A BRADFORD election candidate is in the clear over a TikTok video he uploaded after police concluded that 'no offences have been identified.'
Councillor Muhammed Ali Islam uploaded a video to his TikTok account where he appeared to suggest people “might” get a cake if they vote for him in the General Election on July 4.
The 21-year-old, who recently became a councillor for Manningham, was standing as the Bradford Independent Group’s candidate for Bradford West but just lost out to Naz Shah.
West Yorkshire Police told The Telegraph & Argus it was making inquiries into the video, which was posted on June 20 but then deleted.
In it, Cllr Islam references a company in Bradford and “The Matilda” cake, which is like the chocolate treat from the film of the same name that Bruce Bogtrotter is forced to eat by Miss Trunchbull.
He said: “Now if you vote for me in the General Election you might again get your free Matilda cake.
“Quote me when you get your cake and hopefully you might get a discount.”
But a West Yorkshire Police spokesperson said: “The matter has been investigated and no offences have been identified.
“An election candidate has been spoken to and given guidance.”
The video was labelled as being part of Cllr Islam’s bid to support local businesses for his campaign and when the T&A spoke to him on Thursday he affirmed this was the case and it was taken out of context.
He said: “My words have been misconstrued, blown out of proportion – nothing happened, we’ve done nothing wrong.”
Cllr Islam added: “We were doing something fun, something different.”
And he hit out at what he called "cardboard politicians who don’t do anything fun.”
Cllr Islam added that "politics is crazy" and that people would "do any little thing to target you.”
The young politician’s attempt at becoming the MP for Bradford West ended in failure, but he was only 707 votes behind the long-standing Naz Shah.
She retained her seat with 11,724 votes which was a huge drop from 33,736 in the last General Election in 2019 and is the lowest it has ever been since she joined Parliament in 2015.
Cllr Islam’s share of the votes was 30 per cent – compared to 32 per cent for Ms Shah – which was much higher than the only independent candidate in 2019, who received 90 votes for a share of 0.2 per cent.
The councillor said he was seen as an “honest threat”.
He added: “The results showed it, 700 votes away from taking out Labour.
“It shows they were worried.”
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