the apparently spontaneous doorstop encounter beforehand”. The reason Crick could do this? Anderson had seemingly forgotten he was wearing a radio mic!

TLDW

For a full 4 hour breakdown of the 10 second clip, be sure to check back in tomorrow.

If you want a TLDW on that – yeah – we also think Labour staged it.

Featured image via The Canary