This Alpaca Tried To Vote In The Labour Leadership Election And Failed Miserably

Still, at least we learned that nine out of ten alpacas prefer Owen Smith. The Labour purge continues.

This is Oscar. Oscar is an alpaca. All Oscar ever wanted to do was to vote in the Labour leadership election.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

The Labour leadership election is becoming an annual event involving hundreds of thousands of voters – putting an enormous strain on the party's staff as they attempt to enforce its rulebook by ensuring all the people who have registered to vote are real and are Labour supporters. Some have been removed for allegedly supporting the Tories. One union boss was booted for being anti-Labour. Another individual has allegedly been removed for liking Foo Fighters.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has criticised "rigged purge of Jeremy Corbyn supporters" from the list of those allowed to vote, while the party was challenged in court by party members who wanted the right to vote.

In order to test whether it was still possible to beat Labour's registration system by registering under a fake alias, BuzzFeed News signed up Oscar as a £25 registered supporter.

Laura Gallant / BuzzFeed News

Last year we successfully registered a Corbyn-voting cat. Having run out of original ideas we thought we'd repeat the test for this summer's leadership election but aim higher.

As a result we registered a Pokemon, a stuffed monkey nailed to a tree in York, and a historic apple tree in east London as registered Labour supporters. Those three were quickly caught as fake applications by Labour's compliance department and removed from the list. But the alpaca seemingly made it through.

Oscar is owned by the family of Sian Butcher, a designer at BuzzFeed who grew up in a place called the "countryside" with lots of animals. She signed up her family's favourite camelid as a Labour supporter by paying the £25 registered supporter fee on her debit card and entering his name, along with a fake date of birth, a fake email address ([e-mail]), and her parents' address.

In case we need to emphasise: Oscar is not on the electoral roll and should not be allowed a vote.

Regardless, Oscar the alpaca was issued a vote via email on Wednesday morning.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

This followed the standard barrage of emails from both campaign groups asking for the animal's vote. Although strangely these were being sent to Oscar's email but addressed to Sian, as if Labour didn't recognise their animal supporter.

In order to help Oscar decide which candidate to vote for, we set up two buckets of hay with large pictures of the two Labour leadership contenders.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

The non-threatening images of Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith holding produce were chosen to be non-threatening to the alpacas and absolutely not because they both look a bit daft.

At first it proved quite hard to get Oscar or his alpaca friends interested in politics.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

It turns out herding alpacas towards mounted pictures of Jeremy Corbyn is quite difficult.

No matter how many times we tried to read Owen Smith's list of policies to Oscar, he just kept running away at the sight of the Pontypridd MP.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

And no matter how long we spent talking about the benefits of rail renationalisation, the alpacas were only mildly interested in the current Labour leader.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

Then Oscar saw the two buckets of hay with the two pictures of the politicians. At first the alpaca was much more interested in the one containing a photo of Jeremy Corbyn holding a giant marrow.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

With one quick bite he ran away with all of the hay from the Corbyn bucket, standing proud at all he had achieved.

But then he had another look at Owen Smith and started nibbling at that bucket as well.

Suddenly we noticed – the pattern was repeating itself elsewhere. The alpacas, being pack animals, were drifting towards Owen Smith over Jeremy Corbyn.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

The pattern kept being repeated.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

Increasingly it was looking like the a walkover for the challenger candidate. Even Oscar started to join in.

There was one final political test to see whether Oscar was on the Corbynite or Smith wing of the Labour party: Would he be willing to eat hay from a 2015 Labour general election "controls on immigration" mug?

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

Answer: Yes.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

We set up a voting terminal in field for Oscar to cast his vote online.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

The decision was weighing heavily on his mind as he pondered what sort of Labour party he really wanted to represent his alpaca interests.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

But eventually, with a little bit of human assistance, he was able to log in to the Labour party website and cast his vote for Owen Smith.

BuzzFeed News

Afterwards we phoned Labour and told them to remove the invalid vote from their database, which they quickly did. And then came the dispute: We insisted we had registered on behalf of Oscar, with a fake name, date of birth, and email address at a postal address where our staff member had not lived for several years. They insisted Oscar had never formally been registered and it had all been done in the name of a human who was still on the electoral roll at their parents' address.

Both sides maintained they were correct, creating yet another dispute over Labour membership rules.

Or as a party spokesperson would cruelly put it: “We thank BuzzFeed for their interest in helping to choose Labour’s next prime minister, but this story isn’t quite as it seems and Oscar, along with any other interested alpacas, has not received a vote."

Instead, they said this was essentially a case of what happens when someone who has "email address for themselves in the name of their alpaca" votes legitimately in the manner of other £25 members.

"Labour’s processes remain robust, although of course we hope BuzzFeed’s alpaca takes a keen interest in the work of the Labour Animal Welfare Society and the work of our Shadow DEFRA team.”

As for Oscar, he's so completely disillusioned by his experience that he's quit politics for life.

BuzzFeed News / Laura Gallant

In conclusion Labour's compliance department seems to have got its act together when it comes to tracking down dubious registrations, even if you can enter fake details registered to your parents' house and get away with it.

Still, at least Owen Smith now knows that he's got the alpaca vote stitched up.